'The country I love'

While there aren't too many Americans who don't know who he is by now, Barack Obama uses his first general election TV ad to reintroduce himself as the product of a strong American family who has a deep faith in the country he loves.

The 60-second spot shows him in an open-collared shirt and blazer, seated in a room with sunshine streaming in the doors, as soft guitar music plays. It goes light on his unusual biography as the son of a white mother from Kansas and black father from Kenya and instead highlights his up-by-his-own bootstraps story and his all-American values.

"I’m Barack Obama," the presumptive Democratic nominee says in the ad. "America is a country of strong families and strong values. My life’s been blessed by both. I was raised by a single mom and my grandparents. We didn’t have much money, but they taught me values straight from the Kansas heartland where they grew up. Accountability and self-reliance. Love of country. Working hard without making excuses. Treating your neighbor as you’d like to be treated. It’s what guided me as I worked my way up -- taking jobs and loans to make it through college.

"It’s what led me to pass up Wall Street jobs and go to Chicago instead, helping neighborhoods devastated when steel plants closed. That’s why I passed laws moving people from welfare to work, cut taxes for working families and extended health care for wounded troops who’d been neglected," he continues as scenes from the campaign trail appear.

"I approved this message because I’ll never forget those values, and if I have the honor of taking the oath of office as President, it will be with a deep and abiding faith in the country I love," Obama concludes.

The ad is to air in 18 states, including usual battlegrounds such as Florida, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and some traditionally Republican states where Obama hopes to make inroads, including Georgia, Montana, North Carolina, and Virginia.

UPDATE: The McCain campaign issued this response to the ad: “Barack Obama wants more taxes from 21 million small businesses, 10 million seniors and he’s confessed that his economic proposals could damage the economy -- we’re confident the more Americans know about Barack Obama the less likely they are to support him,” said spokesman Tucker Bounds.