John McCain’s New Ad: “Chicago Machine” – Guilt by Association

“Barack Obama,” an announcer intones, “born of the corrupt Chicago political machine.”
The ad quotes Obama saying, “In terms of my toughness, look first of all, I come from Chicago.”
Then the announcer continues:
“His economic adviser, William Daley. Lobbyist. Mayor’s brother.
His money man, Tony Rezko. Client. Patron. Convicted Felon.
His “political godfather.” Emil Jones. Under ethical cloud.
His governor, Rod Blagojevich. A legacy of federal and state investigations.
With friends like that, Obama is not ready to lead.”

This is McCain’s attempt to flip around the public image factor and bad associations factor. For a while, Obama and the Dem’s have been focusing on the lobbyists in McCain’s campaign and his unsavory friends, using the guilt by association trick. Now McCain has turned that trick around on Obama.

Steve Schmidt, a top McCain strategist, said “Sen. Obama very directly has introduced the issue of associations in this campaign,” he said “I think (Obama has been) raising fundamentally, that you can tell something about people by the company they keep, and that’s a debate we look forward to having over the next 43 days of the campaign as we focus on these questions and what it says about each man as the American people get ready to make their decision to who to elect to be the 44th president of the United States.”