For a while, political observers were starting to wonder about the McCain campaign’s media team. They were creating plenty of videos and TV ads, but they tended to be odd and unpersuasive. (In March, the campaign’s first general-election video made an odd connection between McCain and Churchill, while interspersing images from the Hubble telescope. As Sam Boyd put it, the video “gives you an idea of what it’d be like to be Norman Podhoretz on shrooms.”)
Now that we’re finally, formally in the midst of the general-election season, the McCain gang seems to be getting serious, and today unveiled a new spot, part of its first big ad buy since the Republican primaries.
“Only a fool or a fraud talks romantically about war,” McCain says in the ad. “When I was five years old my father left for war. My grandfather came home from war, and died the next day. I was shot down over Vietnam and spent five years as a POW. Some of the friends I served with never came home.”
As the music in the background gets more dramatic, McCain concludes, “I hate war and I know how terrible its costs are. I’m running for president to keep the country I love safe.”
It’s actually a pretty good ad, which serves a couple of purposes. One, obviously, it reminds voters of McCain’s service in Vietnam. (McCain criticized John Kerry for doing this four years ago, but never mind.) And two, it argues against the notion that McCain is some kind of warmonger, anxious to attack Iran and keep U.S. troops in Iraq for another 100 years.
Outside of the message, the fact that this is the first big commercial from the McCain campaign does tell us a bit about what the senator and his advisors are thinking.
The campaign — which like every campaign, has done extensive polling and focus-group testing — appears to be worried about voters’ association with him and the war. The ad seeks to downplay McCain’s neocon worldview — he’s not pro-war, the ad argues, he hates war. McCain isn’t reckless about invading countries — like some presidents who shall remain nameless — he’ll be reasonable about it, as his scars prove.
Greg Sargent’s take was spot-on:
The key to understanding this, I think, is that McCain is using his bio to achieve separation from George W. Bush. He’s suggesting — without saying directly — that even if he’s continuing Bush’s war policies, he’s different from Dubya in that he understands the costs in a way that Bush never did.
The subtext: “Even if that reckless chicken-hawk took us to war, someone who actually understands and has experienced the costs of war — someone you can actually believe — is here to tell you that we must continue it.”
That’s a smart approach. I’m not sure it’ll work, though — Americans are pretty anxious for this war to end. They might find it nice that McCain is a reluctant neocon, but at the end of the day, voters and McCain just aren’t going to be on the same page when it comes to the future of U.S. foreign policy. Whether he’s less personally reckless than Bush is ultimately irrelevant if McCain is just going to give us the same Bush policy with a different wrapping.
So, what does this tell Dems? That McCain’s worried about the impression voters have of him on the war. What’s the response? A few more ads about McCain’s unyielding support for Bush’s Iraq policy, his support for keeping the existing policy ongoing indefinitely, and his support for keeping U.S. troops in Iraq for at least 100 years after the war is over ought to do the trick.
As for this McCain ad, it’s part of a pretty serious push. It’s set to begin airing in 10 battleground states — Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Coming soon to a TV near you.