John McCain is finally making noise in the White House race, after weeks of anemic photo ops, scattershot attacks and looking on as Democrat Barack Obama soaked up adulation and opinion poll leads.
The Republican stiffened his campaign with a negative new strategy, claimed Obama is playing the 'race card' against him, and mocked his Democratic foe as an empty celebrity and prone to a Messiah complex.
In the fiercest combat of the general election so far, McCain tasted successive victories last week in the battle for daily news coverage, the political trench warfare which adds up to define a campaign.
But McCain's change of tack, which followed Republican whispering about his performance and Obama's return from a triumphant foreign tour, carries risks along with its promise of political gain. He hopes voters will soon start to share his view of Obama as a talented, yet presumptuous pretender unprepared for the presidency.
But such tactics are the political equivalent of playing with fire-and could cement Obama's narrative that McCain is ignoring real issues at a time of economic peril, has an unpleasant temper and is a typical, cynical politician.
"Any time you engage in negative campaigning, you always run the risk of it backfiring on your own campaign," said Costas Panagopoulos, of Fordham University's Elections and Campaigns Management program. "That said, people remember negative ads-candidates use them because they are effective.
"If they can capitalize on pre-existing fears the electorate has about Obama, or hesitations they have about him it can be an effective strategy."
McCain is betting that he can dim Obama's so far remarkably resilient star power-and seems to be making preemptive bid to limit any 'bounce' his rival enjoys from his party convention in three weeks. But one political giant-Hillary Clinton-has already tried such a strategy and failed, during the Democratic primary season when she branded Obama "a lot of talk, no action."
McCain's barrage opened with an ad using footage of Obama's barnstorming European tour to compare him to troubled popular culture icons Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, the message: the Democrat is all show and no substance. McCain's campaign then set off a firestorm, accusing African American Obama of playing the 'race card' after he commented that Republicans will point out that he does not look like presidents memorialised on US currency.
Then McCain made headlines again with an ad mocking Obama as a Moses-like figure, which sarcastically asked "can you see the light?" suggesting his opponent had anointed himself to save the world. McCain left no doubt about his tactics on Saturday.
"Senator Obama is an impressive orator, and it's a lucky thing for me that people aren't just choosing a motivational speaker," he said in a radio address. "Washington is full of talented talkers and Senator Obama is one of the best to come along in quite a while-unfortunately on issues big and small, what he says and what he does are often two different things." In an ABC television interview, McCain also accused Obama of opposing "a comprehensive energy plan" in the face of skyrocketing gas prices.
"It seems to me the only thing he wants us to do is inflate tires" to improve gas mileage, the Arizone senator argued. Since Obama returned from Europe, the race appears to have tightened. The candidates were tied at 44 percent each in the latest Gallup tracking poll. A week ago, Obama was up by nine points.
Rasmussen had Obama up 43-44 percent in its tracking poll and survey in the next few weeks will be watched to see whether McCain's hard line is damaging Obama-or himself. The Obama camp has learned the lessons of past campaigns-it was in August 2004 that the Republican attack machine honed in on Democrat John Kerry's Vietnam war record, and sowed seeds that would help destroy his campaign.
Each McCain attack was met with a quick, forcible response, with the ads branded "juvenile" and "sad." Obama joined the fray himself Saturday saying that though he did not think McCain's campaign was racist, it was "cynical." His campaign chief David Plouffe argued that the McCain broadsides had motivated the Illinois senator's huge grassroots fundraising movement.
"What John McCain has done in the last week has really shown the American people he doesn't want to talk about the economy or foreign policy or healthcare," Plouffe said in a video emailed to Obama supporters.