Obama Ad Links Iraq War to US Economic Slump

In a new ad called "Book" the Obama camp hits McCain on ties to President Bush's economic policies, linking the costs of the Iraq war to US economic troubles and adding a dig about Iraq's oil-revenue surplus.

To put it less subtly, the message of this ad is as follows: Iraq is hoarding its huge oil profits while Americans fund the reconstruction efforts there and ruin our own economy in the process. Therefore, John McCain is destroying the US economy by supporting the Iraq war.

Let's put aside for now the question of what Iraq should be doing -- or is capable of doing at this point -- with that money, or whether they really have any control over global oil prices. (Or the fact that it's an important sign of progress that the Iraqi oil industry is back on its feet.) What about the suggested link between Iraq war costs and the faltering US economy? We asked NPR business correspondent Adam Davidson to weigh in. He said there's nothing outright wrong in the ad, but its juxtapositions are a bit misleading:

It's not incorrect to say the war has been a drag on us economic growth, but it's outweighed by many other factors. Oil prices, housing crisis, and the credit crunch are infinitely more significant...the Iraq war is a vanishingly minor character in the economic drama.

That doesn't mean voters won't make that connection anyway -- in a CNN poll earlier this year, 71% of respondents thought the war was hurting the economy. This ad is happy to nudge that perception along, in much the same way that McCain has embraced the fallacious link between Obama's stance on future offshore drilling and today's high gas prices.

On the upside, at least the ad isn't about famousness.

-- Evie Stone

1:27 PM ET | 08-13-2008 | permalink

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