McCain Fires Back On Taxes

The CBS News Political Unit is tracking the campaign commercials of the presidential hopefuls. Jane Ruvelson analyzes a recent effort from Republican John McCain.

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The Ad: Desperate is the second response by the McCain campaign to an ad launched by George W. Bush in South Carolina last week. The Bush ad alleges that McCain is running an intentionally misleading commercial about Bush's tax plan; that even McCain's economic adviser chooses Bush's tax plan over McCain's; and that McCain's tax cut is too small - smaller, in fact, than President Clinton's. Both of McCains rebuttal ads began running this week in South Carolina.

Audio: McCain: "I guess it was bound to happen. Governor Bush's campaign is getting desperate with a negative ad about me. The fact is, I will use the surplus money to fix Social Security, cut your taxes and pay down the debt. Governor Bush uses all the surplus for tax cuts, with not one new penny for Social Security or the debt. His ad twists the truth like Clinton. We're all pretty tired of that. As president, I'll be conservative, and always tell you the truth, no matter what."

Visual: McCain addresses the camera from a softly lit hotel suite. "Fix Social Security," "cut your taxes," and "pay down the debt" appear on screen as he speaks.

Fact Check: Whether Bush spends "all the surplus" on tax relief is a matter of semantics. Bush's tax plan uses the entire the non-Social Security surplus to cover tax cuts. However, Bush's plan does call for putting all of the Social Security surplus toward Social Security.

The Strategy: McCain's commercials are as much (or more) about credibility as they are about tax plans. Both the message and delivery are sharper than they were in his first rebuttal ad, Trust. In that ad, a faceless announcer presents McCain's argument - that Bush pledged to run a positive campaign but has broken his word by running a negative ad. The ad closes by alluding to Mr. Clinton with the statement: "Do we really want another politician in the White House ... America can't trust?"

Desperate is a much more direct hit. No announcer, no graphics, no allusions - just McCain, calling it like he sees it.

The Bush/McCain tax-plan ad war has gone like this: A month ago, McCain ran an ad saying that he, unlike "the others," would not "take every last dime of the surplus and spend it on tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy." Then, Bush, as a notable "other," declared in last week's ad that McCains ad is misleading, since the Bush tax plan would put $2 trillion of the Social Security surplus toward the retirement system. Again, he's talking about the Social Security surplus not the non-Social Security surplus to which McCain is referring.

McCain has eason to believe South Carolinians will favor his tax plan over Bush's as he presents it in Desperate - a January TIME/CNN poll found that Republicans nationwide favored McCain's proposal. However, by saying that "[Bush's] ad twists the truth like Clinton," McCain may have gone too negative for some Republicans to stomach.