The president’s Mother’s Day message is equal parts feel-good nostalgia and political platform. There’s his hard-working single mother, who taught him empathy and compassion, and that stoic Kansas grandmother of his, who grew up during the Depression and worked her way up to a bank VP job, only to hit the glass ceiling. This all leads seamlessly into what Obama describes as “issues that mothers face,” including greater health care costs — hence his health care overhaul — and continuing compensation inequality — the reason why he signed the Lilly Ledbetter Act in 2009, a piece of legislation that Romney couldn’t bring himself to endorse just last month.
The Romney team also put out its own Mother’s Day video, which somehow doesn’t include the candidate. Instead, each of the five strapping Romney boys narrated a series of Kennedy-esque clips of blond-haired children frolicking while Ann Romney, Polo modelling in the background, looks on. It’s really more of a paean to Ann Romney, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a political message in its own right. The Hilary Rosen kerfuffle is still pretty fresh in a lot of minds, so might this be the final rebuttal in the Mommy Wars?
