McCain no maverick, says Obama

Washington, Aug.7: Senator Barack Obama has released a television advertisement that questions Republican rival John McCain's claims to being a "maverick".

"The price [McCain] paid for his party's nomination has been to reverse himself on position after position," Obama told a crowd of more than 1,000 at a high school gym in Elkhart.

"That doesn't meet my definition of a maverick. You can't be a maverick when politically it's important for you but not a maverick when it doesn't work for you," the Washington Post quoted him, as saying.

Obama's response was to his Republican opponent launched a string of increasingly personal attacks on him.

McCain has said that Obama would lose a war in order to win a campaign, accused him of going to a gym rather than visiting wounded troops, and, while aides asserted that he had "played the race card," hinted that Obama has a messiah complex and portrayed him as a celebrity comparable to Paris Hilton or Britney Spears.

That final line of assault continued yesterday with a new McCain ad, again mocking Obama as "the biggest celebrity in the world."

Such attacks have concerned Democratic strategists, already haunted by John F. Kerry's 2004 run and Al Gore's razor-thin loss in 2000.

Interviews with nearly a dozen Democratic strategists found those concerns to be widespread.

Obama's latest ad may be his toughest yet, using words and images to link McCain to President Bush and concluding: "The original maverick? Or just more of the same?"

But Democratic strategists said that it is nothing like the character attacks by McCain, and that the response could be far nastier.


Copyright Asian News International