McCain's Ad-man: Obama 60% Likely to Win

Republican advertising consultant and Jon Lovitz lookalike Alex Castellanos, famous for the heinous but effective Jesse Helms "Hands" ad, has high hopes...for Barack Obama. He tells New York magazine's John Heilemann all kinds of encouraging nuggets, but I'll start with the summation:

J.H.: Care to give candid odds on McCain pulling this thing off?

A.C.: Advantage Obama, 60-40. But I've been in campaigns that have won with a lot worse odds than that.

Not exactly the Vince Lombardi of consultants, is he? Like the time William Wallace told his azure-visaged comrades, "They may take our lives...but I've seen armies survive slaughters before, let's see what happens..."

To be fair, his job isn't to be a cheerleader, but should he be showing the GOP nominee's belly like this in public? Is he working an angle, lowering expectations for McCain? Is he just in love with the sound of his own voice?

Castellano had some other, similarly interesting points to make. On the "Dream Ticket":

The obvious answer: She is the anti-Obama. She sound-cancels his message, like a set of Bose headphones.

After the jump, the video from that "Hands" ad, a few more of these pearls, and brief commentary.

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Lovely guy, huh?

Here's Castellanos on Hillary's "fortitude":

She's got balls bigger than church bells.

It's tough to argue with the sentiment, if not the delivery, but he has this to say about Obama's strength as a candidate:

However, in the 40,000-feet, high-altitude, soaring, "I have a vision of a better America" campaign, a nontraditional campaign, he is stronger. He's got a passing game.

Here's my favorite, though, on Clinton's biggest mistake:

Biggest mistake was [Clinton's chief strategist] Mark Penn, author of the book Micro-Trends. He is a micro-thinker. In his book, he says there is no single America, just hundreds of little micro-slices. His strategy, if you can call it that, was to win a couple of slices, women and Hispanics - i.e., he had no big-picture strategy or message.

I really hate to find myself agreeing with this guy, but I take solace in the fact that even a broken, evill clock is right twice a day, and he's probably running a game on us, trying to reset expectations for McCain in the general election. This is still encouraging. You don't try to make a dead-even candidate into an underdog unless you're kinda scared of your opponent.

Less encouraging is the fact that things like the "Hands" ad can work in a close election. As people get to know more about McCain, expect Obama to put some more daylight between himself and McCain, and expect Castellanos to wade into the fight with whatever white appendages he thinks will help.


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