Behind the Ad: Obama campaign says "we didn't start the fire"

By Richard K. Barry

Who: The Obama-Biden re-election campaign.

Where: Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Nevada, New Hampshire, Iowa, North Carolina, Florida, and Colorado.

What's going on: The Obama campaign really, really wants voters to remember what a miserable mess the economy was in when the current president got to the White House. The Obama campaign understands that this is a pivotal point for their reelection. Most polls indicate that Americans understand that the economy was put in the ditch by George W. Bush, a Republican president. But what they do with that information is key.

Romney and his team are hoping that people will believe Obama should have completely fixed the mess he was handed by now. Romney hopes that people will forget that policies like huge tax cuts for the very wealthy, and an under-regulated financial sector, hallmarks of the Bush Administration, have had a massive impact on our current economic mess.

In other words, there are two fairly distinct approaches to governing and regulating the economy, and the one that got us into so much trouble is the one Romney wants to put back in place to solve our problems. Make sense to you? I'm sure we can expect Obama to make that point at least a few thousand times over the next six months.

This ad, called "Go," launched on Monday, makes that case, plus the fact that things are getting better, even if not fast enough.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)