This paper assays discourse, narrative, and video editing to introduce the notion of ‘historical coherence’. This notion is an extension of A. Duranti’s notion of ‘existential coherence’, the construction of an embodied narrative connecting a candidate’s past with his or her decision to run for office. This inquiry explores how language and communication are related with historical narratives via the use of multimodal stories in which US political commercials link candidates’ present actions with historical events, dynamics, artifacts, and/or figures.