The Anti-Obama Ad Campaign That Never Happened

[Lunar]

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1861831,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

What if the McCain campaign had run ads using footage of Barack Obama dancing with Ellen DeGeneres to show his coziness with celebrity? Or followed up on its Paris Hilton ad with others featuring Donald Trump and Jessica Simpson? All of that was on the drawing board of Fred Davis III, the advertising whiz that John McCain has used for almost all of his campaign media and one of the most talented conservative political operatives in America. Oh yes, he also had an Internet ad up his sleeve that would attack Obama's celebrity by associating him with Oprah. But in the end, he scotched that one. "We decided you don't really fight Santa Claus or Oprah," he says, "so we removed her."

In an extended interview with TIME, Davis detailed what might have been in the campaign ad war — and what self-censorship the McCain staff imposed on themselves regarding the issue of race. For most of the campaign, Davis functioned as McCain's silent partner. While journalists hounded McCain's senior campaign aides, people like Steve Schmidt, Mark Salter and Rick Davis (no relation), Fred Davis worked in the shadows. He designed and often wrote the scripts for the most stinging of McCain's spots — the Web ad that depicted Obama as a messiah, the kindergarten ad that suggested Obama wanted to teach young kids about sex and the many others that questioned Obama's qualifications for the White House.

"My favorite ad of the campaign was as simple as it could be," Davis said. "And it started out something like, 'Long before the world knew of John McCain or Barack Obama, one of them spent five years in a hellhole because he refused early release to honor his fellow prisoners, while the other one wouldn't walk out of a church after 20 years of the guy spewing hatred towards America.' And the last line was, 'Character matters, especially when no one is listening.' " The ad never ran, however, because McCain ruled the topic of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the preacher of Obama's Chicago church, out of bounds shortly after he locked up the Republican nomination.

Good advertising men are almost always mischiefmakers at heart, the sort who don't mind a little confrontation and who revel in a bit of controversy. And so Davis is wistful at the missed opportunities of the McCain campaign. "I made a list once, which no one will ever see, of all the reasons that my hands were tied on this campaign," he says. "And I've never had a list this long." One of his biggest struggles, Davis says, was to come up with negative spots against a historic, groundbreaking candidate without stepping on taboos. "One of the big hands that I felt was tied behind my back was [that] so many things — like [Obama's record on] crime — you would logically do were perceived as 'Oh, we can't do that. That was playing the race card,' " he says, adding that the campaign created a whole series of crime attacks against Obama that were never aired. "Reverend Wright? 'Oh, can't do that; they'll say we are playing the race card.' [William] Ayers? For the longest time, 'Oh, can't do that. We're playing the race card.' "

Davis says that concern about race played a major role in the entire aesthetic of McCain's ads. The photographs of Obama that the ads used, for instance, which often showed Obama elongated and smiling, were carefully selected, he recalls. "We chose them with only one thing in mind, and that is to not make them bad pictures because bad pictures would be seen as racist," Davis says. "How many shots in their ads did they use a John McCain [photo] looking decent and smiling?" He says the campaign also agonized over the music in the ads, paying special care not to play drum-heavy tracks that could be seen as an African tribal reference. "We were held to a totally different standard," he says.

Nevertheless, the McCain campaign was unable to escape the charge that it was playing the race card. An Associated Press analysis called the campaign's invocations of the once violent 1960s radical Ayers "racially tinged" because they evoked the word terrorist. McCain was also accused of playing on race for running an ad that highlighted Obama's relationship with Franklin Raines, a former executive at Fannie Mae who is black. Says Davis: "I never saw anybody play the race card but the Obama campaign."

Still, for Davis, it was an exhilarating if frustrating experience. In addition to the McCain account, his firm oversaw ads for five Senate races, including the hard-fought Elizabeth Dole and John Sununu campaigns. It was a career high point for Davis, who started in advertising at the age of 19, after his father died and he had to take over the family public relations business. At the height of the campaign, Davis, who is the nephew of Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, oversaw nine edit shops, producing up to three spots a day, as well as the stage production for the Republican National Convention. "You wouldn't know what tomorrow's need was until tomorrow morning early," he says. "And it needed to be out that day."

By all rights, Fred Davis III should be living in a red state, a place teeming with clapboard churches, cowboy hats and gun racks. Instead, the Oklahoma native has chosen to live in sunny Santa Barbara, Calif., and has located his company, Strategic Perception, in sinful Hollywood. But he's had to pay a price for it all. The neighbors haven't exactly been friendly. Every day for about six months, he put a "John McCain for President" sign in front of his home. And almost every night it would be stolen. "I wanted to leave a note there and say, 'You idiots don't get it. I have an unlimited supply,' " Davis says, still laughing about it.

After the election ended, he participated in a panel discussion before a crowd of Hollywood bigwigs. He was met with disapproving grumbles when he was introduced as the guy who made McCain's Paris Hilton ad. "It wasn't a good evening really," Davis says. As he was trying to leave the hall, former Seinfeld actor Jason Alexander confronted him. "He basically wanted to know how I sleep at night."

Even with the limitations on his ads, Davis says he holds no ill feelings toward Obama. He says the McCain campaign's plan, which was largely dependent on tactical attacks on Obama, was working well until the financial meltdown, which began to accelerate in mid-September. "You've got to look at it and say, my Lord, it was just Obama's time. You know, his stars aligned right," Davis says. "And I think he's an incredibly gifted candidate. Let's hope, and I do hope, and I hope I'm right, that he'll be a very gifted President. And I hope he'll rule from the middle. And I hope he'll, you know, be inclusive of Republicans. And if he does those things, he could be one of the great Presidents in history."

Such kind words for Obama may be surprising coming from the man who oversaw the media campaign to destroy Obama's reputation. But Davis is not the kind of Republican operative who looks on liberals with personal animus. At the end of the day, he still has to live among them.

[Jens]

Good thing, McCain is a descent man, unlike this fellow. Imagine what kind of hate-filled campaign a lesser candidate would have ran if this guy got his way.

[Lunar]

Good thing, McCain is a descent man, unlike this fellow. Imagine what kind of hate-filled campaign a lesser candidate would have ran if this guy got his way.

He did Run Lizzy Dole's ad campaign if you want a hint

[Jens]

Good thing, McCain is a descent man, unlike this fellow. Imagine what kind of hate-filled campaign a lesser candidate would have ran if this guy got his way.

He did Run Lizzy Dole's ad campaign if you want a hint

Saw that, and it didn't improve anything. This guy should stay with his metier: promoting landmines, cluster bombs, toxic waste dumps and 3th world dictators - suites his moral standards

[Lunar]

He's not evil, you can see himself that he thinks Obama could be a great president.

His job is to make the best ads possible and let his candidate use the ones he wants.  Lawyers need to defend rapists and murderers too.

Really, such things result from him political tacticians living in a bubble. 

I wonder though, if that ad in bold above would have been a game-changer.

[Meeker]

I wonder though, if that ad in bold above would have been a game-changer.

I doubt it. Having a negative opinion of Obama wasn't really a factor in a lot of people's votes by the end of the campaign - quite a few people were completely driven by economic concern.

[Lunar]

Well, McCain would have still lost.

But that ad would have dominated the media news cycle for a week and would have been the most powerful ad of the campaign.  It closure - a simple statement about character and talking about McCain's POW experience - sort of undoes the racial backlash of the ad.

It also spins a dynamic of the campaign as one of character - an area that Obama almost would surely do poorly in and drags McCain's POW experience into people's mind.  If people are thinking if they want to vote for the Wright guy or the POW guy who suffered to do the right thing... I don't know.  I feel like the McCain campaign would have then been able to take advantage of "judgment" beyond the surge thing which had limited appeal to suburbanites.

I think that ad would have poofed the momentum out of the Obama campaign.  I'm going to go start a Wright thread.

[Lunar]

I know some GOP-types like to claim Obama got off easy because of his race and I'd like to address those claims preemptively.

Yes, some ads that you could run on a normal candidate were now taboo.  If a "white equivalent" of Wright existed, anyone who attended that church would have been toast.  One could argue that Black sermons are normally pretty hair-raising and a lot of those Wright-quotes are taken out of context, but nevertheless, those soundbytes would have been deadly to a white dude's political career if he had the "equivalent" happen to him.  Obama was very smart to tie the entire Wright issue to one of race by immediately giving a speech on Race in America when that came out, as if to dare his opponents to attack him on Wright and provoke the race card.  Some merits, some tricky strategy to this argument.  Ok, now that's out of the way.

While this is true, some ads were now off-limits, making traditional ad-makers fumble the ball, new ads that were properly subtle now became exponentially more powerful.  Ads calling a John Smith "dangerous" "Who is the Real John Smith?" "Risky" "Ties with Terrorists" would have been a lot harder to run with on a guy who's name doesn't rhyme with Iraq Hussein Osama.

I think it's obvious that Obama got a net gain out of the ad wars because of his race, but it's important to note that Davis might not be an unbiased source here.  A white version of Obama wouldn't have been framed as the "Unknown" or the "Dangerous" in the same manner.  Ok end of story.

[Beet]

And even despite that, the McCain campaign still ran the more interesting ad of the cycle (Hilton/Spears/Berlin ad). That one will go down as 'the ad' of 2008, much like the Kerry windsurfing ad. Runner up is probably the Dem primary '3 a.m.' ad.

[WillK]

...
It also spins a dynamic of the campaign as one of character - an area that Obama almost would surely do poorly in

Would he? 

You must be logged in to read this quote.

It was already hammered into our minds as it was.   The public was suffering from POW fatigue. 

[Stranger in a strange land]

I wonder though, if that ad in bold above would have been a game-changer.

I doubt it. Having a negative opinion of Obama wasn't really a factor in a lot of people's votes by the end of the campaign - quite a few people were completely driven by economic concern.

also, when you consider that many people were already turned off by the negative tone of the campaign, and that the attacks on flag pins and Bill Ayers failed and probably backfired, and that Obama lost a sizable number of white voters due to race anyway (look at the county swings in the South and Appalachia), I doubt an onslaught of Wright ads would have had that much of an effect.

[RBH]

"What if the McCain campaign had run ads using footage of Barack Obama dancing with Ellen DeGeneres to show his coziness with celebrity?"

Yeah.. that would have went over well.

But it would produce a reaction where American bigots forget that Ellen is a lesbian to declare "He's dancing with a white woman, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

So, will this guy make a movie with David Zucker next?

[paul718]

I don't think bringing up Wright would've made much of a difference.  When the economy tanked, the electorate cared more about competence than character.  The Obama campaign effectively sold the idea that Obama was economically competent and McCain was not.

This is a reason why, I think, Barack Obama could never have become President outside of the present circumstances.   

[emailking]

This is a reason why, I think, Barack Obama could never have become President outside of the present circumstances.   

Even though when McCain was at his height (post primaries) Obama was still over 270 in state polling? Would he really have lost CO and IA because of the Wright stuff? Remember many independents cite Palin as the reason for their vote.

Or are you saying with no "tanking" (which was more of a media awakening event to an ongoing situation) that McCain would have run tons of Wright ads and thus Obama would have lost ground in a lot of states?

[paul718]

This is a reason why, I think, Barack Obama could never have become President outside of the present circumstances.   

Even though when McCain was at his height (post primaries) Obama was still over 270 in state polling? Would he really have lost CO and IA because of the Wright stuff? Remember many independents cite Palin as the reason for their vote.

Or are you saying with no "tanking" (which was more of a media awakening event to an ongoing situation) that McCain would have run tons of Wright ads and thus Obama would have lost ground in a lot of states?

My post should've been better worded. 

What I mean by "present circumstances" is the combination of a weakening economy, a sitting Republican President with approval ratings in the teens, and the fact that having an (R) next to your name is a scarlet letter.  These circumstances existed well before the Bear Stearns collapse.  Outside of these circumstances I believe the Wright/Ayers/inexperience/"bitter" issues would have rendered Obama unelectable.  My basic point is that since the electorate believed Obama was "better for the economy" than McCain, they chose to ignore those issues.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

This is a reason why, I think, Barack Obama could never have become President outside of the present circumstances.   

Even though when McCain was at his height (post primaries) Obama was still over 270 in state polling? Would he really have lost CO and IA because of the Wright stuff? Remember many independents cite Palin as the reason for their vote.

Or are you saying with no "tanking" (which was more of a media awakening event to an ongoing situation) that McCain would have run tons of Wright ads and thus Obama would have lost ground in a lot of states?

My post should've been better worded. 

What I mean by "present circumstances" is the combination of a weakening economy, a sitting Republican President with approval ratings in the teens, and the fact that having an (R) next to your name is a scarlet letter.  These circumstances existed well before the Bear Stearns collapse.  Outside of these circumstances I believe the Wright/Ayers/inexperience/"bitter" issues would have rendered Obama unelectable.  My basic point is that since the electorate believed Obama was "better for the economy" than McCain, they chose to ignore those issues.

So then why did all that you mention do nothing for Hillary? She wasn't dogged by the aforementioned baggage, and her campaign against Obama based on that got nowhere.

I can probably buy that a much less charismatic politician with those issues would be severely dogged though. Obama is more made of teflon than anyone else I've seen this decade.

[paul718]

So then why did all that you mention do nothing for Hillary? She wasn't dogged by the aforementioned baggage, and her campaign against Obama based on that got nowhere.

I can probably buy that a much less charismatic politician with those issues would be severely dogged though. Obama is more made of teflon than anyone else I've seen this decade.

Winning the Democratic nomination is different from winning the Presidency. 

Hillary was the establishment candidate who led in the polls starting the day after Bush was re-elected in 04' and was around 50% at a point when there were 7 candidates still in the running, and Democrats tend to resent that sort of stuff.  Plus, I think, she ran a bad campaign.  And she almost won.