It's tough to convey in words the relentless sameness and lameness of most political television ads. Candidates pounding podiums before cheering crowds. Candidates talking at town halls with hypnotized audience members nodding. Candidates striding around job sites. Collages of newscasts, headlines and still photos. Most local-level, congressional and even presidential ads contain at least a few of these giveaways that basically announce: here's yet another humdrum political commercial. Bernie's "America" was a relief—as well as a hark back to a golden age of highly produced ads. Golden-hour picture-postcard footage. A familiar song instead of a familiar rant. The messaging of most ads is just as monotonous as the packaging. Republicans and Democrats have been banging the same drums for years or even decades about Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, Wall Street banks, taxes and corporate loopholes, Iraq and terrorism, guns and abortion. I've started and stopped drafting this column half a dozen times, in part for not being enough of a writer to really, viscerally communicate the uninspired state of political ad-making, and in part because the ad-makers I know are
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