I think the nuance of not actually knowing Bush Sr's age is going to help a lot of people miss the point. The whole golf cart thing smacked of effete, country-club elitist more than anything.

Besides, McCain is almost 72 years old, and he has not aged well (Dick Lebeau, anybody?); it is simply impossible to show images of him next to anyone and have him coming off looking young or virile (except Cindy).

While I am against any discrimination based on age, I have no problem with it.  Fact is, John McCain is a relic from a bygone era and not a man of the future.  He's been a mainstay of the Washington establishment for 25 years and his mindset is rooted in a Cold War mentality.  And, he's clueless about life in the technology age and can't even use the Internet.  Provides a perfect contrast for Obama.

Very nice ad though the more important item is linking Bush and McCain (even if it was HW, not W). The Obama campaign should have a rule on the stump, in press conferences and in ads - "McCain" should always be within two words of "Bush."  We have one of the most negatively viewed sitting U.S. presidents overseeing a collapsing economony and McCain is allowed to run as "the maverick" independent of the Bush policies he supports continuing.

No one finds this offensive? What would be the equivaent to do to Obama? Slyly imply that he dealt drugs?

Notice how Obama's ads--including his latest on the homes flap--show McCain moving in painfully slow

This stuff makes me quesy - on the one hand, jbentley4 is right.  On the other hand, there's lots of razor sharp, highly motivated older voters who won't like this one bit.

Offensive? This guy is applying for the most demanding, stressful job on the planet. How is his age not relevant to his qualifications?

And here I thought they'd compare him to Frank Costanza.

Eos: What would the equivalent be? It might involve juxtaposing Obama's image with those of sexy white stars, and showing this to audiences that include some folks who harbor viceral fear and anger about interracial sex.

Or it might involve declaring that Obama is willing to make his country lose a war just so he can advance his personal ambition. No wait. That would be much much worse.

I don't know if this slugfest will lead anywhere good for Obama politically. But at this point it looks like he's going to get completely slimed by the either way GOP. I just hope he keeps his attacks tied to the issues and doesn't go too far down the "age" road. (By the way, I'm not convinced he *is* playing the age card in this ad. He's just juxtaposing actual footage of McCain with McCain's own statement in a pretty straightforward way. To me, McCain looks more elderly and frail in the photo where he's hugging Bush.)

Hi age is relevant. Implying that he is senile is social stereotyping at its worst, very much the equivalent of racist stereotyping. But, I guess it's okay if Obama does it.

"They want to turn him into Morty Seinfeld."

Quick, somebody make sure McCain's daughter never mugged Ohio for a marble rye.

What's with last picture with the white couple?  Are we supposed to identify with them?  A better idea would have been to show one of McCain's lavish homes (the ranch most likely) when the voice over says "maybe things are going well for them"  and then show a middle-income family house with a for sale sign out front when the voice over says "but how are things going for you?"

What Wandrey said.

In the 2006 midterm elections, a majority of voters were 50+ (including this one). We are well aware of the advantages and disadvantages of aging. We are also hitting retirement while watching our nest eggs crack like doomed peregrine falcon offspring; witnessing assorted degradations of our society's culture, educational system, prestige, energy supply, and environment; taking more pills every morning than we did during all three days of Woodstock; and holding the hands of our friends and family members while they die.

Between the two candidates, which man is more likely to understand, at a gut level, the needs and fears of older Americans who have learned the hard way that personal experience is a bona fide source of wisdom--the same older Americans who, correct me if I'm wrong, vote in significantly greater percentages than those callow whippersnappers cackling at ageist attacks on McCain?

Don't all shout at once.

Wandrey,

McCain's not that sharp.  The older folks you have in mind should be just as concerned about McCain's diminished capacity as they probably are about some other 72 year-olds in their acquaintance.  I know a few folks in their 80s who are less muddled than McCain - they all know how many houses they own and the things they believe in don't change every four years.

So far, McCain's gaffes haven't cost him anything -- but I think as they pile up they will make the case that he is not up to the job.

Neil

Eos: I think it's a big leap to suggest that an ad that only, in the most nuanced, indirect way, refers to McCain's age is saying that he must be "senile." The message here is much more about how McCain's judgment is stuck in the past, that he doesn't "get it" and that he's tied to the past.

Let's not forget that McCain doesn't even use a computer. This is the guy who's going to lead us into the 21st century??

How does anyone get ageism out of this ad? McCain is 72. What is Obama supposed to use McCain's pictures from 40 years ago when he still had white hair? Give me a break. What I got out of this is that McCain is "so rich" he can't even be bothered to remember how many houses he has. It's like asking a collector of baseballs cards to know exactly how many he/she has in their collection.

The coupling of McCain with HW Bush in a golf cart implies a life-style of ease and leisure that the Blue-bloods and married-into-money "elites" can afford and the average middle-class can't afford. Golf is not a poor-man's activity. Secondly by linking McCain to HW Bush also implies that McCain's economic policies haven't changed since HW Bush was in office and McCain intends to continue the broken Bushonomics that have saddled the middle class with the greatest burden of debt in US history.

If Obama keeps plugging away with these types of ads and closes every ad with an average, working-class couple then the ads devastatingly link McCain's continued bushonomics with the continued economic decline as a middle-class tax payer.

McCain = more of Bush

Eos: I didn't notice the slow motion til Michael Crowley pointed it out. (Guess I wasn't paying very close attention.) That does cross the age card line and makes me kind of queasy.

I'm torn, like Wandrey.

BHL,

Your point about McCain's technophobia--I think that's a big one. I think even older Americans who barely surf or email--if at all--would be decidedly uncomfortable with someone hampered by a lack of technical skills at the social median.

I'm surprised I haven't heard/seen more from Obama about this. I find McCain's computer illiteracy far more troubling than his age.

John McCain owns several homes in Czechoslavakia.

Reclaim the streets! Much better, a bit of class warfare, right to the core of the matter. Great use of that gaffe about how many gaffs McCain has.  

Should commercial airline pilots have a mandatory retirement age. While its currently too young, I'd prefer my flight from LA to Tokyo wasn't a crew of 76 year olds. It isn't a lack of respect or discrimination. There are few jobs as physically and mentally demanding as POTUS. They are vetted more critically than the greeter at Wal-mart.

But the 'age card' is more than a big number. I recall older voters expressed greater concern about his age than younger demos. Isn't Obama's sliding in 35-60 and picked up a bit in 65+? McCain's age opens the door to his policy (as one who qualifies for benefits) on Social Security, Medicare and, well, he's hardly relying on those entitlements. Plus, if forces people who are secure with their shorter future (older folks) to compare how their conscience addresses their kids and grandchildren. They and McCain are less invested in their own shorter. I think the public in general does not want more of the same for their kids and is hearing from their family "Obama is the way to go if you care about us."

So there are legitimate reasons to quit ignoring age is an issue for McCain as it relates to his next job. Older voters can't identify with Barack allow him to use the full McCain profile to drive a wedge between his policies and McCains that do not help seniors. McCain can't get a free ride on hammering Barck that experience  = judgment and expect that McCain's age and the negatives are out of bounds.

The house gaffe is a safe segue to age and a gentle but direct path must be taken. Why dodge age when it allows McCain to neglect the impact of his policies and concerns that need to be defended. It's one thing for McCain to joke about it and open the door...Shouldn't he be forced to prove if it's only worth a laugh or something to consider for better or worse, as everyone does.

The age angle only works if McCain comes off as doddering in debates.  That will reinforce the image that he is too old to run.  However, so far Obama has had the bigger problem with the getting through answers fluidly without a teleprompter.  Older voters know that some of their peers are still sharp and others have lots some of their spark.  I suspect they don't want some young whippersnapper accusing McCain of being too old--they'd rather decide for themselves.  

purcell: diminished capacity means he had capacity once. Finishing at the bottom of your class at the naval academy in large part because of the admiral legacy (or he wouldn't have finished at all) doesn't exactly lend credence to this point. But be that as it may, McCain has dragged this campaign here. They've been waiting for an excuse to unload Rezko, Ayers, et. al. so might as well get it out. Its sad, I had hope for a better campaign when McCain said he wouldn't do this. I had hoped that Obama could have kept it elevated anyway, but alas it wasn't working. Worse, taking the punches was making him look like a wuss. And whoever wins now will be severely damaged by the campaign and will be stuck in a partisan war again. At least with a Dem congress, McCain will get nothing he wants done.

I'm intrigued by the ageism allegation, but mainly as an exercise in interpretation. I'm not yet convinced. A few observations:

Notice that the I-approved-this-message intro shows a black-and-white still of Obama smiling warmly at an older white woman who smiles warmly back, looking up into his eyes, her own bespectacled peepers all a-twinkle. Black-and-white suggests old-fashioned, classic, Kennedyesque, no? As if Obama himself were from an earlier era? Does that introductory still dilute any potential ageism that follows, separating Old Man McCain from all those other nice old people out there? Or does it perhaps confirm that the ad's creators know full well what they are up to?

I'm not sure that in of itself slow-mo conveys senility rather than, say, suspicion. This kind of slow-mo is a convention of advertising, isn't it? Political advertising in particular? Not to mention tabloid television journalism? It imputes a kind of guilt, suggesting that we had better watch carefully because this suspicious character cannot be trusted. And the combined effect of the slow-mo and the dark, largo music (played by a depressed xylophonist, it seems) is ominous. Just look at the effect it has on that worried couple depicted in the final shot.

Every liberal needs to reread the prisoner's dilemma. The worst outcome occurs when the other guy confesses and you don't (when the other guy frames you unfairly and you don't respond in kind, when the other guy produces partisan media and you don't, when the other guy goes negative and you don't).

If you want to win, and not just make a statement, it's foolish to play by the rules when the other guy is cheating. Please, let's play to win for once.

McCain is old, temperamental, and misogynistic. These are our tools. They're out there in the media's pre-established narrative, waiting to be excavated.

Eos: "But, I guess it's okay if Obama does it."

Um, ah, actually, yes.  Given that no matter what kind of rationale anyone puts forward, you still hate Obama, what's the point of even bothering to reason with you?  Any way, what *is* your point?  That people who support a party and its programme should recoil in horror when the party's candidate launches into SHOCK HORROR attack on the mental and moral competence of the opposite number?  At least, unlike McCain's buddy Bush, Obama is not suggesting that McCain fathered a "darkie" out of wedlock; in any event, if Hillary did the same, you'd probably be prostrating yourself at her feet, so - I ask, what is your point?

Woland: he's already done that one.

Bill: "We are also hitting retirement while watching our nest eggs crack like doomed peregrine falcon offspring;" - yes, and you have a candidate who does not even know how to use the computer.  And you are in your fifties in any event.  The Ad does not suggest that all seniors are senile; it says only that this particular one is a pampered out of touch old coot.  And *if* the ads manage to raise the fact that Obama has no clue what an email is, well then, as someone who is so concerned about his retirement, you should want to go with the candidate who can actually turn the advantages of the modern age to protect and defend your interests.  

You suggest that old folks will vote their identity rather than their interests.  If there is one thing age teaches, surely it is that interest is more important than identity.  Isn't AARP all about interest?

Actually, Cal80, I'll take Obama's unscripted answers over McCain's canned applause lines any day. It's clear that Obama thinks things through, while McCain is simply doing what Bush does: parroting the talking points he's been fed by his handlers.

BHL:

Obama has repeatedly tried to suggest that McCain is cognitively impaired: e.g. "lost his way, " "forgets and can't keep track," etc. Iy has gone on for a while, and he has been called on it before.It is ugly stereotyping, the exact equivalent of using racism to imply that Obama was a drug dealer. If this is objectionalble when Corsi does it, it should much, much worse when the candidate himself uses social stereotyping against an opponent. This is the kind of thing that got me mad at Obama during the primaires, and it is the kind of thing that begins to seem characteristic of Obama's approach to things.

Nippers wins the comment of the day.  This is a perceptive analysis.  I really liked "This kind of slow-mo is a convention of advertising, isn't it?".  Indeed.

Bill: you answered my other comment in your second.  Exactly.

Wandrey: I agree with you at an intellectual, rather "elite", way.  And this one of Kipling's Epitaphs of War has been my guiding light and inspiration:

I was of delicate mind. I stepped aside for my needs,

   Disdaining the common office. I was seen from afar and killed...

How is this matter for mirth? Let each man be judged by his deeds.

   I have laid my price to live with myself on the terms that I willed.

Because, simply, much of my life I spent swimming upstream and "disdaining the common office".

Well, elections are important and this one more important than most.  It is not open to Obama, in my view, to simply "live with myself on the terms that I willed", because the terms are now being dictated to him.  As I have said before, *he* should be careful how he approaches it, but as to the need to hit McCain back with all seven kitchen sinks, there is little doubt.

Incidentally, does anyone take the idea of Chet Edwards as VP seriously?

A couple of points:

1. John McCain does have a habit of regularly forgetting and losing track of basic facts. Not only does he forget that Czechoslovakia does not exist how many homes he owns, but he either forgets or doesn't know basic facts relating to the most important issues he will have to deal with as president, like who is supporting Al Qaeda in Iraq and which parties in Iraq are supported by Iran.  This is serious stuff and voters have a right to know if he can't keep them straight.

2. At least the footage of McCain with Bush is actual footage.  The McCain campaign interweaves photos of  Paris Hilton and Britney Spears in their anti-Obama ads (not to mention Woodstock, which happened when BHO was 8 years old), when these women have absolutely nothing to with Barack Obama and also happen to have the trashiest reputations in Hollywood, if not the country.

3. McCain allies and surrogates (and that's what these guys are, make no mistake about it), including Corsi, Sean Hannity and others have made insinuations that Barack Obama may have dealt drugs.

With cal80 on the debates.

Unless something unexpected happens in the meantime, the debates are the acid test for the age-as-impairment theory. If McCain comes through in one piece he's over the age hump.

"At least the footage of McCain with Bush is actual footage.  The McCain campaign interweaves photos of  Paris Hilton and Britney Spears in their anti-Obama ads..."

Lighten up, jbentley! When McCain manipulates footage of Obama he's just funnin'. You need to have a sense of humor about these things. When Obama uses unflattering footage of McCain, on the other hand, it's clearly a brutal attack on the honor of a war hero.

Paul Krugman likes the Obama campaign’s new, stupid-but-effective line of attack on John McCain. "The

subject-verb-POW appears to be wearing thin:

"Time magazine's Ana Marie Cox was even harsher [than Howard Fineman], writing that the constant P.O.W.-past spewing is "weird" and "bordering on irrational."

"It's a head-spinning non sequitur, designed to distract us from something mildly troubling with the assertion of something impressive," Cox wrote of the McCain team's use of the P.O.W. stuff to deflect criticism of the houses gaffe.

"It does seem like they're flirting with Giuliani/9-11 territory here," opined Politico's Ben Smith, "in which a subject that seems utterly immune to humor, used as a first resort, suddenly becomes a running joke among your political enemies and your late night comic friends.""

yeah, i guess that senile, doddering old coot keeps ducking those town hall meetings so that his feeblemindedness won't become apparent.

Eos: the town hall meeting has been discussed to death here and I don't want to get into it now.  I don't know what was going Obama's head, but I'm a litigator and I teach - meaning I'm pretty good on my feet - but I still would not want to go ten town halls in an election campaign - especially as I am a minority and especially if my opponent is a doddering old fool.  Frankly, beating up on Gramps is not as great a vote winner as it is assumed to be; as well, you can't choose your audience and the questions they might ask - "infanticide", "terrorist", "boxers or briefs".  Now, as to this latter point, it might not be "fair" or "sporting" to want to have political rallies that put you in the best light, but it is good politics.

As to the former: Obama is considered "arrogant", which really means "uppity", which in turn means he should know his place.  He won't be able to show off his intelligence, reflection, grasp of the issues etc., or beat up too much on McCain, or capitalise on McCainaffes ("sunni,shi'a, whatever") in one on ones becomes it would not look good.  It would look, with brutal honesty, like a mugging, no matter how "clean" Obama looks.  

Prudence dictates, in these circumstances, limiting one on one, unscripted meetings.

Eos said: "Implying that he is senile is social stereotyping at its worst, very much the equivalent of racist stereotyping."

Nuts.  Obama can't do anything about his skin color.  McCain can prove he's not getting fuzzy by simply remembering how many houses he owns.  If he acts over-the-hill, he can wear the mantle.

But I hope your logic gets echoed by the McCain camp.  There is no better way to show how oversensitive and out of touch they are by implying that these attacks are worse than racist.

icarusr:

Don't you get tired of taking the line that every criticism of Obama that really cuts is somehow a version of racism? Doesn't sound so much quick on your feet as it does stuck in the mud.

As to Obama's actual arrogance and entitlement (and your own constant accusations of racism), I favor Jonah Goldberg's recent version:

"The winds at the Democrats' backs are hurricane-force gales, and yet there's Obama holding steady, like a young Dan Rather in his schoolgirl rain slicker, immobile and unmovable.

Ask the typical Obama supporter why this should be so and you'll get a range of answers. Some just stare at the poll numbers the way my late basset hound would look at me when I tried to feed him a grape: with pure unblinking incomprehension. Others act like the guy who sits alone with his shopping bags at the public library, muttering about Fox News conspiracies and how Karl Rove-like aliens are doing terrible things with probes of proctological exactitude. Still others just shake their heads at the racism of anyone who could possibly have a problem with a very left-wing politician with almost no experience, who often sounds like his campaign slogan is: "People of Earth! Stop Your Bickering. I Am From Harvard, And I'm Here To Help."

www.realclearpolitics.com/.../the_mystery_of_obamas_problems.html

Eos, Obama a drug dealer?  Stick with the truth.  If you want to imply that Obama's used drugs, well, we all know that he did.  But McCain is old.  There's not lie there.  There's quite a difference between getting old and accusing someone of being something there's not evidence for.

jet:

you miss the point entirely. being old is not the equivalent of being cognitively impaired any more that being african-american means you are a criminal. you can be old and cognitively impaired; or you can be black and a criminal. but it is sterotyping of a terrible kind to link the two. Unfair implications of cognitive impairment against a vigorous 72 year old are morally disgusting.