Campaign Diaries

McCain continues to surprise us. He was supposed to be in a financially difficult situation by the summer, struggling to stay on par with Obama’s spending. Instead, the two candidates are spending much more equally than expected. Now, Ad Age reports the McCain campaign made a $6 million ad buy during Olympics coverage. This is a national buy, on broadcast and cable TV. The timing suggests it is a last-minute decision by the campaign based on their their most recent budgetary projections

Two weeks ago, it was revealed that Obama had bought time during the Olympics himself - a $5 million package. This was taken as a sign of Obama’s determination to go national and his comfort with large amounts of spending; Obama’s move was also the first national ad buy since 1996 - and a more ambitious one. But within two weeks, McCain exceeded Obama’s buy.

This is certainly an audacious move for a campaign that hasn’t been meeting Obama’s spending in a number of red-leaning states for now. I believe these Olympics ads will be first McCain ads voters will see in North Carolina, Montana, North Dakota or Indiana - all red states that are looking surprisingly competitive and that McCain could potentially put away with some investment. It will also serve as a further morale boost for the GOP as the McCain campaign continues to show signs of life.

On the other hand, keep in mind that McCain now has less than a month to spend whatever money he has raised. Once he accepts the GOP nomination on September 4th, he can no longer spend those funds and will be restricted to the $80 million of public financing. There is only so much money a campaign can spend: McCain cannot just use whatever surplus he has to send staffers to Montana or New Jersey because he wouldn’t be able to keep up that investment in September and October. And he is already spending very high amounts in the 11 battleground states he has chosen to invest in.

Today, McCain also unveiled a new campaign ad. After a string of personal attack ads against Obama, this one seeks to find a more positive - though gloomy - tone:

The ad calls McCain the “original maverick” and seeks to revive the Senator’s reputation as a straight-talker. The announcer starts by saying, “Washington’s broken - John McCain knows it” and continues with the line, “We’re worse off than we were four years ago.” In other words, not only is McCain not running to continue Bush’s terms - he is running against Bush’s second term.

The good news for Democrats is that the battle to define McCain looks like it is finally being launched, taking some of the focus away from Obama. While this ad by McCain does not look particularly defensive, it does come at a time Obama is stepping up his own attempts to associate McCain with the President. The combination of the two should lead to more conversations about McCain’s positioning and his relationship with his party and it will force McCain on the defensive.

The Obama campaign fired back with a statement: “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.’” And they are already sending around a video of McCain during the GOP primaries saying that the country is better off today than it was eight years ago.

With the conversation moving back to McCain, the Republican has an opportunity to differentiate himself from the President but Democrats also have an opening to broadly publicize such statements.