Oh, Mitt.

Mitt Romney, Republican presidential candidate extraordinaire, put out an ad recently entitled 'Ocean'. Here's a transcript:

GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY: I'm deeply troubled about the culture that surrounds our kids today.

Following the Columbine shootings, Peggy Noonan described our world as "the ocean in which our children now swim."

She described a cesspool of violence, and sex, and drugs, and indolence, and perversions.

She said that the boys who did the shooting had "inhaled too deeply in the oceans in which they swam."

I'd like to see us clean up the water in which our kids are swimming.

I'd like to keep pornography from coming up on their computers.

I'd like to keep drugs off the streets.

I'd like to see less violence and sex on TV and in video games and in movies.

And if we get serious about this, we can actually do a great deal to clean up the water in which our kids and our grandkids are swimming.

I'm Mitt Romney and I approve this message.

My initial reaction is that I could have written better copy for the ad than apparently Mitt's campaign managers did (Cesspool of indolence and perversions? Really Mitt?), but my secondary reaction to it is confusion.

Let's suppose for a minute that I'm a Republican instead of a liberal, and that this ad actually has a chance of appealing to values that I fall in line with. Republi-Me is a fundamentalist Christian and likes the idea of children having a safer time of it, but I'm not sure that the presentation here turns me on much. He promises reforms, but doesn't give any specific mechanism, and Republi-Me is wary enough of politicians and weary enough of the war to know that promises without plans are a recipe for disaster. I also know that Mitt was Governor of Massachusetts, so I'm a little wary of his 'family values' shtick. Most fundamentalist Christians are divided on whether they think the government should be legislating morality, but I think that even the ones who think that's okay might be wary of Mitt doing the legislating.

But even if I buy that he can bring cultural reforms and that he does have a plan he's not yet telling us about, I'm not sure that the idea comforts Republi-Me that much. Because Republi-Me is a real Republican in the traditional sense of the word, and after the Bush presidency I'm very much in line with the idea that less government is better government. This ad doesn't say 'less' to me. It doesn't say 'cut governmental spending and governmental interference in industry'. This ad says 'The government is going to mess with your private life some more, and we'll need a bigger beauracracy to do it' to me.

In short, I'm not really sure who his target audience is here, other than people who don't think very critically about the soundbytes their politicians throw at them. Seems to me like he overshoots the target for small-government Republicans by implying he's got a plan that's going to mean more government, and undershoots the target for fundie Christian Republicans by not detailing the plan to accomplish any of the hyperbole.

Then again, maybe this is why I'm a Democrat.