This 60-second commercial for Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, began running on stations in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday and is expected to be included in Mr. McCain’s regular advertising rotation on television stations in more than a dozen swing states, and on national cable networks.
PRODUCER McCain campaign media team.
THE SCRIPT A male announcer says, “It was a time of uncertainty, hope and change, the summer of love. Half a world away, another kind of love, of country: John McCain, shot down, bayoneted, tortured. Offered early release, he said, ‘No.’ He’d sworn an oath. Home, he turned to public service. His philosophy: Before party, polls and self, America. A maverick. John McCain tackled campaign reform, military reform, spending reform. He took on presidents, partisans and popular opinion. He believes our world is dangerous, our economy in shambles. John McCain doesn’t always tell us what we hope to hear. Beautiful words will not make our lives better. But a man who has always put his country and her people before self, before politics, can. Don’t hope for a better life, vote for one. McCain.” Mr. McCain says, “I’m John McCain, and I approve this message.”
ON THE SCREEN The spot opens with grainy moving images of student protesters marching; a skinny hippie in an open vest and no shirt kissing a woman he is carrying in his arms at what appears to be the site of the Woodstock festival. It moves on to show images of the war in Vietnam as seen through the eyes of Mr. McCain: An airplane making a bombing run; a much younger Mr. McCain in his flight suit; a Vietnamese woman holding a rifle as she stands above the wreckage of an American fighter jet; Mr. McCain on a hospital cot during his captivity; Mr. McCain saluting upon his return to the United States. Progressing through Mr. McCain’s life, the commercial goes on to show him shaking hands with Nancy Reagan before moving to more current images of Mr. McCain: shaking hands with a voter; standing in front of a desert mountain; speaking before an American flag; riding on his campaign bus; speaking at a podium. The spot ends with a split screen of Mr. McCain then and now, and then there is an on-screen autograph from the candidate.
ACCURACY Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, at whom this spot takes veiled swipes, was turning 6 years old during the “summer of love,” and cannot be counted as among those who protested or indulged while Mr. McCain suffered (unless playing with building blocks counts). Mr. McCain’s military service and the torture he endured in Vietnam are well established. Mr. McCain did indeed buck his party’s leadership in helping to draft new campaign finance regulations, though he and his supporters are now being accused of exploiting loopholes to compete with Mr. Obama, who has opted out of the campaign finance system. His moves against Congressional earmarks and wasteful government spending are well known. But Mr. McCain has more recently found new areas of agreement with President Bush and other party leaders, like pledging to make permanent the tax cuts he twice voted against and lifting a ban against offshore drilling that he once supported.
SCORECARD This commercial is better produced than Mr. McCain’s previous general election commercials. It is direct in its effort to neutralize Mr. Obama’s widely acknowledged speaking skills by portraying his soaring oratory as lacking real substance. It remains to be seen whether that argument will work. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York failed to stop Mr. Obama with a similar approach last spring. The advertisement’s contrast between Mr. McCain’s life in captivity and his peers’ carefree lifestyle at home is powerful. But the point may be lost when applied to Mr. Obama, who was a little boy then, and whose stump speech now regularly includes a call for the country to move beyond the culture wars of the 1960s. JIM RUTENBERG