The Jeremiah Wright ad McCain didn't want you to see

The McCain campaign had a spot attacking Barack Obama over his former pastor ready to go, but never pulled the trigger.

Published December 9, 2008 12:35AM (EST)

John McCain forbade his campaign from using the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's former pastor, to attack Obama. But, as ABC News reported on Monday, that didn't stop some people within the McCain camp from putting a fair amount of work into a hard-hitting attack ad on the subject.

Comparing McCain and Obama, the ad's narrator says, "One chose to honor his fellow soldiers by refusing to walk out of a prisoner of war camp. The other chose not to even walk out of a church where a pastor was spewing hatred."

The spot includes the standard candidate approval, but Steve Schmidt, a top aide to McCain, told ABC the Arizona Senator never actually saw it "and it was never considered for air, period."

You can see the commercial, and ABC's report, below.


By Alex Koppelman

Alex Koppelman is a staff writer for Salon.

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2008 Elections Barack Obama John Mccain R-ariz.