Candidates' Olympics ads take different approaches
WASHINGTON -- Millions of TV viewers are seeing negative political ads during the Olympics, a gamble by Republican John McCain that the sheer size of the audience outweighs any potential backlash against sharp rhetoric during a feel-good event.
Democrat Barack Obama, the target of the two McCain ads running with the Olympics, is taking a different tack. His Olympics offering is a gauzy spot about new types of energy jobs. But he's getting tough on McCain in lower-profile settings such as national cable, local radio and TV ads targeted to a single state.
Political advertising analysts say both candidates are doing what they need to do: McCain raising questions about Obama's readiness to lead, Obama trying to preserve his positive brand of "new politics."
Still, says Ken Goldstein, head of the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin, it was strange to see a McCain "attack ad" during the Olympics opening ceremonies — especially since the footage used to deride Obama's "celebrity" was of Obama being cheered in Germany.
Given that the spectacle was all about "the world and fellowship and the parade of nations," Goldstein said, "going after your opponent for being of the world seemed a bit jarring, a bit odd."
The Obama campaign suggests McCain's move will backfire. "Their campaign really seems pretty out of touch with what the American people want to see and hear during the Olympics," says Obama adviser Anita Dunn.
Evan Tracey of the Campaign Media Analysis Group says McCain's strategy is risky but could pay off. "They're using a gigantic stage to make their national case against Obama," he says. "It doesn't seem to be causing any uproar. They may have guessed right."
Tucker Bounds, a McCain spokesman, says McCain is "focused on ensuring that voters have the best information possible to make an informed decision on Election Day."
The claims in both ads, that Obama voted to raise taxes on lower-income people and will raise them as president, have been labeled false or misleading by PolitiFact.com and FactCheck.org, non-partisan fact-checking groups that say Obama proposes tax cuts for lower-income people.
There's no sign Obama will be responding in kind during the Olympics. Jim Margolis, his media adviser, says his Olympics ad is "a lot more appropriate" than McCain's negative ads.
Most of Obama's negative ads are responses to McCain and the Republican Party. The local advertising offensive, Margolis says, is meant to show people how McCain's policies would affect them in a "relevant and personal" way. Recent examples:
• A TV ad in Nevada cites McCain's support for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository and shows him saying he would not be comfortable with waste moving through Arizona, his home state. The McCain campaign says Obama, a Yucca opponent, twice voted for a water bill that funded the project.
• A radio spot in Ohio says McCain "used his influence" in the Senate to help DHL, a German firm, buy a U.S. company and says his campaign manager, Rick Davis, "was the top lobbyist for the DHL deal." Now 8,000 jobs at DHL are "on the chopping block," it says. Davis said on Fox News Sunday that without the takeover, "those jobs were probably going to be lost" earlier. McCain has said he will do all he can to save the jobs.
• A radio spot running in Milwaukee and York, Pa., both identified with Harley-Davidson, concerns McCain's comment that "I will take the roar of 50,000 Harleys any day" over the roar of Obama fans in Berlin. It cites McCain's opposition to requiring the government to buy U.S. motorcycles and products and says "Harleys don't matter" to him.
Bounds says McCain's economic plan would cut Harley's taxes more than $100 million, allowing it to expand and add jobs, and McCain supports free-trade policies that have created more than 170,000 jobs in Wisconsin. "Unlike Barack Obama, Harley owners appreciate open roads and open markets," Bounds says.
The McCain campaign is not rebutting Obama's local ads with its own ads. It has agreed to take public financing of about $84 million for the general-election campaign. That means its spending after the convention Sept. 1 will be capped.
Democratic strategist Robert Shrum says localized ads in 2000 and 2004 were sharply restricted because nominees Al Gore and John Kerry took public financing. "I would have liked to have run ads to suppress Nader's vote in Florida in 2000 and more tailored ads in 2004" in individual states, Shrum says. "Obama is very wise to get out of federal funding."