AIG bonus blame game makes anti-Reid campaign fodder

Aiming to turn Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s reputation as a master of Senate dealmaking against him, the National Republican Senatorial Committee today released a Web ad accusing the Nevada Democrat of being to blame for those notorious AIG bonuses.

Reid, the YouTube video notes, appointed himself to the conference committee on the stimulus bill during which the provision that allowed the bonuses was apparently inserted.

Against a background of dramatic, minor-key piano music, the video's announcer twice reads a headline from a Congressional Quarterly story about Reid: “Making sure he’s in the room when the deals are made.” The ad urges viewers to tell Reid “to stop backroom deals that protect bonuses for bailed-out CEOs.” It’s an interesting and novel tactic of trying to portray the clout Reid so often touts back home as a negative.

The ad shows MSNBC’s Chris Matthews ranting, “Somebody took that amendment out in House-Senate conference. Somebody got in that room and protected those AIG bonuses. And top congressional people aren’t saying who it was.”

It has since been revealed that it was Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., who’s pictured with Reid in an image used in the ad. The ad implies Reid is “responsible” because he “insisted on being part of it,” without stepping over the line and saying Reid himself inserted the provision.

Reid spokesman Jon Summers noted that Reid and other Democrats have a record of speaking out against excessive executive compensation, while Republicans have been silent on the issue.

In a floor speech last November, Reid condemned a $500 million payout for deferred compensation at AIG, saying, “To reward executives with exorbitant paydays after poor performance, and to do so even indirectly with taxpayer dollars, strikes most Americans as fundamentally unfair and a misuse of their money."

"The question is, where were the Republicans?” Summers said today. “Why didn’t they stand up to protect American taxpayers when Democrats offered a solution? And why did they oppose the economic recovery bill that included language curbing executive compensation? It is the height of hypocrisy for them to now raise any issue related to executive compensation. Republicans simply want people to forget what they did to put this country in the financial condition we find it in.”

Web “ads” are a cheap way for campaigns to put out a message that they’re not backing up with a TV or radio airtime purchase.

As of Friday afternoon, only about 200 people had viewed the anti-Reid video on YouTube.