If your first television ad of the 2012 cycle is about Solyndra, portraying the president as the victim of “secretive oil billionaires,” and if it has to insist that you’re ethical, and if it has to insist that dependence on foreign oil is down (when gas is still exceptionally high for January) . . . things have not gone well.

Oh, by the way, the ad was instantaneously hit for being . . . well, to use the ad’s phrase, “not tethered to the facts”:

Then, in bold type, the ad proclaims: President Obama “kept a campaign promise to toughen ethics rules” and it cites: “PolitiFact, 1/21/09.”

Politifact did write that on Jan. 21, 2009, but then it almost immediately changed its ruling as Obama began granting waivers to his ethics policy.

In other words, the ad is touting the fact that one day into his presidency, he hadn’t yet disappointed everyone by not keeping his promises.

How much of Obama’s reelection campaign will be about obscuring the “expiration dates” of his promises?

Let’s dust off the old engine . . .

All statements from Barack Obama come with an expiration date. All of them.