But Black acknowledged that the campaign thought it was also important to directly rebut Obama's central line of attack -- that McCain represents a third Bush term.
"Sure he's been in Washington 26 years, but he's always been a reformer, always worked across party lines, sacrificed his own political interests to do so," Black said. "So we were always going to have to tell that narrative, because some people know it, but not everybody."
McCain staffers bristle at Democratic contentions that their candidate is no longer a maverick, pointing to his belief that global warming is caused by pollution and his willingness to criticize Republicans for pork-barrel spending.
Analysts say many voters will probably continue to see McCain as a political contrarian. "He can point to areas where he broke with the Bush administration, where he broke with his own party," said Charles H. Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin. "That part of the maverick image probably isn't going away."
The new emphasis on that image, Franklin said, is to counter possible blow back from the scathing ads the Arizona Republican has launched against Obama. The ads have alarmed some supporters who fear McCain could jeopardize his reputation by appearing to take the political low road.
Last week, McCain's camp released an ad that contends "we're worse off than we were four years ago." The spot calls him "the original maverick," and says he has a record of taking on corruption "in both parties." He followed up Thursday with a Web ad made up of clips of prominent Democrats praising him for forging his own path in Washington.
Democrats immediately shot back.
"The John McCain of 2000 wouldn't even consider voting for the John McCain of 2008," Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, one of the Democrats whose praise of McCain was excerpted in the video, said in a statement. "John McCain has changed: He's taken the low road, leveling false, negative and misleading attacks against Barack Obama."
In 2000, few questioned McCain's maverick credentials. He had stirred anger among conservatives by pushing a ban on the unlimited contributions to the parties that were used to finance campaigns. He locked horns with the tobacco lobby in 1998 when he sponsored an anti-smoking bill that would have raised cigarette taxes and was ultimately derailed by Republicans. He had long rankled colleagues with his campaign against earmarked projects, farm subsidies and pork-barrel spending. And he famously called televangelists Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance."
