Amid Negative Ads, McCain Claims High Road

CBSNews.com Reports: Candidates Want To Be Seen As Running Positive Campaigns, But They Have Little Control Over Outsiders

(CBS) 
Black, McCain's strategist, says his expectation is that "if somebody runs an ad designed to help McCain that hits below the belt, he's going to say so, and say he wishes they didn't run it." (Along with this week's spot, Black points out, McCain condemned an ad he deemed inappropriate during the GOP nomination battle.) But Black adds that "we can't spend all day every day commenting on everybody's ads."

"The irony is McCain was the guy who helped pass the campaign finance bill, which really downsized the power of the political parties and upsized the power of these shadowy organizations," said Republican strategist John Feehery.

For candidates like McCain and Obama, who have aggressively sought to portray themselves as champions of clean campaigning, ads from outside groups and state parties - even when they're put out by people on the same page as the candidate ideologically - have the potential to tarnish the above-the-fray image the candidates want to project.

"When there is an independent group out there putting out a negative ad, voters typically don't make a distinction between your ad and the ad of your group," said Terry Nelson, who was McCain’s campaign manager until the middle of last year. "A lot of the time the candidate faces the brunt of whatever the backlash is to that ad."

Ads from outside groups don't necessarily hurt a candidate - the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth spots from 2004, for example, are credited with helping George W. Bush defeat John Kerry in the general election. Many of those involved with such groups have past connections to a party or candidate: Chris LaCivita, who was the Swift Boat Veterans' adviser on media strategy, worked previously for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Sen. George Allen, and the Republican Party of Virginia.

Asked if outside groups like the Swift Boat Veterans could be accused of engaging in tacit collusion with the campaigns - working in concert without engaging in any official communication - LaCivita said no. He argued that the reason people who have worked with the parties become involved with outside groups is simply that they have the relevant experience.

"No one in my business in their right mind is going to willfully engage in an illegal activity that could get their ass in jail," said LaCivita. In 2004, he added, "the left made a big deal about my past. But they could never prove we were coordinating, because we weren't."

Feehery said that McCain is less open to charges of tacit collusion than Mr. Bush was because of the nature of his campaign and the public perception that the Arizona senator genuinely disapproves of below-the-belt tactics.

"The Bush campaign had a very corporate structure," he said. "McCain's campaign is much less structured, smaller, less corporate. They're more nimble and more able to turn on a dime. But no one really knows where they're going next. So I think it's plausible and credible to say McCain is not going to be telling these 527s, even in a tacit way, what to do."

The only real power McCain -- or any candidate -- has over such groups, Nelson argued, has to do with the potential consequences over the long term for those who fund or work with outside groups whose ads a candidate disavows.

"If John McCain becomes president, the question people have to ask themselves is, 'do you want to have a relationship with the Republican Party?,'" Nelson said. "Because it's difficult, as a matter of honor, for him to allow his White House or party to engage in relationships with outside groups that he has condemned."

Unsavory ads aren't always the work of outside groups, however - they sometimes come from the national parties themselves. Nelson himself was the head of the RNC's independent expenditure unit in 2006, which was behind the somewhat infamous ad targeting Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr.

With voters faced with the bewildering task of differentiating between ads coming from the candidate, ads coming from the party, and ads coming from outside groups, perhaps it's no surprise that skepticism so often greets candidates' promises about "respectful" campaigns.

"Just about every campaign in America starts on the premise it's going to be positive," said LaCivita. "The first time somebody lays a glove on somebody else, all that changes."