Who's Who

There's a big week coming up, the last time for the candidates to
dominate the news cycle before the two weeks of Olympic coverage. Bets are on for either Obama or McCain or both to announce VP running mates. Meanwhile, there's the wreckage of last week's "celebrity" attacks by McCain on Obama to deal with. Per Joe Trippi:

Ever since McCain’s NAACP speech that seemed to me to be directed at white swing voters and not at African Americans I have believed that the McCain campaign is adept at understanding how to raise race as an issue and use it to its advantage.

Is a pattern emerging?

With white voters, the attacks appear to be working -- so far. Per David Gergen:



Will there be long-term damage to the McCain campaign? Is John McCain actually the very thing he ridicules? Mark Kleiman says yes:

Something about the Britney/Paris video has been nagging at the back of my mind, and I finally figured out what it was. Comparing Obama to them is wrong because they're fading stars and he's a rising star. The Britney/Paris analogue in the race is McCain: he, like they, got rather far on extremely limited talent and huge amounts of marketing, and is now desperately trying to cling to celebrity with more and more extreme antics that get him ink but offend and sadden his fans.

And that explains the raw hatred that McCain and his handlers display towards Obama: it's the hatred of the has-been (especially a has-been who never was much in the first place, a mere celebrity, like Britney rather than an actual star, like Madonna) for the person (especially the person of egregiously superior talent) she passes on the rising escalator as she herself takes the long, long ride down to well-deserved obscurity and mall openings.

In fact, Paris Hilton's mother is none-too-pleased with the ad:

I've been asked again and again for my response to the now infamous McCain celebrity ad. I actually have three responses. It is a complete waste of the money John McCain's contributors have donated to his campaign. It is a complete waste of the country's time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs. And it is a completely frivolous way to choose the next President of the United States.

So stripping all the well-planned Rovian distraction away, the circus that may or may not decide the future leader of the free world, who is this John McCain in who's name this ad was run?

This guy:



Yep, Joe Lieberman may condescend to Obama as "a good young man" (tell me and my wife that we're young at roughly Obama's age and we'll dance in the streets), but his candidate is, at best, a "once-good old man."

Good luck, America.