Lipstick comments colour US presidential campaign

With the US presidential race tightening in a struggle for women voters, John McCain seized on a remark about lipstick by rival Barack Obama as a sexist attack on his running mate.

McCain rolled out a Web advertisement today saying his Democratic rival was talking about Sarah Palin yesterday when he likened Republican plans for government reform to putting "lipstick on a pig."

Ms Palin, a little-known Alaska governor before she became McCain's running mate, had told the Republican nominating convention this month that she was a "hockey mom" and joked that the only difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull was lipstick.

McCain's new advertisement juxtaposes the lipstick remarks by Mr Obama and Ms Palin, then cuts to a TV news presenter observing that one lesson of the campaign was the "continued and accepted role of sexism in American life."

"Ready to lead? No," Mr McCain's ad says in print across the TV screen. "Ready to smear? Yes."

Mr Obama's campaign spokesman Linda Douglass said it was clear from his remarks yesterday that the Democratic presidential candidate was not referring to Ms Palin in his comments and was not calling her a pig.

"There is no doubt that the McCain campaign is doing everything it can do to distract voters from the fact that they have no solutions to America's economic troubles," she said. McCain is "running a relentlessly dishonest, disruptive and cynical campaign in hopes of distracting voters," she said.

Opinion polls since the Republican and Democratic conventions show Mr McCain closing the gap with Mr Obama ahead of the November 4 election.

A Washington Post/ABC News survey found most of Mr McCain's surge was due to a big shift in support among white women voters. Mr Obama rejects the idea that he is losing ground among women voters.

Mr Obama, a senator from Illinois, made the "lipstick on a pig" remark during a speech in Lebanon, Virginia, yesterday while ridiculing Mr McCain's assertion since the Republican nominating convention that he and Ms Palin would be "agents of change" in Washington.

"You can put lipstick on a pig. It's still a pig," Mr Obama said as the crowd cheered and shouted and eventually stood. "You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still gonna stink."

"We've had enough of the same old thing," Mr Obama said.

Mr McCain, a senator from Arizona, has used the "lipstick on a pig" line in the past himself, specifically earlier in the campaign when talking about the policies of Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton, who lost in the primaries to Mr Obama.

Torie Clarke, a longtime McCain adviser and former Pentagon press secretary, wrote a book entitled, "Lipstick on a Pig: Winning in the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game."