BY CHUCK RAASCH ● GANNETT NEWS SERVICE ● July 31, 2008
WASHINGTON -- In April, John McCain said Americans wanted a respectful presidential campaign, but lately he's shown anything but respect for Barack Obama.
On Wednesday, presumptive Republican nominee McCain aired new ads comparing Democrat Obama to troubled celebrities Paris Hilton and Britney Spears and asserting that celebrity isn't presidential leadership.
It's the latest salvo in a negative onslaught in which McCain has blamed Obama for high gas prices, said Obama would rather lose the war in Iraq than lose an election and made objectively discredited claims that Obama didn't visit wounded troops in Germany because it would have no political benefit.
Some think McCain is trying to stop Obama from getting too far ahead in polls and building status as a presumptive president. A Gallup-USA Today poll this week showed that despite 10 days of substantially positive coverage of Obama's trip to the Mideast and Europe, McCain had gained and essentially drawn even with Obama.
But the Arizona senator's attacks on Obama's relative inexperience are a rehash of the Democratic primaries, when Hillary Clinton ran an ad asking voters which candidate they'd want answering a 3 a.m. crisis call. Inference: Obama's popularity aside, he's not ready for the call.
But will lumping the Illinois senator with vacuous celebrity backfire? Will it be seen as out of character, even desperate, for a candidate who has built his reputation as a maverick and who ended his first campaign for president in 2000 believing he'd been the victim of unfair GOP primary attacks from George W. Bush?
McCain's ad, slated to run in 11 contested states, is ostensibly about the debate over oil drilling. McCain wants to open more areas, including offshore sites, to drilling. Obama doesn't and says the United States needs to develop new forms of energy.
The McCain ad opens with glimpses of Spears, Hilton and Obama as a female voice intones: "He's the biggest celebrity in the world. But is he ready to lead?"
"Look, it is not our campaign that is trying to make him an international celebrity, it is his campaign trying to make him an international celebrity," McCain campaign manager Rick Davis said in a conference call. "Just because you are a celebrity doesn't mean you are ready to lead."
Davis called Obama's speech to more than 200,000 in Berlin "the first-ever political rally abroad with his fans in Germany" but said Americans would distinguish between "celebrity and the kinds of events that he puts on with his adoring fans" and a "political movement based on ideas and solutions."
Obama responded to a previous McCain oil-drilling ad by running a spot accusing the Arizona senator of employing "the same old politics," a subtle reference to the fact that McCain will be 72 on Aug. 29.
Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor called the new Spears-Hilton ad another in a "steady stream of false, negative attacks."
"Or, as some might say," Vietor said, repeating lyrics from a Spears song, "Oops, I did it again."
But some Obama supporters fretted he wasn't hitting back hard enough.
A post Tuesday on the popular liberal blog Daily Kos criticized Obama for answering too late and too tepidly.
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