Obama ads go negative

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., under persistent attack from his Republican rival, is intensifying a negative ad campaign targeting Sen. John McCain of Arizona in key battleground states.

In the past two weeks, the Obama campaign has aired at least eight new TV and radio advertisements accusing McCain of failing to protect U.S. jobs, favoring oil companies and turning a blind eye to the economic suffering of working-class Americans. Many of the television ads also prominently feature photos of McCain with President Bush.

The negative ads, running in 18 states, hew to themes that Democrats and groups allied with the party have been hitting for months. But they mark a change for the Obama campaign, which until recently concentrated its advertising money on casting the junior senator in a positive glow.

The sharply worded ads match toughening rhetoric from Obama on the campaign trail.

"The conventional wisdom is that this election is going to be a referendum on Barack Obama," said Dan Schnur, a California Republican who worked on McCain's 2000 campaign and now heads the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California.

"His people are smart enough to realize this doesn't necessarily work to their benefit," Schnur said.

Obama's negative turn, however, runs the risk of undermining his promise of bringing change to the political system. It may also compete with the candidate's other messages, chiefly assuring voters that he is ready to be commander in chief.

GOP strategist Frank Luntz said that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., failed to make such a case for himself as the 2004 presidential nominee.

"Kerry did an effective job of showing that Bush didn't deserve to be president," Luntz cautioned. "But 'none of the above' isn't on the ballot. And, in the end, Kerry did not give voters enough of a reason to choose him."

The Obama campaign, which would not release details about the ad buys, has kept relatively quiet about the advertising, eschewing the now-standard practice of touting new ads to reporters in hopes of getting free coverage. The ads are not posted on Obama's Web site.

"It's revealing that Barack Obama's attempts to run a campaign under the thin veil of a positive message when he has consistently shown that he's running a negative campaign," said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.

Bill Burton, a spokesman for the Obama campaign, said the new ad campaign is "no secret," noting that the ads can be seen on YouTube.com. Burton acknowledged, however, that Obama is moving away from the biographical advertising he did earlier in the campaign.

"Elections are about choices," he said. "What Senator Obama is doing is laying out a very clear choice."