Governor Rick Perry’s campaign has released a new 60-second advertisement with some of America’s most decorated veterans endorsing his campaign for president.
“Any veteran I knew that I knew needed help, Governor Perry always told me whatever he could do to take care of them he would do,” Medal of Honor recipient Dakota Meyer says in the video, entitled “President of Honor”.
“He’s one of the most honorable men I’ve ever met,” Navy Cross recipient Marcus Luttrell says.
The ad shows several veterans before shifting to scenes of Washington, DC. Perry is then shown sitting on a hay bale in the back of a pickup truck talking to a man in overalls. Then he’s in a factory wearing a hard hat and talking to a worker. Then he’s speaking in a church.
“And we can restore this nation to its preeminence in the world,” Perry says over majestic orchestral music, as scenes of Americana flash by – a fluttering US flag, an aerial shot over a rural church, galloping stallions, celebrations of the end of World War II, “as a beacon of individual liberty and economic prosperity.”
The advertisement is cinematic and sweeping and heavy patriotism, continuing in the tradition of earlier Perry campaign ads that feel like trailers for a Jerry Bruckheimer movie.
But can the ad’s emotional appeal help Perry breakthrough in Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state where voters will choose their nominee in eleven days? If the latest polls are any indication, the governor has a tall mountain to climb.
American Research Group released a poll today showing in fourth place with single digit support, 9 percent. The three leading candidates are all in a statistical dead heat in the survey: Texas Congressman Ron Paul has 21 percent; former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney has 20 percent; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has 19 percent.
That survey paints a similar picture of voter support as a Rasmussen poll released Wednesday, which had Perry in a fourth place tie with former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum.
Perry is spending Christmas in Austin. Then he’s heading out on the second leg of his bus tour December 27. That will leave him with exactly one week to try to fight his way back into contention in Iowa.
