As Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike across America demand change, John McCain's new television campaign ad, "Not Easy," offers little but more of the same. Aimed at New Hampshire primary voters on whom McCain's sagging hopes of winning the Republican nomination depend, the ad begins with the oft-repeated but weakly-supported claim that McCain stood up to the Bush administration on Iraq and singlehandedly turned the war around:

"One man warned us we were failing in Iraq, and told us how we could turn things around: More troops and a different strategy. He took a lot of heat, but he stood by what he knew was right. Today that strategy is working."

As a December 19 Democratic press release points out, McCain has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Bush administration on Iraq since day one (see also Think Progress). On March 20, 2003, McCain told NBC's Katie Couric, "The Iraqi people will greet us as liberators." We know now that they did not. As Baghdad fell to US forces on April 9, McCain told ABC News "It's clear that the end is very much in sight." We know now that it was not. "There's not a history of clashes that are violent between Sunnis and Shiahs...," McCain told MSNBC on April 23, "...So I think they can probably get along." We know now not only that they have not, but that McCain's statement betrays utter ignorance of both Islamic and Iraqi history. Echoing Bush's now-infamous claim of May 2003, McCain told ABC News on December 14, "This is a mission accomplished"; and on March 2, 2004  that "I’m confident we’re on the right course." On December 8 that same year, McCain told The Hill, "I think a year from now, we will have made a fair amount of progress if we stay the course." These statements, also, we now know to be wrong. Today, while he insists that "the surge is working" and that we're on our way to "victory in Iraq," McCain also tells voters that he has been the war's "greatest critic" from the beginning.

In addition to its tired old lies on Iraq, the new ad also includes the image of a much younger John McCain walking with Ronald Reagan - Yet another conjuring-up of the former president's ghost in the absence of new ideas, amid a Republican field already far too reliant on the Reagan myth. Hoping to draw undecided and independent voters from an electorate clamoring for fresh ideas, McCain is showing this ad while he and Joe Lieberman drive a bus around New Hampshire during Christmas and New Year's with only days left before the primary. Stay the course, John.

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