"America's Leadership"
Barack Obama's campaign is up in 18 battleground states with a spot that touts his work with Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN) on legislation to expand U.S. cooperation to destroy conventional weapons. It also expanded the State Department's ability to detect and interdict weapons and materials of mass destruction. President Bush signed the bill in January 2007.
Andy Fisher, Lugar's press secretary, said that the GOPer was featured in an Obama ad during the primaries. Lugar's office did not sign off on the first Obama ad or the one that debuted today, but Fisher noted: "The information in the past ads has been factual."
And of the most recent spot, he added: "There's nothing inaccurate about it."
Fisher said that when Lugar ran for president during the 1996 cycle, he ran spots highlighting his work with then-Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn on the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program, the legislative precursor to Lugar's collaboration with Obama.
Obama and Lugar traveled to Russia together in 2005 to visit nuclear and biological weapons destruction sites.
(JENNIFER SKALKA)
America’s Leadership Transcript
BO at town hall: We are a beacon of light around the world. At least that’s what we can be again. That’s what we should be again.
BO in interview: The single most important national security threat that we face…
BO VO:…is nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists.
BO VO: What I did was reach out to Senator Dick Lugar, a Republican, to help lock down loose nuclear weapons.
BO in interview: We have to lead the entire world to reduce that threat.
BO at town hall: We can restore America’s leadership in the world.
BO VO: I’m Barack Obama, and I approve this message.
Interesting that he highlights Sen. Lugar as his GOP buddy, when last September his office called this the Obama-Hagel bill.
While not diminishing in any way his accomplishment on this front, it should be noted that these efforts began in the 1954 Atomic Energy bill, long before the demise of the Soviet Union, and picked up steam in the 90's. It's been a whole series of efforts over time and from a variety of Administrations, of which this is one facet.