For months, we waited for the McCain campaign to unveil an offensive on Barack Obama’s ties to Jeremiah Wright. Yet, the Arizona Senator stuck to his spring pledge to keep Wright off-limits (besides Sarah Palin’s seemingly improvised decision to bring up Wright in an interview with Bill Kristol). Only in the final days did independent groups launch a flurry of ads featuring Wright - too little and too late to stop Obama’s momentum.
After the election, as McCain staffers revealed their secrets to eager journalists, we learned that the campaign had actually produced a number of negative ads that never aired - one featuring Obama dancing with Ellen DeGeneres, another unleashing the Wright attack.
Today, ABC News obtained and aired that unaired Wright ad, offering us a remarkable look into what might have been had McCain given his green light (the ad itself starts at 1:14):
The ad is framed around the issue of character - a key theme of McCain’s campaign - and seeks to contrast decisions made by Obama and McCain “when no one was looking.” While “one chose to honor his fellow soldiers by refusing to walk out of a prisoner of war camp,” says the announcer, “the other chose not to even walk out of church where a pastor was spewing hatred.” We then see footage of Wright’s famous “God Damn America” sermon.
It is impossible to know whether such an offensive would have truly damaged Obama, but there is no doubt that it would have fundamentally altered the course of the campaign. Yes, Republicans focused their campaign on Bill Ayers in the first half of October and thus used the type of guilt-by-association attack that the Wright ad would have played into - and that did them little good.
But invoking Wright would have injected race in the general election in a way in which both campaigns ultimately managed to avoid. In fact, it was rather surprising how little race was discussed; an early August war over Obama’s use of the race card threatened to throw the entire election into the dangerous territory of racial polarization and the topic had proved such a vivid one during the Democratic primaries.
Both campaigns could have lost a lot had race become a more explicit campaign theme. On the one hand, McCain could have suffered a severe backlash; on the other, Obama’s success was partially due to his ability to neutralize racial conversations, and a sudden increase in racial polarization could have hurt his appeal to culturally conservative white Democrats and independents - groups that ended up massively voting for him but that were not sure to do so during the summer.
In other words, this ad would have been fairly unpredictable but sure to attract so much attention as to monopolize the conversation for a significant amount of time.
This just goes to show how low the GOP can go. Even when McCain vowed not to bring the issue up, there are some in his camp who are hell bent on bringing the Rev. Wright issue up. Palin tried to bring it up and made a fool out of herself by doing so. What pisses me off is that they never want to play the sermon in the full context of how it was preached. If they would have, the American people would have realized that his words were being taken out of context.
Yeah, the “blame America” context would have gone over wonderfully. Like a lead balloon.
So-called “independent” groups ran similar ads, and McCain lost anyway. So running one more ad would have made a difference? I think not.
Obama rnounced Rev. Wright, who by all acounts has lost his mind. Wright has all but renounced Obama as well.
McCain lost not because he failed to make attacks like this, but BECAUSE he made attacks like this.
Republican die-hards still cling to the Rovian theory. They claim “if we only had gone further to the RIGHT and played DIRTY we would have won!”
But America was sick of both right-wing ideelogy and dirty politics. THAT is why Obama won, not because McCain pulled his punches.
BTW, what ever happened to McCain’s “honorable campaign”?
McCain has been incredibly gracious in defeat, too bad Obama’s supporters like the two commenters above can’t be as gracious in their victory. The campaign is over kids.
Yes Teezy the campaign is over so stop snipping. Obama has been gracious, appointing Republicans and centrists even though he won a solid victory.
The GOP continues to shop their real contempt for America by buying foreign cars and wanting the domestic auto industry to die just because it isn`t in the south. That is very unpatriotic and wearing flag pins will not prove your patriotism. Enjoy being a regional party.
Anti-Wright ads were aired quite extensively by those “independent” groups in Pennysylvania in the last couple of weeks before the election and they obviously didn’t do McCain a bit of good–he lost the state by over ten points.
Its a shame a man calling himself a christian (of the many) can say the things he said behind the plpit and get a tip of the hat from some people. Christians should stand against him and non christies should use him as the ultimate “what not to show the world” testimony. Really shouldnt ministers of any sort rise to a higher degree of accountability? The politicians are another smelly can!!! Its better such ads not run. Its even better if Obama had called him a fruit loop from the jump.Birds of a feather!!!!
Sorry Mikey, but its the Obamacons here that are still snipping. I don’t give a flip about Wright anymore.
Obama has not appointed any Republicans yet. Only Democrats, non-partisans, and independents. You’ve got to pay attention to what he’s actually doing, not just what his media/web supports are saying.
The GOP is buying foreign cars and wants the domestic auto industry to die? Again, you’re not paying attention to. The GOP wants the big three to be restructured to be actually competitive in a world market, not just get them through to Obama’s next election.