NationalJournal.com's Ad Spotlight

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Obama Gets The Last Word

Filed under Barack ObamaFiled under Television Ad
Posted at 12:08 PM
Click here to watch "He Has What It Takes."

Not willing to let Hillary Rodham Clinton have the final word in Pennsylvania with Monday's "Kitchen" spot, Barack Obama released another ad late in the afternoon of the final day before voting began.

Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton accused the Clinton campaign of fear-mongering in its ad, which includes shots of Osama bin Laden and the attack on Pearl Harbor. "We already have a president who plays the politics of fear, and we don't need another," Burton said in a statement Monday. Obama's final Pennsylvania ad takes a similarly pugnacious tone.

"He Has What It Takes" hits implicitly on themes which the Obama campaign has already raised repeatedly in six weeks of increasingly negative campaigning -- Clinton's ties to lobbyists and her vote authorizing the Iraq war -- and an announcer asks, "Who in times of challenge will unite us -- not use fear and calculation to divide us?" The ad ends on a positive note, however, with footage of Obama delivering patriotic lines from his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention.