Obama ad again links McCain to Bush

The Barack Obama campaign on Wednesday rolled out a new ad that bids to reinforce the Democrat’s theme that Republican opponent John McCain represents a continuation of the unpopular policies of President George W Bush. McCain, too, was out with a new commercial that questions Obama’s readiness to help American families. The ad indulges a theme the campaign has pushed since Obama’s overseas tour - that the first-term Illinois senator is a worldwide celebrity but not ready to be the American president. As both candidates move toward their party conventions, which will mark the home stretch toward the Nov 4 presidential balloting, the campaign has become increasingly negative. The race remains relatively close, with the most recent Associated Press-Ipsos poll showing Obama with a six-percentage point advantage over McCain at 47-41. Obama sought to ram home the message in his new add during a speech on Wednesday during an Elkhart, Indiana, town hall meeting. “I know Senator McCain likes to call himself a maverick and the fact is, there are times when he’s shown independence from his party in the past. But the price he paid for his party’s nomination was to reverse himself on position after position, and now he embraces the failed Bush policies and politics that helped break Washington in the first place and that doesn’t exactly meet my definition of a maverick,’’ according to prepared remarks. released by his campaign. The Obama ad was the latest in a series of tit-for-tat exchanges on American television screens but notable this time for not contrasting criticism of McCain with praise for Obama. The commercial was issued in response McCain’s most recent, in which the Arizona senator said the US government is broken and he – known for independence and bucking the system - would fix it. “Really?’’ The Obama ad asks before showing a video snippet of McCain telling Fox News in 2003 that he had voted with Bush 90 per cent of the time. The attack then says McCain supported Bush tax breaks for wealthy Americans, “giveaways’’ to the oil industry and tax incentives to companies that move operations overseas. The 30-second spot ends on a close up of McCain, while the announcer asks: “A real maverick?’’ The camera then pulls back to reveal him standing next to Bush, as the voiceover intones: “Or just more of the same?’’ McCain’s new response asks, “Is the biggest celebrity in the world ready to help your family?’’ At the Wednesday appearance in Indiana, Obama was joined by Sen Evan Bayh, one of two senators from the state and an oft-mentioned possibility as a running mate. McCain was to visit football practice at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, before moving on the campaign in neighbouring Ohio. Both candidates busied themselves on Tuesday with blaming one another for the economic hardships facing Americans, while overlooking their own roles in decisions that may have played into the slumping US economy, the number one issue among voters in the coming presidential election. Obama charged that McCain had acceded to “the Cheney play book’’ on energy, but did not mention his own vote in support of oil-friendly policies that the unpopular vice president helped to craft. Vice President Dick Cheney, a former oilman as is Bush, played a major role in writing an energy policy early in first term of their administration. Obama now says the policy gives overly generous tax breaks and other favourable treatment to US oil giants.“President Bush, he had an energy policy. He turned to Dick Cheney and he said, ‘Cheney, go take care of this,’’’ Obama said on Tuesday during a town hall session in the economically hard hit Youngstown, Ohio. “Cheney met with renewable-energy folks once and oil and gas(executives) 40 times. McCain has taken a page out of the Cheney play book,’’ the first-term Illinois senator said. Obama voted for the 2005 energy bill that included billions of dollars in subsidies for oil and natural gas production. McCain opposed it for giving what he said were billions in unnecessary tax breaks for the oil industry. The Obama campaign has said the Illinois senator supported the legislation because it included huge boost to the renewable energy sector. McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, said, “Barack Obama is opposed to offshore drilling and is also opposed to admitting that he voted for the same corporate giveaways for Big Oil that he’s campaigning against today.’’ The new AP-Ipsos poll was taken after Obama had returned from a trip to Middle Eastern and European capitals, and during a week that saw the two camps clash over which of them had brought race into a campaign. Obama, if he wins, would be the country’s first African-American president. Despite Obama’s overall six percentage-point lead, McCain held a 10-point advantage among whites and is even with Obama among men, groups with whom Republicans traditionally do well in national elections. Obama leads by 13 points among women, by 30 points among voters up to age 34, and by 55 points among blacks, Hispanics and other minorities, the poll shows. Just 18 per cent think the country is moving in the right direction, and only 31 per cent approve of the Bush is doing. Both readings are a bit better than the record lows in both categories measured by the poll in mid-July. Congressional approval was at 19 per cent, just above last month’s all-time AP-Ipsos low. The poll was conducted from July 31 to Aug 4 and involved telephone interviews with 1,002 adults, for whom the margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. Included were interviews with 833 registered voters, for whom the error margin was plus or minus 3.4 points.