We've seen the John McCain ads. Consistently negative attack ads against Barack Obama. Given that McCain continues to hang close to Obama in the polls, the McCain camp clearly believes there's something to be gained by attacking Obama, even with easily disproven charges. One can assume the McCain campaign will continue to use the attack ad strategy up to the general election.
We've also seen the Obama ads. Kinda fuzzy and intended to make us proud and partriotic, full of Obama policy details and short on McCain attacks.
In a LA Times opinion piece, Jonathan Chait suggests Obama needs to forget about that McCain pledge he would keep the campaign respectful and honorable and, while not stooping to the McCain level, start throwing some punches.
...negative
ads work better than positive ads. In focus groups, voters insist they
hate negative ads, because that sounds virtuous. Yet studies show the
negative advertisements are the ones they remember.
To go on the attack, Obama doesn't need to engage in character
assassination and baseless charges, as his opponent has done. All he
needs to do is stop letting McCain paint a wildly distorted
self-portrait. The Arizona senator wants voters to see him as a
maverick who never changes positions for political reasons. One ad
touts the way he bucked Bush on the environment. It doesn't mention
that McCain has abandoned the climate-change bill he co-sponsored,
demanded wider drilling and a gas-tax holiday that would undermine the
goal of burning less fossil fuel, and started raking in huge sums from
oil companies.
McCain has de-emphasized or reversed nearly every position that set him
apart from Bush, most notably the tax cuts for the rich that are the
heart of Bush's economic program. To prove his partisan bona fides
during the primary, he boasted that "I did everything I could to get
[Bush] elected and reelected." And when an interviewer suggested that
McCain was different from Bush, the senator replied, "No. No. I -- the
fact is that I'm different, but the fact is that I have agreed with
President Bush far more than I have disagreed. And on the transcendent
issues, the most important issues of our day, I've been totally in
agreement and support of President Bush." Why haven't we seen these
words in television ads?
There's plenty of opportunity here. For example, John McCain is vey happy to have voters believe, because of his own personal story, he's a big supporter of veterans rights and benefits. In fact, McCain has a horrible record on these issues. Informing voters of the Senator McCain's real record on veterans issues (and many others) is not an unwarranted attack, it's just stating facts.
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