Ain’t no way in hell Hermain Cain should be running the country. That being said, I finally got a chance to check out his new campaign video. After almost a week of reading tweets about whether or not the video was “real,” I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. But I have to say, as weird as it is, there’s some genius there.

Using an old Hollywood western style, the video successfully conveys Cain’s primary message which is “Hey! I’m just as white as you are, thank you very much!”

The video starts with his Chief of staff Mark Block, an older white male, saying what an honor it’s been to work for Cain. You get the feeling that there is a good chance that this man may have shot the Sheriff AND the Deputy. After giving his spiel about whatever it is that America needs that we really don’t, he ends his statement by taking a puff of a cigarette and blowing the smoke right in the viewer’s face.

How’s that for thumbing the nose at everything that America’s wimpy side stands for?   What may look like some silly hypermasculine puff of smoke to you was really a coded action. With that puff, Block just told all of you that Cain isn’t some soft, new-age, PETA-supporting, we-are-the-world, race-speechifying Obama supporter. This is a guy who doesn’t mind if you smoke, eat copious amounts of red meat, or carry a gun onto school property.

When times are hard, nostalgia reigns supreme and Cain’s ad provides a healthy dose of it. The narrative that America has gotten too “soft” is a popular one in red states. Lots of Americans long for a time before there were regulations that protected us from companies, strangers, and ourselves. When you could smoke a cigarette without everyone looking at you like some sort of pariah. There is a direct correlation, in some Americans’ minds, between America’s one-time strength and the popular norms and values of that time.

Of course those would be the norms and values they like to remember like smoking in public places, not the ones they conveniently forget like openly accepted racism and sexism (though I gather they don’t think that was all that bad). Cain’s supporters want America to be free again whether that means exercising some prejudice or simply smoking while having a drink at the bar.

The song you hear in the background “I Am America” is a perfect complement to the video and so is Block’s immediately preceding line about taking the country back. Cain’s face shows up right as the lyrics begin to play and there’s a subtle message that again, as dark as Cain may be, he’s just as whitebread as you and the rest of your family. With this video and subsequent sustained messaging, Cain may effectively detach “taking the country back” from racially coded language and reduce it to merely politically-coded. Can you take the country back from blacks if a black man is leading the charge? Literally, yes. Figuratively, no.

On a whole, this video spits in the face of almost everything I learned studying elections and media. Of course, my original study took place long before you tube and the advent of online viral campaigns.  But it gets one thing right for sure–it portrays the candidate in a way that will appeal to his audience. And due to the fact that many folks in red states have shown a distaste for negative ad campaigns when polled, Cain was wise to avoid yet another formulaic 30 second take-down of an opponent.