LAS VEGAS - The race is on to define John McCain.

The likely Republican nominee launched his first television ad of the general election campaign Friday, casting himself as a ready-to-lead wartime president.

The ad, airing only in the swing state of New Mexico, coincides with a tour next week in which McCain will give a series of speeches in towns that shaped his life.

Son of a military man, Navy pilot, Vietnam POW, member of Congress for nearly three decades -- this is the résumé of the 71-year-old McCain.

"In some ways, I'm well-known to the American people. In other ways, I'm not well-known," he said Friday.

The Democratic Party -- still lacking a nominee -- and its supporters offer a starkly different portrait. In their view, McCain is a Washington insider, backer of an unpopular war in Iraq and indifferent on the economic woes of average Americans. They cast McCain as four more years of President Bush.

Seven months before Election Day, the two parties are furiously trying to establish a lasting image of McCain for voters. Perceptions can take hold, whether it's the one the Bush campaign crafted in 2004 of a strong, steady leader or the one critics tagged to Democratic nominee John Kerry: flip-flopper.

Polls show McCain has work to do to boost voters' impressions of him but also indicate that his identity isn't universally tied to Bush among pivotal independents.

"What McCain has to do -- and what he's got time to do now -- is delink himself from the president and define himself as a different Republican who can appeal to independents and swing voters," said Steven Lombardo, a GOP pollster in Washington.

ASSOCIATED PRESS