New McCain Ad: Obama May Be "The One"

UPDATE: The Obama campaign has reacted to McCain's latest ad starring him and Moses.
This time Obama didn't personalize the response. Much smarter than how he responded yesterday to the Britney-Paris ad.

From the Obama campaign:

"It's downright sad that on a day when we learned that 51,000 Americans lost their jobs, a candidate for the presidency is spending all of his time and the powerful platform he has on these sorts of juvenile antics," said spokesman Hari Sevugan. "Senator McCain can keep telling everyone how 'proud' he is of these political stunts which even his Republican friends and advisors have called 'childish', but Barack Obama will continue talking about his plan to jumpstart our economy by giving working families $1,000 of immediate relief."

The fallout over the Britney Spears-Paris Hilton celebrity ad only appears to have emboldened John McCain's new strategy to paint Barack Obama as a witless fad. McCain's latest ad ratchets up the celebrity comparisons by putting the Senator next to one of the biggest figures in time: Moses.

Obamaone1
by dollarsandsense123

McCain's strategy doesn't feel too different from a tactic Hillary Clinton used against Barack Obama in February when her campaign started to realize it wasn't going to fulfill its media-anointed mantle of inevitability. Hillary mocked Obama, telling the crowd "the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know we should do the right thing, and the world will be perfect."

Making fun of Barack Obama as a Jesus figure obviously didn't help Hillary. That doesn't mean it can't help McCain. Unlike Hillary, the GOP candidate isn't the one explicitly making fun of Obama. When Hillary did it, people made fun of her. Yes, McCain's in the commercials, but only to approve them. By creating an ad campaign around mocking Obama, McCain is forcing him to comment and therefore make the ads a bigger deal. That's exactly what happened on Thursday when Obama commented on the Paris-Britney ad. Obama took the bait and did just what the McCain camp wanted him to do when he said McCain was saying he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills." Obama's comment painted himself as different, a figure of race, a person who rose up by different means, perhaps even through celebrity... Let's see how the Obama campaign reacts to this one. (Update: Obama has responded. See above.)

ABC dissects the ad to show where the McCain camp is spinning "the one" out of context:

"We are the ones we've been waiting for," Obama says, in his Super Duper Tuesday speech in California.

The narrator continues: "And he has anointed himself, ready to carry the burden of The One. To quote Barack, 'I have become a symbol of America returning to our best traditions.'"

As we covered earlier in the week, that quote was actually Obama telling House Democrats that the big crowds and enthusiastic receptions he received in Europe had less to do with him than they had to do with a desire for a new U.S. foreign policy. In a way, it was more a statement of humility than arrogance.

"He can do no wrong," the narrator says.

Cut to an excerpt of CBS's Lara Logan asking Obama, "Do you have any doubts?"

"Never," Obama says, smiling.

"Can you see the light?" asks the narrator.

Comments

[yellowdawgdem]

If McCain is really starting to piss you off, make your voices heard with your wallet.
Give til it hurts. Save us from four more years of bush/rove/mcain.

http://www.barackobama.com/splash/

[MayPeacePrevail710]

Yes, John McBush...Obama is the One. Thank you for remainding American public how amazing he is by delivering this CM.

[Exit]

McCain is on the attack and it is working. Obama needs to step up his game and stop saying stupid stuff like "put air in your tires." He needs to break with the Democrats on drilling and start attacking McCain back, Clinton style.

[FluffyBunny]

Democrats never learn that they are in a fight until the last rounds. The soft responses are pathetic.

[RexPrimoris]

I'm not worried. As others have observed, America will get the leadership it deserves. If the electorate, after witnessing eight years of disastrous, ill-conceived and short-sighted foreign and domestic policies under Cheney and Bush wants to elect McCain, keep the neo-cons in power and perpetuate military industrial complex welfare, so be it. Never underestimate the gullibility of the American electorate. The 2008 presidential election will essentially be a national I.Q. test.

[DrMJG]

Does not even raise itself to the level of the "daisy" ad in terms of good negative ad. Simply silly. My only question is what were they imbibing when they thought this ad up and where can I get some!

[didleijoe]

Seriously are they trying to help us?

[BJMS]

PATHETIC...and childish and ridiculous...McCain has lost ALL credibility he ever had. He is a sad, small, pathetic excuse for a man.

[DeeKres]

Why is Huffington giving free publicity to John McNothing? Clearly, the Rovian machine knows how to get its message out so that they spend little to nothing for ads and the media does his advertising for him. Smarten up libs. You've become complicit in the Swiftboating of your candidate.

[joe973]

The McCain campaign is starting to get a good feel and finally understand their base, it's that simple and I think that tactically it's a good move for the, this entire ploy is meant to wake low info voters react as well as generate some buzz from the press and on top of that it's cheap! they understand that in the 24h information age there is no need for a lot of cash to make an impression; Again politically I think it's great but of course distorting the truth and being engaged in a dishonest campaign is extremely low and painful to watch but welcome to politics! The Obama campaign need to understand that this is becoming a real street fight and playing nice will only lead to unfortunate consequences in November. Bottom line they should not fall into the 2000 election trap, where James Baker basically trounced warren Christopher!

[kcflood]

PATHETIC!!!!!!!

[Stace]

Pathetic and desperate. SMFH!

[Redeemer777]

its the reg frog/green frog strategy

CRAWFORD on msnb:" I think that‘s one reason the celebrity ad came out so quickly. You know, part of the strategy here is—once you get caught, change the subject, and launch a new charge. You know, someone who practices these dark arts once called this, told me he called this the “red frog/green frog” strategy. What it means is you shake a big ugly frog in your opponent‘s face and to voters, you say, “Look at this ugly frog” and then when they‘re—just as they‘re reacting to it and dissecting it, then you get another frog up there and say, “Look at this frog.” You just keep switching the frogs—the ugly frogs, and that‘s what this strategy appears to be."

[GunneraGirl]

At one point in that ad, it doesn't even sound like Barack...it sounds like it was dubbed or pieed together badly. This really stinks.

The good news is that apparently in just the last few days, there have been around 100,000 new donors to the Obama campaign. So maybe the ads are working ...for us! and against McCane.

[Lost Soul]

I'm a Lost Soul and I approve of this ad. LOLOL. What will they think of next LOL. BTW was Moses holding a stick or a rifle..hard to tell.