A Lying Thief We Can Believe In: McCain's Latest Ad Campaign

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by Meg White

There's something about Sen. John McCain's newest ad campaign that sounds familiar, and it's not just because I've already heard every media outlet yammer about it at least twice in these past couple slow news weeks.

Yes, McCain's newest ad has gotten a lot of publicity. Which is great for his campaign, as that means they don't have to pay for as much advertising to get the word out. In order to not contribute to that trend, I'll just say you can see both ads mentioned here on the front page of McCain's campaign Web site.

The New York Times has an article on its front page this morning about the new ad campaign, headlined "McCain Tries to Define Obama as Out of Touch." I found this to be an interesting choice of words. It's been said that Obama's campaign has made an effort in the past to paint McCain as similarly out of the loop when it comes to average Americans.

In a wider analysis, McCain's campaign looks to me like an exercise in derivation.

McCain's slogan "A Leader We Can Believe In," is a clear rip-off of Obama's "Change We Can Believe In" mantra (not that McCain got rid of that powerful "C" word everyone likes so much). His logo is eerily similar to Obama's.

Two things McCain didn't steal from Obama, relentless negativity and outright lies, come from an entirely different source.

Copying a campaign that works makes a certain degree of sense, if you can avoid getting caught. Which may be why McCain has been getting advice from the two-time "winning" team of Bush Advertising Co. McCain recently put former Bush strategist Steve Schmidt in charge of day-to-day affairs, and it's starting to show.

The two latest McCain ads contain actual falsehoods. The ad that came before the most recent one contained a glaring error that also did not go unnoticed by the media. McCain's campaign was in the midst of a dismal week of gaffes while Obama shined abroad. In a strained effort to find something negative to say about Obama's overseas trip, McCain's campaign misconstrued an event cancellation to make Obama look like he was abandoning wounded soldiers because he couldn't get any media coverage out of the visit. FactCheck.org disputes the insinuation made in the ad as "false."

The more recent one, after it flounders around trying to tie Obama to celebrity flakes Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, wrongly accuses Obama of wanting to raise taxes on energy. This has been widely denounced as a lie in the media; see the nonpartisan Annenberg Center's FactCheck.org for a comprehensive analysis of the ad.

The ad tries to portray Obama as too popular, like a certain fascist European dictator from the mid-20th century, or like the top two worst celebrity role models in the nation. In a country that desperately wants to get away from both presidential-election-as-popularity-contest and the politics of negativity, this may not be the way to go.

On the other side, the newer ad attempts to liken McCain to that part of Bush that the most of the American public liked best: the down-to-earth drinking buddy who wouldn't, knowingly at least, hurt us. But when Schmidt and his team try to paint this image on McCain, he comes off as a cranky old man trying to convince his granddaughter's friends that he's still cool. Not to mention, anyone who thinks Spears and Hilton are at the top of the celebrity food chain is considerably out of touch themselves.

Though they don't go as far as to accuse McCain of falsification or forgery, Republican strategists are calling this new campaign "childish" and "absurd."

My advice to McCain? Stick with stealing slogans and styles from Margaret Thatcher.

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