Obama Hits Back

Jonathan Weisman and Perry Bacon

Washington
Post
Barack
Obama released a television advertisement yesterday that questions John McCain's
claims to be a "maverick," and he charged in a campaign appearance
that the Republican displays independence only when it suits him politically.
Obama aides said Democratic hand-wringing about polls showing that the
presidential race remains tight had nothing to do with the volleys.
"We are not going to base our campaign on the concerns of so-called
campaign strategists on cable TV," spokesman Bill Burton said.
But the ad and the Democrat's rhetoric in Indiana appeared to up the ante in a
campaign that took a distinct turn toward the negative last week.
"The price [McCain] paid for his party's nomination has been to reverse
himself on position after position," Obama told a crowd of more than 1,000
at a high school gym in Elkhart.
"That doesn't meet my definition of a maverick. You can't be a maverick
when politically it's important for you but not a maverick when it doesn't work
for you."
The parries come more than a week after his Republican opponent launched a
string of increasingly personal attacks on Obama. McCain has said that his
rival would lose a war in order to win a campaign, accused him of going to a
gym rather than visiting wounded troops, and, while aides asserted that he had "played
the race card," hinted that Obama has a messiah complex and portrayed him
as a celebrity comparable to Paris Hilton or Britney Spears. That final line of
assault continued yesterday with a new McCain ad, again mocking Obama as
"the biggest celebrity in the world."
Such attacks have raised worries among Democratic strategists -- haunted by John F.
Kerry's 2004 run and Al Gore's razor-thin loss in 2000 -- that Obama has not
responded in kind with a parallel assault on McCain's character. Interviews
with nearly a dozen Democratic strategists found those concerns to be
widespread, although few wished to be quoted by name while Obama's campaign is
demanding unity.
"Democrats are worried," said Tad Devine, a top strategist for
Kerry who thinks Obama must stay on the high road. "We've been through two
very tough elections at the national level, and it's very easy to lose
confidence."
Obama's latest ad may be his toughest yet, using words and images to link
McCain to President Bush and concluding: "The original maverick? Or just
more of the same?"
But Democratic strategists said that it is nothing like the character
attacks by McCain, and that the response could be far nastier, perhaps raising
McCain's ethical scrape in the Keating Five savings and loan scandal, mocking
his family wealth and designer shoes, or highlighting his age. After McCain
economic adviser Phil Gramm suggested that the United States has become "a
nation of whiners," Democratic strategists said Obama should have
immediately started an ad blitz.
"If somebody attacks you, you have to frame the attack: 'This is the
same old politics, or better yet, the Bush-Rove politics,' " something
Obama has done well, said one Democratic strategist. "At the same time you
do that, you have to counterattack. You don't want to look like a whiner. You
want to look tough."
Said another Democratic consultant: "There needs to be a negative
McCain track beyond the Bush policy stuff. One of the great strengths of the
Obama campaign has been to not listen to the D.C. chattering class. They have a
plan and they stick to it. But clearly, the D.C. chattering class are wringing
their hands."