Noam Scheiber: The Perfect Anti-McCain Ad Proposal
And: Obama's Recent Anti-McCain Ad A Screw-Up

Here it is. It's a great idea.

(Insert standard grumbling about the idiotic "framing" lingo here, though.)

Unfortunately, the new Obama ad that makes fun of McCain for not being able to send an e-mail is pretty much the kind of ad I've been warning against (though it's not as bad as I expected it to be). And, sure enough, it's done one of the things I've warned against: opened up Obama to potentially devastating retaliation. "Still" portrays McCain as old and out of touch (a rather low blow, IMHO), pointing, e.g., to his inability to send e-mail. Here's the L.A. Times explaining that McCain can't use a keyboard because of his injuries. There are responses one might make to this, but they won't work. I predict a powerful and effective McCain response.

[Note: by "they won't work" I mean: "they won't work rhetorically speaking, i.e. they won't be effective in deflecting the POW response, lame though it is.]

[Update: I dunno...John Cole sure does a pretty good job revealing the abject stupidity of the POW response... Too bad that showing that something is abjectly stupid doesn't necessarily count against it in American Politics...]

For chrissake, why is it so hard to understand this point: you must get tough without getting mean. For one thing, they are a lot better at being mean that we are.

I'm not one of the panickers, but I'm getting very frustrated with the abject incompetence of the Obama air war. All I want is one or two better-than-average ads hitting McCain on his lies and dirty campaigning. This is not complicated.