Determined to turn Barack Obama’s celebrity into a liability, John McCain’s campaign is mockingly comparing the globe-trotting Democrat to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears.
Fleeting images of Hilton, famous primarily for being famous, and Spears, whose meltdowns have raised questions about her mental stability, are interspersed with those of Obama in a new TV ad unveiled Wednesday by the McCain camp. The ad features footage of 200,000 Germans chanting Obama’s name as a narrator intones: “He’s the biggest celebrity in the world. But is he ready to lead?”
Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor called the ad yet another in McCain’s “steady stream of false, negative attacks.” Paraphrasing a Spears song, Vietor added: “Oops! He did it again.”
It was a reference to the fact that McCain has been hammering Obama all week for canceling a planned visit to wounded U.S. troops at a hospital in Germany. After months of what some conservatives bemoaned as McCain’s reticence to go after Obama, the GOP candidate is stepping up his attacks on the Democrat with blunt language and open derision.
On Wednesday, for example, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis issued a memo describing the Germans who attended Obama’s speech in Berlin last week as “fans fawning over The One.”
“Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day, demand ‘MET-RX chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew — Black Forest Berry Honest Tea’ and worry about the price of arugula,” wrote Davis, quoting a New York Times article detailing Obama’s appetites on the campaign trail.
The attack was reminiscent of the GOP’s effort in 2004 to portray Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry as “the French candidate” who was effete and out of touch with ordinary Americans. Unable to top Obama’s celebrity, the McCain camp has decided to lampoon it in a bid to win over working-class voters.
“He is the biggest celebrity in the world, but do the American people want to elect the world’s biggest celebrity or do they want to elect an American hero?” said McCain adviser Steve Schmidt. “We’ve seen much presumption from the Obama campaign, whether it is the construction of his own presidential seal or many other presumptuous” moves.
After mocking Obama’s star power, the McCain ad takes him to task for opposing offshore drilling and vowing to “raise taxes on electricity.”
Vietor replied by ripping “McCain’s plan to continue the same failed energy policies by handing out nearly $4 billion in tax breaks to oil companies.”
