Republican John McCain made a play for the "change" mantle of Democratic foe Barack Obama, and distanced himself from his own party, in his latest salvo of the White House advertising wars Tuesday, AFP reported.
"Washington's broken, John McCain knows it, we're worse off than we were four years ago," the ad's narrator said, as pictures flashed across the screen showing showdowns in Congress and racing gauges on gasoline pumps.
"Only McCain has taken on big tobacco, drug companies, fought corruption in both parties. He'll reform Wall Street, battle Big Oil, make America prosper again," the ad said.
"He's the original maverick," said the ad, in an apparent attempt to recapture McCain's former reputation for independence, which critics say has been dimmed by his attempt to court establishment Republicans in the 2008 race.
"One is ready to lead - McCain," the advertisement concludes, in a clear reference to the other White House candidate, Obama, whom McCain has been portraying as unprepared for the job of president.
The advertisement, part of a fierce war on the airwaves developing in the run-up to the respective party conventions later this month and early next, triggered an immediate row with the Obama campaign. Obama, 47, is running under the slogan: "Change We Can Believe In."
"Being a maverick isn't practicing the same kind of politics we have seen from Washington for decades," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.
"It isn't having a campaign run by Washington lobbyists, and it's certainly not promoting the same policies that have led America down the wrong path these past eight years."
The Obama campaign also refuted each claim made in McCain's ad, arguing that the Republican could hardly be termed a "maverick" after voting with President George W. Bush 95 percent of the time in the last year.
Obama aides also portrayed McCain as part of the Washington logjam their candidate has vowed to unblock, saying the 71-year-old was a tool of corporate lobbyists and had failed to recognize mounting US economic problems.