Best Super Bowl Ad? Clint Eastwood on Detroit

President Barack Obama must be pretty ecstatic about the events of the last week. Newt Gingrich continues his descent, Mitt Romney said he’s “not concerned about the very poor,” unemployment dropped to 8.3 percent, and the economy added nearly a quarter million jobs in January. Not too shabby.

And then, last night, car commercials dominated the Super Bowl, a sign that the economy is back on the rise if there was ever one. Every third commercial was a car commercial: Volkswagen returned to the Star Wars theme, Acura reunited Jerry Seinfeld and the Soup Nazi, and Chevy taunted Ford with a 2012 Mayan apocalypse ad.

But the piece that’s getting the most buzz is above ad for Chrysler, in which Clint Eastwood pulls out all the patriotic stops and touts the return of Detroit:

“People are out of work and they’re hurting. And they’re all wondering what they’re going to do to make a comeback. And we’re all scared, because this isn’t a game. The people of Detroit know a little something about this. They almost lost everything. But we all pulled together, now Motor City is fighting again.”

Chrysler, if you remember, received a multi-billion-dollar bailout from the federal government under Obama’s watch in 2009. The auto bailout was criticized from many quarters, including by Romney — the son of a former Michigan governor/American Motors president — who argued that the government ought to let Detroit go bankrupt and reorganize on its own. Unfortunately for Romney, the auto bailout worked — studies have shown that it saved more than a million jobs.

If I worked for the Obama campaign, I’d just be showing the Eastwood and Chrysler ad on repeat. It has everything you look for in a political masterpiece: flags waving, factories humming, engines roaring. Says Eastwood: “This country can’t be knocked out with one punch. We get right back up again and when we do the world is going to hear the roar of our engines.” Get that man a super PAC.