Ah, so I am not the only one who thought that the chanting crowds thing was supposed to be a reference to mad dictator. (Extra points for using Adolf Hitler!) I guess in this context Mike's question about the placement of the black man under "Is he ready to lead?" is more understandable -- all GOP ads are apparently required by law to strike into the fear of our subconscious and conjure up nasty images. I wonder what Mr. Weaver has to say about this . . .

I think I wrote on another post that I thought this McCain ad was juvenile, but on second viewing, I think it's sexist and that emasculating Obama may have been  intended.  I know that's an outlandish charge, but bear with me a sec.  McCain chose two young female celebrities to make a so-called (lame) point that Barack is as shallow as a celebrity.  Certainly other celebs have recently garnered much more attention than these two young women.  What about Brad and Angelina?  How about Tom Cruise and David Beckham?  Here's the point: male celebrities may be nuisances, but they aren't necessarily constructed as shallow.  That's the media's (TV and tablloids mostly) narrative for young women celebrities.  And I think it's highly intentional by McCain an Co. that in putting out this ad, they not only derided young women, they also emasculated Obama by comparing him to "shallow" "supericial" women.  Isn't it like calling the boy a "sissy?"  A sure way to offend a male is to call him a girl.  

Now, peeps here have sid that McCain is running a ridiculo campaign and they expect it to get worse.  I have said the same.  I'm afraid that we are in for a terribly long haul.  Maybe if they keep this shit up long enough, people will get sick of it or hopefully, see it for what it is: intoleraable.

You have got to be kidding - this has to be THE WORST political ad I have ever seen. Horrific  on so many levels.  Combines the usual Republican boilerplate about taxes - this from the man who opposed W's tax cuts - with cheap, meanlingless comparisons to the 2 dumbest bubbleheads in pop culture.  Oooh, just dawned on me - managed to juxtapose a couple of blonde white women with the scary black politician.  I didn't immediately make the leap to Hitler and Nuremberg raillies, but yest it's there.

"I'm John McCain, and I'm ashamed to admit that I approved this ad - and pissed off that I actuallly paid for it."  

Tit for tat I say - Obama''s got to take this crap from Grampa Simpson who doesn't even know how to open email?  

Again, I cannot believe that the presumptive nominee of a major politcal party would run such a poor ad.  If it doesn't backfire, and backfire badly,  my already low esteem of the American electorate isn't low enough.

dubyadoubt: that's another way to look at the sexism here: it's racist as well, playing on white fears of the black man endangering white women, even if they are "shallow."  Good catch.  I wonder if Rove is doing some behind the scenes work for McCain.  

dubyadoubte  said:

"If it doesn't backfire, and backfire badly,  my already low esteem of the American electorate isn't low enough."

Your low esteem of the electorate will get lower.  I'm convinced the public is dumb.  They put dubya in office twice didn't they?

I said it once and I'll keep repeating it: negative ads work and they work well.  It's kept a lot of pols in office.  This kind of slimy attack ad is what kept pricks like Jesse Helms in office for decades.  I've seen decent Democrats destroyed by pube  attack ads full of lies.  Taking the "high road" doesn't work in the end.  If Obama doesn't start attacking McLiar then it's John Kerry and swiftboat city all over.

What's appalling and quite amazing is not just the poor taste, but, how can I put this - sophomoric, amateurish content - maybe the Young Republicans at Tidewater Community College would come up with something this juvenile, but to proudly say " I'm John McCain and I approved this ad"  It's just sad.  

As for the crowd, Grampa Simpson wishes he could draw a crowd like that - the only way Rebpus draw crowds is if they already have a captive audience - NASCAR being a popular millieu.

Wow, some of the comments on that Triumph of the Will clip are just lovely.

And to add insult to injury, the noted political thinker's Web site TMZ.com says Paris Hilton's parents have each donated the max to McCain's campaign.

And yes, Tammy, you're absolutely right.

For some reason - probably because he rightly sized Obama up as a threat early on - McCain has despised Obama ever since he (Obama) joined the Senate. (He hates a lot of people, apparently.) You team that up with a flat-out political thug like Steve Schmidt and you're going to get a lot of dumb, nasty jock B.S. If any reporter ever musters the stones to ask McCain to his face why he's allowed his campaign to take a nosedive into the gutter, he'll laugh and say it's not the gutter, and he's interested in running a high-minded issues campaign, and "politics is hardball" and if Obama can't take the heat, etc.

But yeah, their goal is to portray Obama as a, pardon my French, pussy. I hope to lose at least 10 pound between now and my mid-November birthday, and I think McCain is going to help me along by making me vomit five times a week.

(Now, if your argument is that these two particular young women are *not* shallow, that's where we have to agree to disagree. Because man, oh man, are they ever. But I've seen plenty of descriptions of Beckham as shallow and dumb, and Tom Cruise isn't portrayed as shallow because he's got insane and creepy locked up.)

One more add:

Just because I think Brits and Paris are shallow, that doesn't excuse McCain for sneering at them in a political ad about someone else. They are not running for office, they're just sitting around the pool minding their own business. It's baffling that they would hold these two up, by name and photograph, for public ridicule in their attempt to smear Obama. This whole thing is wrong on nine or ten different levels.

tnmats is right, the Republican low-road approach is a proven way to win. Thom Hartman described on his radio show today how Newt Gingrich is leading the charge on one leg of the McCain campaign plan, to blame Democrats and esp. Obama for high gas prices cos they oppose expanding offshore and protected wilderness drilling.  "Reality" says such drilling will have hardly any impact on prices at the pump, and the oil companies already sit on millions of acres of leases w/o drilling, just waiting for the price to go sky high so they can make an even bigger killing.  Hartman reported that the Repubs tested a series of cable TV ads demagoguing Obama and the Dems on this in one area of Colorado, and flipped it from favoring Obama to favoring McCain. Be ready to see this go national.

McCain's surrogates are doing the old "Obama's a flip-flopper" routine which is like living in a glass house and throwing stones. Obama's side should have an ad series on "who's the real John McCain?"  Over the past 8 years he flipped on virtually every issue, so every week have a new ad in which he contradicts himself, saying one thing in 2000 and another in 2005 and another in 2008 -- including many things that would turn off the base (for moderation on immigration reform, against Evangelical political influence, etc)

I don't get the drill-your-way-to-lower-gas-prices thing.  We've got 3% of the world's known petroleum reserves, and the oil market is international, not local.  Our influence on the price of oil is not significant.  This situation needs to be ventilated as much as the oil drilling propaganda is.

Every election cycle the GOP hurl attack ads full of lies at Democrats who just whine and whine endlessly. The public would empathize with the Democrats but in the end always vote GOP, except in '92 and '96 when Bill Clinton decided early on he would not only hit back rapidly on every attack, but expose every lie in GOP ads. He assembled a squad that did just that and more - they initiated the fight many times. Remember how Bob Dole, in '96, was the one whinning about his record being distorted by the Clinton team? "He's lying about my record" was his exact quote over and over. The public generally felt for him but voted Clinton, anyway.

Obama can play the clean-campaigning gentleman politician and - most likely - lose,  or he can take a page from slick Willie's playbook and stand a fighting chance.

After every lost election the Democrats would swear and resolve "never again" would they be swift-boated but when the next cycle begins they'd revert again to their whinning and complaints about the GOP.

That old horror movie is playing again, I think.

So, under standard interpretations of Goodwin's Law, doesn't this mean that McCain automatically loses the election? Dang, maybe that's why Obama's been acting like he's already president.

Let's wait and see what Obama does. I think he is going to be critical of McCain but stay out of the gutter, I don't understand why McCain hasn't tried to do the same thing. Instead, McCain has made himself look petty and, in some ads, juvenile. You would think he was the brash and immature one, not the older and more mature guy.

you bet Tammy - I thought the same thing.  *Everything* you say is so obvious, it's like neon signs,

Obama has not hit back hard enough at all.  He needs to suit up, get in there and play,  His response has been dangerously wimpy.  Ask John Kerry.

Fight BACK Obama. NOW.

JMilstein: you are far too rational for this forum, or American politics.  Of course we're irrelevant to the international price of oil, except in how we modulate our consumption.  But all you have to do is quote a reserve capacity in the outer continental shelf that has the words "billion barrels" in it - never mind the prefixing number - and half of Americans will think their troubles are over. because "billion" is a big number, and they are incapable of actually doing the arithmetic to reveal that in this context, it's a pittance.  LIkewise, if you ask them to conserver, they'll think "but my savings wouldn't add up to more than 100 gallons a year.  That's way too small to matter."  They won't get the accumulation effect either.

scrubbyoak is right.  I've seen decent Democrats in my home state of North Carolina who were destroyed by Jesse Helms and his baseless attacks, the common way every pube in NC runs their campaign.  It happened in 1984 against Jim Hunt, who was a popular sitting governor.  Hunt refused to attack that slimebag Helms and Hunt lost the election.  Helms did the same with Harvey Gantt, a relatively popular Dem mayor of Charlotte.  Gantt never went after Helms and lost.

Obama needs to hit McLiar hard and often.  If he wants to win this election then no Mr. Nice Guy.  Bill Clinton understood this and that's why he was president twice.  If anything Bill and Hillary can advise the Obama campaign on it's counter-strike political strategy and tactics.  The swiftboating is happening right now (witness two books ready for release from the same Klan that swiftboated Kerry).  If Obama's campaign doesn't figure out that you can't play nice with the GOP then they're headed for a loss.  Once he's president he can start on "tone change" in DC.  Until then, he's gotta play by the Rove playbook unfortunately if he wants to win.

"A sure way to offend a male is to call him a girl."

Well, some of us XYs (the more X-ish, if you will) wouldn't be offended, not at all. Some might be, uh, stimulated.

Obama's popularity is really going to catch up to him one of these days. Especially if the United States decides to have an American-Idol style (voting) popularity contest between him and McCain in November!

Contemplating Eve 's (and Rick Perlstein 's) analogy between the McCain " Celeb " ad

WeI don't think McCain ought to be doing this kind of thing under his own name.  Let the third parties do it.

But, FINALLY, the piety about Obama is starting to fade and he became fodder for a Top Ten:

Tusesday, July 29, 2008

Top Ten Signs Barack Obama is Overconfident

10 Proposed bill to change Oklahoma to "Oklobama"

9 Offered Bush 20 bucks for the "Mission Accomplished" banner

8 Asked guy at Staples, "Which chair will work best in an oval-shaped office?"

7 The affair with Barbara Walters

6 Having head measured for Mount Rushmore

5 Guy sits around eating soup all day

4 He's voting for Nader

3 Offered McCain a job in gift shop at Obama Presidential Library

2 Announced his running mate will be Andy Dick

1 Been cruising for chicks with John Edwards

Arrogant.  Overconfident.  Presumptuous (look at him playing president with him own mini Great Seal and everyting) . This might stick.

tnmats writes, "...If anything Bill and Hillary can advise the Obama campaign on it's counter-strike political strategy and tactics."

Bill and Hillary are not going to do any serious finger-lifting to help Obama.  The worst thing that can happen to their careers is to have Obama in the White House.  It will mean, they will never be president again.

The only hope BillHill have is McCain wins, and either fails or because of age quits after one term.  If he doesn't have a strong VP to pick up the mantle, they might get in.

Obama if he loses either close or by a wide margin will never be nominated again.  Dems kill their losers.

Sheesh, yall act like McCain should just decline the nomination and let Obama win by acclamation.  As negative ads go, this seems pretty mild.  

Channy, the problem with this kind of joke is it gets real old real fast. Of course Obama is presumptious, anyone who runs for President has to be. But is McCain even running for President, or is he running so that Obama doesn't become President? Why doesn't he end his ads: I am John McCain, I am that other guy running for President, you know the little guy standing in the corner with that angry scowl on his face, that is me. Don't vote for Obama, push that other button.

McCain: the other, white meat.

blackie, you're not going to get me to praise McCain's ads or campaign.  The strategy so far is lame.  And he damn well better start doing ads soon that say why McCain not anti-Obama.

I do believe Obama has a whole laundry list of negatives that are fair game for attacks.  And negative ads can sometimes hit a bulls-eye with devastating effect-- the daisy picking toddler and the mushroom cloud that gave Goldwater the coup de grace in '64.

You're wrong on one point though, blackie.  Obama is running the most presumptuous presidential campaign by a non-incumbent ever.  The fake presidential seal.  The aping of Kennedy and Reagan in Berlin.  

This is more than necessary confidence.  He has gone over the line.  Which is why even the MSM, which so clearly kisses Obama's ass, is starting to point it out.

channy, most presumptious ever? what does that mean really? How the hell can you run for President and be expected to not act Presidential? Obama is showing us what an Obama Presidency will look like, how terrible. Meanwhile McCain is showing us nothing. I have no idea now what a McCain Presidency would look like. I used to think it would be moderate and centrist and non-divisive, now I have no idea. You say Obama has gone over the line, but McCain is doing nothing more than standing in the bleechers heckling Obama, he hasn't even stepped up to the line. And this has nothing to do with partisanship. I hated Hillary's style of campaigning and I liked McCain's in the Repub. primary.

blackie, a first time presidential aspirant is supposed to show you why he is worthy of being president.  He is not supposed to carry on a charade of being president.  Which Obama has been doing, and even his friends are noticing.

This is now the 15th presidential campaign I've been old enough to follow and observe.  I've never seen an aspirant put on airs like Obama.  Eisenhower, who had been the Supreme Commander and won the European War for the West was never arrogant or presumptuous.

Nah, Obama needs to keep acting quasi-presidential.  Better to look like you fit into the role too well rather than not at all.  I know he's getting under some people's skin with this, but so far it looks like they're the right people.

I agree that Obama has to start pushing back, but he should rely on mockery more than pure vitriol.  People are never going to hate McCain like they can hate Bush, he's just done too much  for this country.  But they can find him a little pathetic, running around kissing whoever's ass he needs to to be president.  Surely there are a few tricks the Obama people can learn from Clinton's '96 campaign against Bob Dole.