TITLE: “Original.”
LENGTH: 30 seconds.
AIRING: In some if not all of the 18 states where Obama is on the air.
SCRIPT: Announcer: “He’s the original maverick,” followed on the screen by the word, “Really?”
McCain: “The president and I agree on most issues. There was a recent study that showed that I voted with the president over 90 percent of the time.”
Announcer: “John McCain supports Bush’s tax cut for millionaires but nothing for 100 million households. He’s for billions in new oil-company giveaways while gas prices soar. And for tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. The original maverick — or just more of the same?”
KEY IMAGES: The ad opens with footage of McCain boarding a plane and campaigning, followed by the Arizona Republican on camera in a 2003 interview about his support for President Bush. The image shifts to a silhouette of a person in a golf cart, with a headline about tax breaks for millionaires; to a middle-class neighborhood with a headline about nothing for households; to a smoky refinery with a headline about billions for oil companies, fading to a readout of a gas pump; and to Asian women at sewing machines with a headline about jobs lost overseas. The final image, a still photo in stark black and white, shows McCain smiling and, as the camera pulls back, standing with a smiling President Bush.
ANALYSIS: Obama seeks to tie his opponent to an unpopular president by arguing that McCain agrees with Bush on most issues. The ad cites three economic issues that concern many low- and middle-income voters — tax cuts, gas prices and job outsourcing — a strategy that advances his economic focus on the campaign trail.
The Obama ad’s evidence for the level of agreement between McCain and Bush is McCain himself. In a reversal, McCain supports renewing the Bush tax cuts, which his campaign says benefits middle-class wage earners. He also backs an across-the-board cut in the corporate tax rate that the campaign says would keep U.S. businesses competitive in the global economy and keep jobs at home.
Obama’s claim that McCain would give more tax breaks to oil companies is based on the overall cut in the corporate tax rates. The Obama campaign has cited a study by the Democratic-leaning Center for American Progress Action Fund that concluded McCain’s proposal to cut corporate tax rates from 35 percent to 25 percent would cut taxes on the top five U.S. oil companies by $3.8 billion a year.
The spot also questions McCain’s reputation as a Republican maverick who bucks his own party, thus suggesting that his election would indeed continue Bush policies — the “third term” charge that the McCain campaign tries to dismiss. But a recent McCain ad suggests that he has broken from the GOP and Bush on various fronts — and that’s true.
As McCain’s campaign notes, there are several issues on which McCain and Bush don’t agree. He is known as an agitator within the GOP, and has parted ways with Bush and the party on several high-profile issues, including expanding federal funding for stem cell research and campaign finance reform.
