Open any newspaper or magazine. Drive down any highway or listen to your radio. Turn on your T.V. or, these days, turn on your iPhone. What do you see? Advertisements.

In today’s world, thousands of advertisements bombard us on every street corner, in every office building and even from our own living room – and though there is no definitive number based on the individual’s daily routine, most guesses regarding individual exposure to ads fall between 3,000 and 5,000 ads… per day. Heck, there are even televisions shows about advertisements! Take “Mad Men” for instance.

And so, I introduce to you the ultimate salesman: the president of the United States of America.

Like a “Mad Man,” the president needs to convince his “intended client” (read: the American public) to invest, both emotionally and financially, in every “ad” (read: project). And how does he do this? Why, a sales pitch (read: speech) of course! But when you’re the POTUS, it takes a little more than a jingle or slogan to make your “clients” invest in the “ad.”

And so, without further ado, we present a comparison of three well-known presidential sales pitches: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “The New Deal,” Lyndon B. Johnson’s “The Great Society,” and Barack H. Obama’s “The American Jobs Act.”

It’s all in the name

As any Mad Men fan will tell you, it’s all in the name. However, unlike FDR’s “The New Deal” and LBJ’s “The Great Society,” – titles that evoke a sense of change – Obama’s title for his sales pitch falls flat.

WINNER: FDR’s “The New Deal” is short and simple, and ultimately brought hope to an American public desperately in need of a new life.
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