Hey, remember that guy in the neighborhood whose yard you made sure NEVER to step foot on when you were a kid; the same guy who had that unfinished addition to his home that resembled a fallout shelter more and more with each passing year; the guy who drove that rusty rape van plastered with well-worn NRA bumper stickers?  Well that same guy is apparently Herman Cain’s campaign manager and he is the star of the most bizarre campaign commercial I’ve ever seen.

This post is not a political screed, it is more of a resounding WTF? Everything in this ad is just so…weird. The cheap production values, the Top Gun’ish 80′s music in the background, Cain’s creepy slow-burn Cheshire Cat smile at the end and of course Cain campaign manager Mark Block’s smoking man persona. In a strange way the ad works for me in the same way David Lynch movies work for me: they are weird and I can’t explain them to anyone, but in a visceral way, they make make total sense to me. And maybe that is the point; perhaps this is an ad is meant to appeal to the red meat eating, cancer stick puffing, porn watching, ass-scratching limbic region that resides in so many of our heads.

The ultimate measure of this ad’s success is eyeballs, and as of today, close to 1.5 million people have viewed the spot on youtube. Before allegations of sexual harassment knocked the Cain campaign off-track, the ad was generating big buzz and perhaps some campaign cash. It is one of many online viral videos that are becoming part and parcel of politicking in the 21st Century. These videos are a mainline straight into the body politic and they don’t require traditional media gatekeepers – only a computer and an internet connection. Their effects can be both positive and negative, but they provide a new take on the traditional stump speech – one that provides a unique way to galvanize potential voters.  As the campaign season progresses, we’ll try sharing some more of these ads along with our non-partisan observations.