FuzzyLumpkins
12-20-2015, 10:32 PM
But watch all of it, and you learn some things about Ted Cruz that are hard to imagine ever showing up in a campaign ad. Despite the stagecraft, you encounter a family that’s messier than the one you’ll almost certainly see portrayed as the Cruz campaign enters the thick of the primaries. The footage offers an intriguing familial mishmash of single mothers, half-siblings and stepparents, bearing burdens of modern America—depression, drinking, drugs.
Cruz’s wife, an executive for Goldman Sachs currently on a leave of absence because of the campaign, describes herself as “a traditional mom,” albeit one who cops to not cooking, and likens her handling of multimillion-dollar investment portfolios to her family’s missionary work in Africa.
Cruz’s daughters adore him, you’re told, and yet you learn that they sometimes consider him “a guest” in their Houston home.
It also becomes clear that the death of Cruz’s half sister—and what he then did for her son—is a story he thinks reflects well enough on him that he wants to tell it in all its wince-inducing detail.
Cruz’s mother is the least willing participant here—the most interesting, too, in part because she is at times so obviously reluctant to play along.
Why is this available, all of it, to anyone? Evidently, shooting video like this and posting it in a public space lets campaigns and their supportive PACs share the content without technically communicating, which would be against the rules.
What’s great about this footage is the camera keeps rolling, people keep talking, and Cruz keeps rubbing, and rubbing, and rubbing, his family members’ shoulders and backs. The staged hugs, the awkward outtakes, the never-to-be-prime-time scenes, the unrehearsed, off-script interactions—these are the moments that feel the most revealing, the most captivating, the most authentic. It’s an unexpected window into the orbit of a candidate who is otherwise disciplined and relentlessly on-message.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/12/ted-cruz-b-roll-family-videos-213429#ixzz3uvG19S36
Cruz’s wife, an executive for Goldman Sachs currently on a leave of absence because of the campaign, describes herself as “a traditional mom,” albeit one who cops to not cooking, and likens her handling of multimillion-dollar investment portfolios to her family’s missionary work in Africa.
Cruz’s daughters adore him, you’re told, and yet you learn that they sometimes consider him “a guest” in their Houston home.
It also becomes clear that the death of Cruz’s half sister—and what he then did for her son—is a story he thinks reflects well enough on him that he wants to tell it in all its wince-inducing detail.
Cruz’s mother is the least willing participant here—the most interesting, too, in part because she is at times so obviously reluctant to play along.
Why is this available, all of it, to anyone? Evidently, shooting video like this and posting it in a public space lets campaigns and their supportive PACs share the content without technically communicating, which would be against the rules.
What’s great about this footage is the camera keeps rolling, people keep talking, and Cruz keeps rubbing, and rubbing, and rubbing, his family members’ shoulders and backs. The staged hugs, the awkward outtakes, the never-to-be-prime-time scenes, the unrehearsed, off-script interactions—these are the moments that feel the most revealing, the most captivating, the most authentic. It’s an unexpected window into the orbit of a candidate who is otherwise disciplined and relentlessly on-message.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/12/ted-cruz-b-roll-family-videos-213429#ixzz3uvG19S36