Obama for America

"Coutry I Love"
60-second ad run in 18 states starting June 20, 2008 (announced June 19).

AK, CO, FL, GA, IA, IN, MI, MO, MT, NV, NH, NM, NC, ND, OH, PA, WI and VA.

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[Music] Obama I’m Barack Obama. 

America is a country of strong families and strong values.  My life’s been blessed by both.

I was raised by a single mom and my grandparents.  We didn’t have much money, but they taught me values straight from the Kansas heartland where they grew up.  Accountability and self-reliance.  Love of country.  Working hard without making excuses.  Treating your neighbor as you’d like to be treated.  It’s what guided me as I worked my way up – taking jobs and loans to make it through college.

It’s what led me to pass up Wall Street jobs and go to Chicago instead, helping neighborhoods devastated when steel plants closed.

That’s why I passed laws moving people from welfare to work, cut taxes for working families and extended health care for wounded troops who’d been neglected.

I approved this message because I’ll never forget those values, and if I have the honor of taking the oath of office as President, it will be with a deep and abiding faith in the country I love.


  
Notes:  The campaign's first general election ad, "Country I Love," is broadly biographical, touches on some of Obama's accomplishments, and seeks to counter some of the concerns that emerged in the primary campaign including the difficulties with Rev. Wright, the bitter remarks, and the various rumors.  In fact, Obama is wearing a flag pin:


The inclusion in the buy of states such as Alaska, Indiana, North Carolina and North Dakota -- which Bush won by solid margins in 2004 -- drew some notice among observers, and indicates that the campaign will continue to "play hard" in all areas of the country.