Last week I had lunch with a few friends and we talked about what we figured Obama would say in the infomercial. I thought he’d make a case for his first 100 days: explain what, in a time of crisis, he’d advocate for immediate relief. That expectation comes from a simple media premise. In 2004, Bush declared he had a mandate; the Washington press corps treated the claim with credulity; within six months the Social Security plan was dead; and within nine months, Katrina exposed the hollowness of his presidency. In 2008, with Obama poised to win a significantly larger percentage of the popular vote and the electoral college than Bush, the Washington press corps will — I presume — simply say that Bush proved mandates don’t mean much and adopt a default neo-Hooverish opposition to his economic program. The infomercial, I figure, would be about building expectations for 2009.

This is why I’m not a politics reporter. Only as I wrote the preceding paragraph did it occur to me that following my advice would have made Obama look presumptuous and arrogant. (Pretty clear what that says about me, huh?) Instead, Obama did something fireside-chat-ish: weaved together nearly every problem faced by the vast majority of Americans through letting them explain what those problems are, and explained his answers through the prism of personal identification. The anecdotes about his parents and his children are to say that he’s been there. And, really, not since Bill Clinton has a presidential nominee had a plausible claim to that. 

If I had to criticize, I’d say it was a little policy-light, especially in the national-security realm. But I gather the goal wasn’t really a policy goal. It was to get voters comfortable with the idea of the next four years with this guy. I was sold a long time ago, and a majority of the voters appear to have been sold within the past month. I’m not sure how many people would have been convinced by the infomercial, but I’m also not sure how many people are at the point of being convinced anymore.