Obama camp turns up heat

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama released a television advertisement Wednesday that questions John McCain's claims to be a "maverick," and he charged in a campaign appearance that the Republican displays independence only when it suits him politically.

The ad and the Democrat's rhetoric in Indiana appeared to up the ante in a campaign that took a distinct turn toward the negative last week.

"The price [McCain] paid for his party's nomination has been to reverse himself on position after position," Obama told more than 1,000 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 parries come more than a week after his Republican opponent launched a string of increasingly personal attacks on Obama. McCain has said his rival would lose a war to win a campaign, accused him of going to a gym rather than visiting wounded troops, and 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 Wednesday with a new McCain ad, again mocking Obama as "the biggest celebrity in the world."

Such attacks have raised worries among Democratic strategists — haunted by John Kerry's 2004 run and Al Gore's razor-thin loss in 2000 — that Obama has not responded in kind with a parallel assault on McCain's character. Interviews with nearly a dozen Democratic strategists found those concerns to be widespread, although few wished to be quoted by name.

"Democrats are worried," said Tad Devine, a top strategist for Kerry who thinks Obama must stay on the high road. "We've been through two very tough elections at the national level, and it's very easy to lose confidence."

Obama's latest ad may be his toughest, 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 the response could be far nastier, perhaps raising McCain's ethical scrape in the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal, mocking his family wealth and designer shoes, or highlighting his age.

A liberal ad consultant said: "There's frustration there because they're watching these childish ad campaigns, and they know exactly how to answer it, but they're powerless to do so."

Powerless because most of the independent groups that would have taken the lead in such an independent campaign have been sidelined by Obama's insistence that Democratic donors channel their money to him, rather than outside groups.

But that has hamstrung what would have been one of the three fronts on which Democrats had hoped to wage the 2008 campaign, said Donna Brazile, Gore's 2000 campaign manager. Obama's team was able to push back quickly against McCain's character attacks, she said, and the Democratic National Committee is beginning to engage the Republican National Committee in a more cutting effort, Wednesday starting an "Exxon-McCain 08" campaign that portrays the Republican as the running mate of the oil giant.

But the surrogate groups remain dormant, Brazile said, because of Obama's decision to cut them out.

So far, said Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org's executive director, the best response to McCain's celebrity attack has come from Paris Hilton, who released her own ad Tuesday chastising "the white-haired dude," outlining her own energy plan and calling McCain "the oldest celebrity in the world, like super old."

Consultants close to Obama said because McCain has accepted public financing for the general-election campaign, he must spend all his primary money before the party conventions. Obama is focusing on turning out voters, while airing a mix of positive ads and responses.

And more ads may not help, according to a Pew Research Center poll released Wednesday. Nearly half of respondents — including 51 percent of independents — said they have been hearing too much about Obama lately, and 22 percent said all that news has made them feel less favorable toward him. On the other hand, significantly more Americans view McCain's ads as mostly negative than say the same of Obama's.

Material from the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.