NationalJournal.com's Ad Spotlight

Thursday, October 2, 2008

McCain's Ads: From Uniting To Attacking In Record Time

Filed under John McCainFiled under ImmigrationFiled under Television Ad
Posted at 3:30 PM
Click here to watch "Fraudulent."

Judging from the McCain campaign's TV advertising, it took them only about 30 minutes to get over the economic crisis their candidate contends should be uniting the country.

At about 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, the camp released "Week" (subscription), an ad that shows John McCain speaking directly to voters about the importance of unity in solving the financial crisis. Just over half an hour later, however, the camp launched a Spanish-language spot, "Fraudulent" (subscription), attacking Barack Obama and his "allies in Congress" on immigration.

"Democrats blamed Republicans, Republicans blamed Democrats," McCain laments in his positive 30-second spot. "We’re the United States of America. It shouldn’t take a crisis to pull us together." The rest of the ad goes on to tout McCain's ability to revive the economy, making no further reference to Obama or other congressional Democrats.

"Fraudulent" is quite another story, however. That ad makes the claim that "Obama and his allies in Congress killed immigration reform" -- despite the fact that Obama voted in favor of the 2006 comprehensive immigration reform bill. It goes on to quote media criticism of an Obama ad that unfairly linked McCain to Rush Limbaugh. "They've said no to us long enough. This election, let's tell them no," the announcer concludes. This ad, per the press release, will be accompanied by radio ads, all running in the battleground states of Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico.

McCain himself has spent a lot of time recently emphasizing the importance of bipartisanship while Congress wades through the bailout legislation. But his ads -- no matter what language they're in -- are suggesting otherwise.