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by John McCormick
Sen. Barack Obama is using an image of his deceased mother in a new campaign ad that seeks to make the case that he is the best qualified to bring change in the way the nation delivers health care.
Called “Mother,” the 30-second ad briefly shows a picture of Stanley Ann Dunham, who died of cancer in 1995. The image includes a very young Obama in her arms.
The ad is scheduled to start running in Iowa on Friday. It arrives during a week where Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York has received extensive news coverage for the unveiling of her health care proposal.
Within the ad, Obama promises a health care plan that will “cover everyone.” That’s a suggest that draws fire from his opponents, who claim the plan he offered in May falls short of offering true universal coverage.
Unlike the plans offered by Clinton and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, Obama’s plan stops short of mandating that all Americans be required to have insurance. Obama’s campaign maintains that by making the system more affordable, it would mean that more people would buy into the program, thus moving the country closer to universal coverage.
The new Obama ad is the second one his campaign has launched in Iowa this week. Like the first one, the Illinois Democrat speaks directly into the camera as he argues that he is a Washington outsider.
“To fix health care, we have to fix Washington,” he says at the end of the ad.
It’s an anecdote Obama has been recently field testing on the campaign trail. This is how he told the story of his mother’s illness during a recent campaign stop in Santa Barbara, Calif.
“I remember my mother. She was 53 years old when she died of ovarian cancer, and you know what she was thinking about in the last months of her life? She wasn’t thinking about getting well. She wasn’t thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality. She had been diagnosed just as she was transitioning between jobs. And she wasn’t sure whether insurance was going to cover the medical expenses because they might consider this a preexisting condition. I remember just being heartbroken, seeing her struggle through the paperwork and the medical bills and the insurance forms. So, I have seen what it’s like when somebody you love is suffering because of a broken health care system. And it’s wrong. It’s not who we are as a people.”
The ad can be viewed here.