It took them a year to come up with … “Forward“? Haven’t they been watching MSNBC’s “Lean Forward” programming?  OK, OK, to be fair, hardly anyone does that.  Still, that makes “Forward” the most original concept from Obama since, um … “winning the future“:

It looks like the Obama campaign may have settled on its slogan for the 2012 election: “Forward.”

Four years ago Barack Obama ran on another one-word slogan, “Change.” Now, as President Obama prepares to hold the first public campaign rallies for his reelection, his team is giving a sense of what his pitch to votes will look like.

Of course, that’s not the direction this video takes.  It takes over three minutes looking backward, including the first minute of what took place before Obama took office.  After a brief shot at Republicans who “tried to tear this President down” — by, er, opposing his policies, which didn’t seem to bother Democrats while George W. Bush was in office — we get a couple of minutes of ball-spiking over the deaths of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki.  When does the video get to the “Forward” part?  Er … when there are 50 seconds left in the video, and even then, it doesn’t offer any specific policy goals — just platitudes:

You have to love the attack on the Tea Party, too.  The entire point of the Tea Party was that the policies of the Obama administration — and some of the Bush administration’s too — was pushing America in the wrong direction, not that “our best days are behind us.”

Mitt Romney’s campaign has a new video out, too.  Called “Broken Promises,” it only takes one minute to make its point, rather than the six-plus minutes it takes Team Obama to come somewhere near their theme:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KOZJHUZgX1M

President Obama’s budget projects that the deficit for the current year will total $1.33 trillion, the fourth straight year of deficits over $1 trillion. Under President Obama, the nation’s total public debt has reached a record $15.6 trillion.

Not to worry!  Obama will just, uh, pay it forward.  Or rather, we will.

Update: Plenty of reaction to Obama’s new slogan, most of it of the “huh?” variety.  This one from the Washington Post’s Alexandra Petri is a keeper, though:

What happened?

Was “Reply-All” taken?

Maybe “Forward” makes sense, given that the theme of the reelection effort has been Vaguely Creepy E-mails You Don’t Want. (“David — Every night in the White House, I see Barack up late poring over briefings, reading your letters, and writing notes to people he’s met. He’s doing that for you — working hard every day to make sure we can finish what we all started together. This week, I need you to have his back.”)

Forward is also Berlusconi’s party, for whatever that’s worth (it sounds better in Italian, like most things.) It’s a basketball position Obama played briefly.

Forward, eh?

I guess it’s better than “tough slog,” but at least that would have been a better description.