The Deep New Voice of McCain's Campaign

Pop quiz: If someone narrated your life, what would his or her voice sound like? Like the hipster kid from those Apple computer ads? Like a spiky-haired designer on Project Runway? Like David Lee Roth or Cindy Lauper or Gene Hackman or Wilford Brimley? Is it high-pitched and caffeinated, or low and slow? Does it rise and fall like a preacher in church, or have the sloshing lisp of someone who has drunk six beers too many?

Well if you are a Republican running for president, there is only really one answer. You need a narrator who sounds like he has been through hell and back, who has lived life and learned something, who could win a bar fight just by looking at you the right way. You need the voice of a simple man, who simply loves his country. You need, in other words, the sort of macho voice that John McCain has employed in his first general election ad of the campaign cycle, which was released today to be aired statewide in New Mexico, a probable swing state.

It is, in short, the kind of voice that can say, “The American president Americans have been waiting for,” as if that phrase meant something profound.

Now I know you are wondering: How does McCain's new macho voice compare to the Republican narrators of old? Well, I'm glad you asked. Have a listen after the jump.

Fred Thompson, whose own voice fits the bill, until the very last seconds of this ad, when a new guy goes even deeper.

Mitt Romney, who found a breathy guy with consonants like knives.

And finally Rudy Giuliani, who went with a law and order type.