Team McCain must believe they've gotten what they needed out of their post-Obama trip series of ads attacking Obama's character. Their latest ad exercises great restraint by not mentioning the Democrat's name once. This ad is all about McCain and while it feels all over the map, full of non-sequitors ("Washington's broken. John McCain knows it. We're worse off than we were four years ago. Only McCain has taken on big tobacco..." Huh?), what the ad does is to hit on all the little associations people have with the old John McCain, present reality notwithstanding. Whether it be the reference to "reform" or "taking on" the special interests, or the final assertion that John McCain is the "original maverick" this ad is essentially damage control, trying to piece together McCain's damaged brand.
Watch it:
It will probably come as no surprise to see that in addition, the rhetoric of the ad, namely, "we're worse off than we were four years ago", is completely at odds with what the candidate himself has said on multiple occasions.
Remember this from the Reagan library debate:
I'm also intrigued by the image of the neon "Open" sign in McCain's ad. This is a sort of subliminal suggestion of optimism, i.e. "America is open for business again" and is classic Steve Schmidt. He used the very same image in one of his Schwarzenegger ads from 2006. I'll try to find it. I was wondering when we'd see Schmidt start to repeat aspects of that campaign. Of course, Schmidt back then had a laughably bad candidate to run against in Phil Angelides, which is not the case this year, but Team Obama would be well advised to study that campaign for clues how to run against Schmidt. Lesson number one from the weak 2006 Angelides campaign: don't let them define you before you define yourself.
Update [2008-8-5 14:12:16 by Todd Beeton]:The Obama campaign's response to McCain's ad:
"Senator McCain wants Americans to forget that during the Republican primary, he said that Americans were better off than we were eight years ago, and that he thinks we've made 'great progress economically.' He wants us to forget that he's fully embraced the Bush policies he once opposed, and bragged about supporting those policies 'more than 90 percent of time.' The truth is, being a maverick isn't practicing the same kind of politics we have seen from Washington for decades, it isn't having a campaign run by Washington lobbyists, and it's certainly not promoting the same policies that have led America down the wrong path these past eight years," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.
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