CHICAGO (Reuters)
U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama attacked Republican rival John McCain as a tool of big oil companies in a television ad released on Monday, after Republican ads sought to cast Obama as a Paris Hilton-style "celebrity" candidate.
Seeking to tap into Americans' anger over soaring gasoline prices, Obama's ad opens with a shot of a driver pumping gas and refers to huge profits made by oil companies in the past year.
"Every time you fill your tank, the oil companies fill their pockets," a narrator says. "Now Big Oil's filling John McCain's campaign with $2 million in contributions."
The ad shows McCain standing next to fellow Republican President George W. Bush as the narrator says, "After one president in the pocket of big oil -- we can't afford another."
The ad touts Obama's plan to offer American families $1,000 tax breaks to help offset higher energy costs as well as the Illinois senator's proposal for a tax on windfall oil company profits. It accuses McCain, an Arizona senator, of seeking to give oil companies additional tax breaks.
His proposal for a windfall oil profits tax has drawn criticism from those who say it proved to be counterproductive when it was last put in place in the United States in 1980 during the final year of President Jimmy Carter's administration.
Those critics say the measure prompted oil companies to cut back on domestic production while failing to raise as much in tax revenue as lawmakers expected. It was repealed in 1988 during the Reagan administration. |
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“Celeb” ad Obama's aggressive new ad is the latest salvo in an intensifying battle on the airwaves. In ads that have drawn controversy, McCain has sought to cast Obama as an arrogant "celebrity" candidate who lacks the substance to lead.
An ad titled "Celeb" features shots of socialite-actress Paris Hilton and singer Britney Spears as well as shots of Obama speaking at a huge campaign event to try to imply that he is more of a celebrity icon than a potential chief executive.
Paris Hilton's mother -- a John McCain donor -- on Sunday dismissed the ad as a "waste of money".
"It is a complete waste of the money John McCain's contributors have donated to his campaign," Kathy Hilton, the mother of the blond socialite-actress wrote in a blog. "It is a complete waste of the country's time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs. And it is a completely frivolous way to choose the next President of the United States".
The McCain ad asks viewers: "Is he (Obama) ready to lead?"
Hilton and her husband, a scion of the Hilton hotel chain, donated $4,600 to McCain's November White House bid.
McCain has portrayed himself as an independent-minded politician with a history of bucking authority and said last week that his rival has shown little more than strong speaking skills. |
