The McCain campaign is running a new ad that the Washington Post says takes on Obama without ever saying his name. The ad is running in New Mexico and several other states. As Ed O’Keefe of the Post notes:
 

John McCain’s latest ad makes subtle suggestions that Barack Obama’s  rhetoric does not qualify him to serve as president. It also reminds baby boomers that while they may have participated in the excesses of the late 1960s, he was serving time in a North Vietnamese prison camp.

 "It was a time of uncertainty, hope and change. The ‘Summer Of Love,’" the ad’s announcer says. "Half a world away, another kind of love — of country. John McCain: Shot down. Bayoneted. Tortured. Offered early release, he said, ‘No.’"

"John McCain doesn’t always tell us what we ‘hope’ to hear," the announcer later says. "Beautiful words cannot make our lives better. But a man who has always put his country and her people before self, before politics, can. Don’t ‘hope’ for a better life. Vote for one."

The ad never says the name Obama, but the phrase "beautiful words cannot make our lives better" is a direct shot at Obama’s oratorical ability and, by extension, what some may view as his relative lack of experience.

It is a debatable point of course — that words cannot make our lives better. Martin Luther King was a dynamic speaker whose oratorical gifts help make millions of lives better. But King combined words with deeds. The question left hanging by the McCain ad is whether Obama can do the same.

The McCain ad also plays up his image of being a maverick, an oblique way of distancing himself from a very unpopular President Bush, whose favorability numbers are in the tank. It also can be viewed as a pitch to independents and undecided voters.

It will be interesting to see how the Obama campaign responds.

Here’s the new ad: