Obama's Stealth Campaign

I've written before about Obama's under-the-radar ad campaign, where the Obama camp runs mostly positive ads nationally while running state-specific negative ads. A new article from Politico.com describes another front in this stealth campaign -- radio ads.

As part of a strategy that has gone mostly unnoticed since it began, Barack Obama is prosecuting an intense, slashing radio campaign against John McCain in some of the nation’s most competitive electoral battlegrounds.

Negative ads are said to turn-off voters but they are also effective, a fact that pushes political campaigns to go negative. I understand the thinking behind using negative ads, and the under-the-radar strategy is clever, but the Obama camp is treading on thin ice when it uses factual distortions in negative ads.

FactCheck.org finds Obama's radio ad on stem cell research to be misleading.

An Obama-Biden radio ad hammers McCain for being opposed to stem cell research. Not true. Meanwhile two spots from the McCain-Palin campaign, together with the Republican National Committee, describe McCain's support for the research; they're largely accurate. (emphasis added)

A few weeks ago I noted similar problems with Obama's Spanish language ad.

Both sides have used distortions and gotten away with them for the most part, but the Obama campaign is taking great risks with these ads. After all it only takes that one sensational ad to set off an avalanche of media criticism and scrutiny, as the McCain camp found out with the sex education ad.