When a candidate runs for office, there are three ways for the campaign for frame his or her personality. They highlight the candidate’s legendary charm, they hide the candidate under a sheet while drawing devil horns on their opponent, or they lean in and turn a candidate’s ostensibly negative quality into a positive.
Gerald Daugherty took the latter approach, and it’s downright pleasant.
Daugherty, a Republican, is running for reelection as commissioner in Travis County, Texas, home of Austin. According to a campaign ad released on YouTube earlier this month, Daugherty is something of a policy wonk. Or, more specifically, he’s an extreme policy wonk who does not know when to just shut up about the trade-offs inherent in building public transportation infrastructure and just enjoy his dinner.
Charming, right? Let’s compare that to the dystopian horror of the most recent ad from Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTylz2WToXw
Daugherty’s ad isn’t the first time in recent memory that a candidate has built an ad around being a huge nerd. Brett Smiley, who ran for mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, in 2014, took a similar angle—except with Wes Andrerson-esque quirk substituted for Texas twang.
See, politics isn’t so bad, is it? Sigh…
