LOS ANGELES, CA- Curious voters tuning into Barack Obama's half hour paid program were in for a bit of a shock on Wednesday night. Instead of the speeches, charts and stock photography of puppies that people had expected to see, they found the candidate trading cheesy one liners with actors on a soundstage. The half hour "infomercial" turned out to be a pilot for a show Obama had been working on for several years. In fact, in a press release issued just after the broadcast, he admitted that his entire campaign had been a rouse to raise enough cash to produce and air the program. His hope, he says, is to get one of the major networks to pick the show up as a mid-season replacement so he can produce and star in it.

Sadly, the transformational figure who has inspired millions of first-time voters is not at all who he seemed to be. All along conservatives have been asking who the "real Barack Obama" is in an effort to undermine his candidacy, but now we know the truth: he is a struggling actor and screenwriter, so desperate to get a project green-lit by a major studio or network that he is willing to perpetrate a massive fraud on the public in order to do it.

After months of joking about it on the campaign trail, it now appears that his name really is Steve. "Barack Hussein Obama" is really just a character he created for the show, an earnest yet naive man with a funny name who really, really wants to be the leader of the free world. Worse yet, the show is a hack sit-com- a very poorly written with atrocious casting according to the handful of people who've seen the rough edit of the episode.

From the first frame to the last, the show is a parade of worn-out cliches hung together with the thin web of story line about a brash young politician reaching for the nation's top office. Obama walks onto the set to the sound of canned laughter and delivers his catchphrase in response to any and every circumstance. His precocious daughters set up a lemonade stand and get in way over their head with a predatory small business loan. They ask if he can loosen up the credit market so they can refinance, to which he replies predictably "Yes, we can!" Once the girls are safely outside and occupied, his wife Michelle grabs him and suggests some intimate activities upstairs. Obama then looks directly at the camera and says "Yes, we can!"

"No we can't," quips LA Times TV critic Mary McNamara in her review. "Or rather, let's not and say we did."

in spite of the negative reviews, the show's premiere raked in record-breaking ratings, not only due to the immense excitement he's generated in his pretend run from the White House, but mostly because it was, quite literally, the only thing on TV at the time. Steve says that he'll press on undeterred by the cynics. After all, he still has a dream in his heard and two hundred million dollars of campaign contributions burning a hole in his pocket.

"Always Bet on Barack" airs at 8pm Eastern on NBC, CBS, Fox and Univision. Check your local listings.