Campaign Diaries

The McCain campaign released three ads (the latest was released this past Friday) over the past 2 weeks seeking to label Obama as a celebrity - and is even airing them during the Olympics, contrary to the conventional wisdom that candidates would be better served airing positive spots in their Olympic buy. In a sign that Democrats are worried that the “celebrity” sign might be moving numbers and defining Obama as an all-talk and inexperienced candidate, the Obama campaign has now released its most direct rebuttal of the McCain ad:

The ad’s message could hardly be more clear: Obama might be a “political celebrity” but McCain has achieved ultimate insider status in the city ads love to bash, in the political culture that voters rejected in 2006 and that they are preparing to reject again in 3 months. The ad calls McCain a “Washington celebrity,” showing him on various late-night shows and on The View. Using this as a way to paint the Arizona Senator as a creature of the establishment, the ad highlights his ties to lobbyistst, his favors to Big Oil, his flip-flopping ways and his “embrace” of President Bush.

Obama’s previous attack ad used McCain’s words to tie the Senator to President Bush, but this spot confirms how central a role the incumbent President will play in Obama’s campaign - and for that matter the campaign of all Democrats. The ad, set to clownish music, uses 6 different pictures or clips of McCain and Bush together - four of which feature the two men hugging or kissing!

McCain’s “celeb” ad and Obama’s response capture the essential dynamic of the 2008 campaign. The electorate wants change from the Washington culture and from GOP rule. Democrats are playing on that, seeking to make this election a referendum on the GOP and on McCain’s conventional profile while Republicans are seeking to change the subject by arguing that change is good but that voters should not trust this particular Democrat, however much they are tempted to vote Democratic.

It is unclear whether the Obama campaign is planning to include this in its regular rotation. Jonathan Martin notes that the campaign’s release only mentioned national cable. You might remember that McCain’s original celebrity ad did not run that much on TV, and the GOP relied on the ad’s shock value to get it covered in the media, over and over again. Depending on the reaction this “embrace” ad gets, of course, the Obama could move from an earned media strategy to a paid media strategy.

Meanwhile, the AFL-CIO is stepping up the attack on McCain’s responsibility in the DHL-Airborne story. At the end of last week, the Obama campaign announced that it would make sure that “by November 4 in the Cincinnati and Dayton markets this is something that is going to be known by every voter in this area” and I already linked to a radio ad the campaign was running in Ohio on this subject. Well, it appears that Plouffe was not bluffing when he pledged to transform this into a crucial issue as the AFL-CIO has already released a mailer that is being sent to 100,000 union workers in the state.

The ad’s front is available here. It is important for the Obama campaign to find state-specific issues on which to hit its opponent, and it looks like they are taking that path. More generally, the choice of the economy is crucial: In a period of economic downturn, job-related issues should be especially powerful. Union workers are the sort of constituency that the GOP believes it could take away from the Democrat.