Presidential race ad war begins in earnest CAMPAIGN 2012

President Barack Obama talks with Jimmy Fallon during commercial break as he participates in a taping of the Jimmy Fallon Show, Tuesday, April 24, 2012, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, N.C.. less President Barack Obama talks with Jimmy Fallon during commercial break as he participates in a taping of the Jimmy Fallon Show, Tuesday, April 24, 2012, at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ... more Photo: Carolyn Kaster, Associated Press Photo: Carolyn Kaster, Associated Press Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Presidential race ad war begins in earnest 1 / 3 Back to Gallery

The presidential campaign ignited Friday after a super PAC linked to Republican strategist Karl Rove launched the season's first major brushback pitch - a 30-second ad mocking President Obama as "a celebrity president," a preview of one of the GOP's top attack lines.

Analysts said comparing the pop-culture-conversant Obama and the more publicly stiff Mitt Romney, the presumed GOP nominee, may not produce the result Rove intended. But the Obama campaign's response inspired a new question: How should it handle the killing of Osama bin Laden?

The first major ad salvo of the campaign began Thursday with a new 30-second online ad produced by Rove's American Crossroads group, which is not affiliated with Romney's campaign. It shows a montage of Obama's top pop-culture turns, singing part of an Al Green song at a fundraiser and hamming it up this week on Jimmy Fallon's NBC late night show.

Then it asks: "After four years of a celebrity president, is your life any better?" After that, in a direct attack on the youth-vote constituency that Obama dominates, statistics on the high unemployment rate and student loan debt among young Americans flash on-screen.

The ad was intended to chip away at polls showing that while the race is a statistical dead heat so far, on a personal basis, voters consider Obama far more favorably than they do Romney.

Obama fires back

But the Obama campaign, in a response that showed how seriously it considered the attack, fired back Friday with an ad featuring two of its most potent weapons. The 90-second video ad stars one of the Obama campaign's top surrogates - former President Bill Clinton - who touts one of the signature accomplishments of Obama's term, the assassination of Sept. 11 mastermind Osama bin Laden.

Obama got a bump in the polls - briefly - after bin Laden was killed nearly a year ago.

"He took the harder and the more honorable path," Clinton said in the ad, admiring Obama's deliberation during the top-secret mission. "And the one that produced, in my opinion, the best result."

The ad ends by questioning what Romney would have done in the same situation, noting that the former Massachusetts governor has vacillated in the past over whether time should have been spent chasing bin Laden.

The use of bin Laden in a political ad incensed Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

"Shame on Barack Obama for diminishing the memory of Sept. 11th and the killing of Osama bin Laden by turning it into a cheap political attack ad," McCain said Friday. "This is the same president who once criticized Hillary Clinton for invoking bin Laden to score political points.

"This is the same president who said, after bin Laden was dead, that we shouldn't 'spike the ball' after the touchdown. And now Barack Obama is not only trying to score political points by invoking Osama bin Laden, he is doing a shameless end-zone dance to help himself get re-elected," added McCain, who has endorsed Romney.

The 2008 version

The Obama-as-celebrity ad recalled the powerful 30-second spot called "Celeb" produced by McCain's 2008 failed GOP presidential campaign. Launched in late July that year, the ad helped vault McCain into the lead over Obama through August and until the economy collapsed in mid-September.

The McCain campaign ad, created by Santa Barbara GOP strategist Fred Davis, flashes images of pop icons Paris Hilton and Britney Spears while saying that Obama may be "the biggest celebrity in the world, but is he ready to lead?"

Davis didn't have the problems that his former boss McCain had with this week's Clinton/bin Laden ad, and told The Chronicle that the new Rove ad is "cute but I doubt if it moves the electoral dial very much."

Comparing its "broad humor" to the Clinton/bin Laden piece, Davis said "Bill Clinton is such a gifted communicator, and he's telling such a very, very serious story there and it's one that makes Obama come off looking pretty good."

Different image this time

Attacking Obama as a celebrity "would be less effective this time around," said Travis Ridout, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which tracks all federal and state political ads aired in the nation.

"In 2008, when you didn't know much about Obama, it worked better. But now, you have an incumbent president who has been around for four years," said Ridout, an associate professor of political science at Washington State University.

The new celebrity ad may have the opposite effect, Ridout said, by comparing Obama to Romney, "who appears kind of stiff. I know if I were my students, I'd think that."

For now, the dueling ad memes - celebrity president versus measured decision maker - will probably be lost on young voters. They're not paying attention yet, six months before election day.

"They're trying to get jobs and summer internships," said Heather Smith, president of Rock the Vote, a campaign to engage young people in politics.

Smith said young voters like that the president is conversant with pop culture "because they appreciate that he's trying to speak to them where they're at." But she added: "They're not going to pick a president just because he's cool. It's going to be because of where he's at on the issues."