Tales from the Trail

PHOENIX  – U.S. lawmakers have yet to back a plan to try and stem the global financial crisis. But the vigorous round of finger-pointing over who is to blame for it continued on the campaign trail on Tuesday as John McCain’s camp singled out Democratic rival Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton in a new ad.

The 60-second spot argued that, while the veteran Arizona senator sought to rein in excesses by troubled mortgage titans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – which were rescued by the government earlier this month – Obama, an Illinois senator, did nothing.

“John McCain fought to rein in Fannie and Freddie,” a voiceover says. It then quotes The Washington Post saying McCain “pushed for stronger regulation … while Mr. Obama was notably silent.”

“But Democrats blocked the reforms. Loans soared. Then, the bubble burst. And taxpayers are on the hook for billions.”

The salvo laying blame and charging inaction over the crisis comes a day after the U.S. House of Representatives voted down a bailout plan backed by President George W. Bush that sought to buy up $700 billion in troubled bank assets.

WASHINGTON – Barack Obama is using a scathing new attack ad to challenge the fundamental perception that John McCain – former Navy aviator and prisoner of war — is honorable.
 
It was bound to happen. The McCain camp has been doing the same thing to Obama for weeks, trying to turn public perceptions about his strengths into weaknesses using attack ads and ridicule.
 
McCain went after Obama’s popularity and his strength as an orator. His campaign even tried to defuse the race issue by accusing Obama — who would be the first black U.S. president if elected — of racism.
 
So it was inevitable the Obama camp would eventually strike back — and it did after McCain was roundly criticized in the press for an ad that falsely accused the Illinois Democrat of favoring sex education for kindergarten children.
 
“What’s happened to John McCain? He’s running the sleaziest ads ever. Truly vile,” the narrator of the ad entitled “Honor” says as quotes pulled from newspaper columns scroll over an ever-shrinking photo of the Arizona senator.

“Dishonest smears that he repeats even after its been exposed as a lie. Truth be damned. Disgraceful, dishonorable campaign. After voting with Bush 90 percent of the time proposing the same disastrous economic policies, it seems that deception is all he has left,” it says.
 
McCain often speaks of duty, honor, country, sacrifice and has cultivated the image of being a man of honor.
 
The ad takes aim at that perception, asking if McCain is honorable, why is he running this kind of campaign.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

Photo credit: Reuters/Neal Hamberg (Obama speaks in New Hampshire Sept. 13)

ERIE, Pa. – After a week of slamming his opponent in a barrage of controversially negative advertisements, U.S. presidential hopeful John McCain spoke for more than 20 minutes Monday without mentioning Barack Obama by name once. 
 
His audience seemed to like it.
 
“I want to hear more about the issues, not bickering between the candidates,” said Ron Holden, a locomotive assembly worker who listened to the Republican senator from Arizona address staff at a large GE Transportation plant here.
 
“I don’t want to hear about what Obama’s been doing from McCain and I don’t want to hear about McCain from Obama,” said Holden, a registered Democrat who said that he was undecided about which way he would vote in November.
 
McCain did aim one nuanced blow toward his Democratic rival, recalling Obama’s comment about bitter small town Americans clinging to their guns and their church.
 
Obama’s rival for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Hillary Clinton, had taunted him over the remark, saying it was evidence he was out of touch with heartland America. McCain gently took a leaf out of her playbook.
 
“You’re going to seeing a lot of me in this state and we’re going to be on the bus and we’re going to go from town to town, and we’re going to tell people that we know that they love the Second Amendment and cherish their religion, because they believe in America,” McCain said.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Brian Snyder (McCain at a July 21 campaign appearance in Maine)

John McCain got his own taste of celebrity last week and evidently liked it — he’s back with a new ad ridiculing Barack Obama‘s fame. 

The Republican candidate got a huge boost from accusing Obama of being a big celebrity like Paris Hilton and acting like some sort of political messiah.
 
Until his spate of negative attacks, McCain had been languishing ignored by the media while Obama triumphantly toured the world.
 
But last week McCain nearly tied Obama in the battle for media coverage — the first time that has happened since the start of the general election, according to the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
 
So the Arizona senator is returning ahead of Obama’s weeklong vacation in Hawaii with another advertisement ridiculing his fame. It also paints him as a big-tax Democrat.
 
“Life in the spotlight must be grand,” an announcer says as a camera pans over images of a smiling Obama on the covers of GQ, Vanity Fair and other magazines.
 
“But for the rest of us, times are tough,” the announcer says. “Obama voted to raise taxes on people making just $42,000. He promises more taxes. On small business. On seniors. Your life savings. Your family.”
 
“Painful taxes. Hard choices for your budget. Not ready to lead. That’s the real Obama.”
 
Scary stuff, but…
 
A study in mid-July by the Tax Policy Center — a venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution — found that Obama’s tax proposals would lift the after-tax income of the poorest 20 percent of Americans by 5.5 percent.
 
McCain’s plans would provide the poor with “virtually no benefit,” it said.
 
Nearly everyone else does better under Obama’s tax proposals as well.

Only the top 20 percent of U.S. wage earners would do better under McCain than Obama. The richest Americans would see after-tax income rise by 5.9 percent under McCain’s plans, while under Obama their after-tax income would drop by 2.8 percent, the study found.Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Barack Obama’s soaring rhetoric on the campaign trail has given rival John McCain yet another epiphany.
 
Not only is Democratic presidential candidate the most popular celebrity in the world, not only has he injected race into the election, but he also must think he’s some sort of political messiah.
 
That’s the message the Arizona Republican put in a new video sent to his supporters.
 
“It shall be known that in 2008 the world will be blessed. They will call him The One,” the announcer intones in a voice of reverential authority.
 
The text of the one minute, 14 second video strings together phrases and pictures loaded with religious imagery and uses them to ridicule lines from Obama’s high-flying speeches.
 
“A light will shine down from somewhere. It will light upon you. You will experience an epiphany and you will say to yourself, ‘I have to vote for Barack’,” Obama says.
 
In case you missed the point, McCain trots out Republican icon Charlton Heston in his role as Moses in the epic movie “The Ten Commandments.”
 
“Behold His mighty hand,” Heston shouts. And as the actor raises his staff to part the waters of the Red Sea, Obama’s presidential-style seal comes swirling through the waves while a chant of “O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!” swells in the background.
 
The video comes at the end of a week in which McCain has turned to negative attacks and ridicule in an effort to blunt Obama’s advantage in the polls for the Nov. 4 election. McCain’s campaign accused Obama of injecting race into the campaign and said he was attention-grabbing celebrity, more popular even than Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

Obama has fought ridicule with seriousness.
 
“It’s downright sad that on a day when we learned that 51,000 Americans lost their jobs, a candidate for the presidency is spending all of his time and the powerful platform he has on these sorts of juvenile antics,” said spokesman Hari Sevugan.
 
“Barack Obama will continue talking about his plan to jump-start our economy by giving working families $1,000 of immediate relief.”
 
“We were having some fun with our supporters,” McCain told a news conference.
 
“I don’t think our campaign is negative in the slightest.”

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Joshua Roberts (Obama on Capitol Hill July 29)