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Thursday, June 19, 2008
Voinovich speaks out on gas prices
U.S. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, spoke on Thursday, June 19, about high gas prices and energy independence. Click to hear his comments.
“From the time I came to the Senate, I’ve been saying this country doesn’t have an energy policy,” Voinovich said. “If we’re really going to solve this problem…we’re going to increase our domestic production, we’re going to have to encourage efficiency and conservation, we’re going to have to promote technology and innovation.”
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Obama “Country I Love” ad
The ad: “Country I Love,” 60 seconds.
Producer: Barack Obama campaign.
Where to see it: It begins airing Friday, June 20, in 18 states, including Ohio. View it at DaytonDailyNews.com/eyeonohio.
Script: “I’m Barack Obama. America is a country of strong families and strong values. My life’s been blessed by both.
“I was raised by a single mom and my grandparents. We didn’t have much money, but they taught me values straight from the Kansas heartland where they grew up. Accountability and self-reliance. Love of country. Working hard without making excuses. Treating your neighbor as you’d like to be treated.
“It’s what guided me as I worked my way up — taking jobs and loans to make it through college. It’s what led me to pass up Wall Street jobs and go to Chicago instead, helping neighborhoods devastated when steel plants closed. “That’s why I passed laws moving people from welfare to work, cut taxes for working families and extended health care for wounded troops who’d been neglected.
“I approved this message because I’ll never forget those values, and, if I have the honor of taking the oath of office as president, it will be with a deep and abiding faith in the country I love.”
Video: The ad opens with video of Obama sitting in a living room wearing a sport coat and soft guitar music playing. It cuts to childhood photos of Obama and then footage of him hugging a supporter, meeting with workers around a kitchen table and shaking hands with a soldier.
Analysis: The ad is a biographical piece that introduces the candidate to voters, emphasizing hard work, personal responsibility and humble roots. Obama all but puts on work boots and goes to a construction site to show what a regular guy he is. The ad leaves out some of the exotic and elite biographical details: a father from Kenya, part of his childhood spent in Indonesia and a law degree from Harvard University.
Aside from being a personal introduction, Obama tells viewers that he loves his country. This is response to the fact that Sen. John McCain’s campaign ads have focused on his time as a POW and his status as a Vietnam War hero. In addition, Obama’s wife, Michelle, has been hammered for making a statement that this year was the first time she has been proud of the United States.
Michelle Obama this week appeared on The View, a talk show popular with women, to say, among other things, that she is proud of this country. —- By Laura Bischoff
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McCain ‘Global’ ad
The ad: “Global,” 30 seconds.
Producer: John McCain campaign.
Where to see it: It began airing Saturday, June 14, on Ohio television stations. View it at DaytonDailyNews.com/eyeonohio.
Script: (Female announcer) “John McCain stood up to the president and sounded the alarm on global warming five years ago. Today, he has a realistic plan that will curb greenhouse gas emissions. A plan that will help grow our economy and protect our environment. Reform. Prosperity. Peace. John McCain.
Video: Opens with a bang. The viewer hears car horns while seeing rapid black-and-white video of autos jammed on freeways, factories belching smoke and ice packs melting. Then the commercial dissolves into a color photo of McCain speaking; a newspaper headline underneath him declares: “McCain climate views clash with GOP.”
The viewer then sees wind turbines, power dams, solar panels and auto workers building new cars. The final shot shows McCain standing outside, with mountain peaks in the background.
Analysis: This commercial practically screams out the words: John McCain is not George W. Bush. It comes close to suggesting he’s not even a Republican. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has charged that a McCain presidency would amount to a third term for Bush. So McCain is picking issues on which he differs most with Bush and Republicans — the environment and global warming.
By doing so, McCain hopes voters will not focus on the many issues on which he agrees with Bush, including opposition to abortion rights, extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, and refusing to adopt a deadline to remove U.S. forces from Iraq.
The commercial is reasonably accurate. In 2002, McCain joined with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in an unsuccessful effort to force automakers to build cars that use less gasoline. In 2003, McCain and then-Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman, now an independent from Connecticut, backed a major bill aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, a measure that died on the Senate floor.
But the commercial does not mention that McCain this week backed oil exploration off the coast of the United States, a move opposed by environmentalists. Nor did the commercial say that McCain this month expressed opposition to a global warming package backed by Lieberman, even though the measure was similar to the bill McCain and Lieberman supported in 2003.
McCain contends that the bill did not include enough incentives to promote the use of nuclear power. Neither McCain nor Obama showed up to vote June 6 when the Senate killed the Lieberman bill.
Jack Torry is a reporter at The Columbus Dispatch. E-mail: jtorry@dispatch.com
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MoveOn.org/AFSCME ‘Not Alex’ ad
The ad: “Not Alex,” 30-seconds.
Producer: MoveOn.org and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
Where to see it: It began airing on Ohio television stations on Tuesday, June 17. View it at DaytonDailyNews.com/eyeonohio.
Script: (Mother speaks as she holds her baby boy, Alex). “Hi, John McCain. This is Alex. And he’s my first. So far his talents include trying any new food and chasing after our dog. That, and making my heart pound every time I look at him. And so, John McCain, when you say you would stay in Iraq for 100 years, were you counting on Alex? Because if you were, you can’t have him.”
Video: The mother sits quietly in what appears to be a living room, cradling Alex. She is smiling at the beginning as she describes Alex, but the smile fades as she delivers the punch line.
Analysis: This commercial is a reminder to politicians: Be careful how you explain things.
At a January town hall meeting in New Hampshire, McCain was asked whether U.S. troops would have to remain in Iraq for as long as 50 years. McCain replied, “Maybe 100.”
But he quickly added, “As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, it’s fine with me, and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al-Qaida is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.”
Democrats, including presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, quickly seized on the 100-year comment, but neglected to add McCain’s qualifier. In a sense, McCain was reminding voters that U.S. forces remain in Germany more than 60 years after the end of World War II, and in South Korea more than a half-century since the conclusion of the Korean War.
McCain has said he would withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq only on the advice of his military commanders rather than impose a deadline from Washington.
The commercial is being aired by two liberal organizations, MoveOn.Org and AFSCME, both of which will support Obama in the fall.
As for Alex, he could be the first major child star in a political commercial since 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson ran a TV ad featuring a little girl removing petals from a daisy. The commercial then dissolved into an atomic bomb explosion, a none-too-subtle suggestion that Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater wanted to blow up the world. Ironically, Tony Schwartz, the producer of that Daisy ad, died Saturday, June 14, at the age of 84.
Jack Torry is a reporter at The Columbus Dispatch. E-mail: jtorry@dispatch.com.
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