When it comes to presidential politics, 2008 is a year of firsts. The first black nominee. The first serious woman contender. The first Latino candidate, the first Mormon candidate and the first time anyone's ever paid attention to Ron Paul. In that pioneering spirit--and in the spirit of postmodernism--let me hereby identify a meta-riffic new campaign tactic that arose in response to Barack Obama's candidacy, that flourished in the hands of Bill Clinton during the Democratic primary and that has now found a home in John McCain's Crystal City headquarters.

I'm referring, of course, to playing the "playing the race card" card.  

At 12:00 p.m., McCain campaign manager Rick Davis sent a terse, two-sentence statement to reporters. "Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck," it read. "It's divisive, negative, shameful and wrong." Soon, Davis was claiming on MSNBC that Team Obama "has been feeding to journalists, all night last night and all day today, the notion that somehow something that we have done in our campaign... had racial overtones," while McCain himself  was characterizing the "race card" accusation as "legitimate" and confessing that he's "disappointed that Senator Obama would say the things he’s saying.”

My initial reaction was confusion. What did Obama say? I asked myself. Did he call McCain "Whitey McWhiteguy"? Did he deliver a Black Power salute from an Olympic podium? Did he accuse his rival of race-baiting, or bigotry, or not having any black friends? These options seemed unlikely. For one thing, Obama is not a masochistic madman bent on his own political destruction. For another, Obama has been very careful--with the partial exception of South Carolina--to never overtly encourage the accusations of racism, lest they undermine his appeal to the country's white majority as an African-American candidate who, unlike Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton, isn't also seen as the "bearer of racial grievance." So I couldn't imagine he'd start now. It certainly wouldn't help him politically. But then I remembered: one doesn't actually have to play the "race card" to end up on the receiving end of the "playing the race card" card. In fact, that's sort of the point.

Apparently, the McCain campaign was reacting--some would say overreacting--to a series of statements Obama made yesterday in Missouri. "Since they don’t have any new ideas, the only strategy they’ve got in this election is to try to scare you about me," he told supporters in Union. "They’re going to try to say that I’m a risky guy. They’re going to try to say, 'Well, you know, he’s got a funny name and he doesn’t look like all the presidents on the dollar bills." Some observers, like Jake Tapper of ABC News, interpreted this as Obama "accus[ing] McCain of running a racist, xenophobic campaign." On the surface, I can see why this makes sense. After all, Washington and Lincoln look pretty white on those greenbacks.

But there are two pretty compelling reasons why this doesn't wash. First, Obama didn't say that anyone is misbehaving now. He said they're "going to" misbehave in some amorphous future. Some have argued that this is a mere semantic difference--in effect, "a pretty clear effort at having it both ways." But that's not how it strikes me. To me, Obama's point seems neither accusatory nor, truth be told, predictive. It seems strategic. What he's doing is acknowledging all the subterranean doubts and suspicions that threaten his bid--his race, his name, his otherness--and saying, preemptively, that to succumb to them would be to fall prey to "politics as usual." He's neutralizing the insinuations that voters are bound to hear (from friends, neighbors, radio hosts, whomever). But he's not saying that substantive disagreements--on the issues, on his record--are somehow race-related. And he's certainly not calling McCain a racist.

To see why I don't think Obama "played the race card"--and why I don't quite buy the McCain camp's defense, which is that Obama is using race to "delegitimize any line of attack against him"--try removing race from the equation and imagining the Republican nominee delivering a similar soliloquy: "They're going to try to say I'm confused. They're going to try to say that I'm too angry. They're going to try to say, 'Well, you know, he's a North Vietnamese collaborator with PTSD and he's older than all the presidents on the dollar bills. But that's just because they don't want to debate me on the issues." Would this be "playing the age card"? Or would it be a legitimate (if preemptive) defensive maneuver against illegitimate insinuations--a maneuver, in other words, designed to focus the electorate on the stuff that McCain wants them to focus on?

There are ways, of course, that Obama could have played the race card. If he had accused McCain, for example, of implying that he has "a taste for young white women" by featuring his face alongside Britney Spears' and Paris Hilton's in yesterday's "Celeb" ad--as liberal blogger Josh Marshall has done--the charge might have merit. But Obama rightly recognized that while the spot may have been a lot of things--an insinuation about his foreignness; a potential homage to Leni Riefenstahl; a bald-faced bid (look! starlets!) for free media attention--it wasn't a subliminal message about miscegenation. Fortunately, every sentient life form knows who Hilton and Spears are, making it impossible to imagine them--unlike the anonymous blond bimbo saying "Call me" in 2006's infamous Harold Ford, Jr. commercial--as Obama's paramours. So the Democrat simply dismissed it. And despite Davis' insinuation on MSNBC that Marshall's item and others like it "did not come out of the blue," there's no evidence, or reason to suspect, that Team Obama was whispering in anyone's ear.

The second counterargument is that if McCain actually believed that Obama's Missouri remarks were "divisive, negative, shameful and wrong," he probably would've mentioned it back in June--when Obama said the same thing at a Florida fundraising event. "They’re going to try to make you afraid of me," Obama told donors. "‘He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?’" The Florida remarks, in fact, were more explicitly "racial" than anything Obama said yesterday in Missouri. But McCain didn't complain. Nor did he complain any of the dozens of other times Obama expressed similar sentiments.

McCain's previous silence proves that when playing the "playing the race card" card, the impression you create--an impression of your rival saying something racially outrageous that benefits you politically--is far more important than whether or not you actually think he said something racially outrageous. In this case, I don't believe that's what Obama did--and judging by June 21, neither does McCain. But unlike whoever was running the show back then, new head honcho Steve Schmidt--a pugilistic Karl Rove protégé--seems to have decided that it benefits his boss to give voters the impression that Obama is the type of person who "plays the race card" (even though Obama strenuously, and necessarily, avoids doing so). And that's what's unsettling about this incident. If Schmidt and Co. were worried, as they say, that Obama was trying frame any "conventional campaign attacks as race-based" and were merely seeking to pre-empt his efforts, they could've simply said "we've never played the race card and we never will." But instead they lashed out. In playing offense instead of defense, Team McCain is actively characterizing Obama as another Al Sharpton--a "divisive, negative" Black Politician with vocal grievances who uses race as both shield and sword. This strikes me as too convenient to dismiss as a coincidence.

It's too bad. Until now, McCain has honorably avoided the tricky pitfalls of race. Back in February, he apologized for a local shock jock's questionable comments, and in April, he condemned an ad by the North Carolina Republican Party featuring images of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. He knows firsthand what playing the race card actually looks like, having watched during the 2000 South Carolina primary as the delightful allies of opponent George W. Bush falsely alleged that his adopted Bangladeshi daughter Bridget was his lovechild with a black woman. But thanks to his new coaches, McCain is no longer batting 1.000.

I guess there's a first time for everything.

UPDATE, 7:58 p.m.: A smart, and important, point from reader CalexanderJ:

I'll cut McCain a little bit of slack. Obama by using the amorphous "they" is on some level suggesting that the McCain campaign would resort to race based attacks. So far the official campaign has been good at avoided that... So on some level they have a right to be upset at the suggestion that they would bring up race when so far they had not. Of course their Race Card response seems to vindicate Obama's suggestion that racial attacks would be forthcoming, so the McCain campaign effectively ceded the high ground.

I agree. 
 

(AP Photo / Mike Roemer) 

By Holly Bailey 

RACINE, Wisc.--John McCain is stumping in Wisconsin today, where--no surprise--the biggest story locally is not his visit but the ongoing debate over what the Green Bay Packers should do about Brett Favre. "It's broken up long friendships," said one local reporter.

The big question among the press corps here today: Would someone ask McCain about Favre? The answer is yes. At his town hall meeting this afternoon in Racine, the very first question came from a man who stood up and praised McCain's experience and credentials. Given that, the man said, what did he think the Packers should do about its aging quarterback? If he were to weigh in, he might very well likely cement a win here in November, the man helpfully noted. McCain paused for several seconds, as audience members laughed and, to be honest, looked a little anxious. "There's a lot of controversy I have jumped into in my time," McCain said. "(But) I am not so dumb that I am going to jump into that one."

Probably a good decision. Of course, McCain has talked about Farve before. On his campaign plane earlier this year, the Weekly Standard's Steve Hayes (a rabid Packers fan) broke the news to McCain that Farve had retired. His reaction: relief. "Actually I'm glad he retired," McCain told him. "I was worried he was going to get hurt."

Barack Obama can summon 200,000 swooning Teutons to Berlin to hear him speak. Barack Obama can sink a three-pointer on his first try--nothing but net. Barack Obama can even part the Red Sea, provided you ask nicely. But can Barack Obama do this?

(Hat tip to TNR's Michael Crowley)

Yes, that's Virginia governor--and "main object of [Obama veepwatch] speculation"--Tim Kaine playing the mouth organ with a group of Crooked Road country musicians. In a jean jacket. And not humiliating himself. I'd say this vaults him into first place, at least among shortlisters, for the coveted role of Obama's "Ambassador to Appalachia." Unless, of course, Evan Bayh breaks out a mandolin.

And yet: I'm starting to suspect that Kaine, though "able," may not by "rising" as fast as the Great Mentioner would have us believe. Mainly it's because the guy can't seem to shut up. First, he was all "my mom loves the [veep buzz]." Then he bragged to a Virginia carnivalgoer that the list "seems to be getting shorter and I’m still being mentioned." He even chuckled when a friend said he was Obama's top choice. In the past two days alone, he's done interviews with WTOP Radio, NBC News and Charlie Rose. Given the radio silence from Obama's other rumored veeps--Bayh, Biden, Sebelius et al.--and given that the buzz originally came from Kaine's associates, not Obama's, the governor's sudden obsession with the spotlight certainly seems purposeful.

There are only three explanations, really. Either a) Kaine is acting alone, b) Obama is releasing a trial balloon or c) the campaign is using Kaine to divert the media's attention from the real contenders. None of these options bodes particularly well for Kaine. A trial balloon is the least likely, given Chicago's insistence on total secrecy, and even then, assessments of Kaine have hardly been glowing. The lone gunman theory is more plausible--but it's safe bet, in that case, that Kaine's loose lips have hurt, not helped, his chances with Obama's disciplined crew. And if Kaine is serving as a distraction at the nominee's behest--admittedly a pretty convoluted hypothesis--he was never worth obsessing over in the first place.

Not that I necessarily subscribe to any of this, but it's important to maintain a little bit of perspective in these heady, substance-free days of vice-presidential speculation. Even with all the bitchin' harmonica solos.
 

Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images

Here's Jake Sherman from NEWSWEEK's D.C. bureau on whether Bill's cash flow will affect Hillary's debt relief. My take: while it would be a nice show of solidarity for Obama supporters to send money Clintonward, I don't think it should be seen as some sort of requirement--especially given that a) much of HRC's dough was spent attacking their candidate, b) it's much harder to raise money for a former contender than a current nominee and c) Bill still has the golden touch (as Jake's reporting amply illustrates). Unless I'm missing something, Hillary could just write a check from their $100 million joint bank account and call it a day, a la Mitt Romney. So I can see why some Dems are inclined to dismiss these kinds of complaints.

Bill Clinton collected $10,085,000 in speeches alone in 2007, a figure that underscores his continued rock-star credentials on the international lecture circuit, according Sen. Hillary Clinton's financial disclosure forms for 2007, which were released Wednesday morning by the Secretary of the Senate.

The Clintons also earned between $11 million and $26 million last year by selling stocks from their personal portfolio, according to the newly released figures. The stock sales appear to be the proceeds from a blind trust that Senator Clinton announced she planned to liquidate during her presidential campaign to avoid potential conflicts of interest.

The new disclosures could have political consequences for the Clintons. By calling more attention to the couple's personal wealth, as well as the former president's enormous earning power, the figures could make it more difficult to persuade Democratic Party donors to help pay off Hillary Clinton's $22.5 million in campaign debts—nearly half of which is owed to the Clintons personally. After Clinton dropped out of the presidential race, Barack Obama agreed to ask his top donors to help his defeated rival pay off her campaign debts. But the plea thus far has not yielded nearly the amounts the Clintons and their supporters had hoped for.

A Clinton spokesperson today said that the senator is not seeking relief for the $13 million she poured into her campaign. The spokesperson pointed to a June conference call, in which the New York Democrat said she considered the loan an "investment" and is not expecting anybody to help pay it back.

According to the new financial disclosure, former president Clinton gave 54 speeches worldwide last year. Many of them were given to corporate giants such as Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, General Electric and Lehman Brothers. He averaged more than $186,000 an appearance. Clinton's most lucrative payday was in the United Kingdom on Aug. 14, 2007; a group called AEG London (which operates sports stadiums and franchises) paid him $425,000 for his services.

The disclosure shows that, even while actively campaigning on behalf of his wife's 2008 presidential bid, the former president kept a hectic international schedule. Among his speaking stops: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, London, South Korea and Canada. The international talks have been the most lucrative for the former president, commanding upward of $250,000 an appearance. Over a three-day period in Norway, Denmark and Sweden in May, Clinton earned $1,485,000. The Power Within, a Canada-based motivational speaking agency, shelled out $955,000 in 2007 to have Clinton appear in Minneapolis, Toronto, Montreal and Niagara on the Lake, Canada.

After leaving the White House, Clinton turned to speaking to help settle about $12 million in legal bills accrued during his time as president. In 2006, he gave 352 speeches (nearly one a day) and earned $10.2 million (much of which the former president has donated to charity.) The number of speeches in 2007 was much lower, but appears to have been on average much more lucrative for the former president.

READ THE REST HERE.
 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

AS AIDES MAP AN AGGRESSIVE RACE, MCCAIN OFTEN STEERS OFF COURSE
(Juliet Eilperin and Robert Barnes, Washington Post)
As Election Day nears, McCain's campaign is adopting the aggressive, take-no-prisoners style of Karl Rove, the GOP operative who engineered victories for President Bush. The campaign continued the attack Wednesday with a sarcastic television ad deriding Obama as a "celebrity," part of an intensifying effort to cast him as an elitist. But the sharp-edged approach is being orchestrated for an unpredictable candidate who often chafes at delivering the campaign's message of the day. It is that freewheeling style that has made him popular with voters and cemented his reputation for candor and straight talk. McCain, who was most comfortable as an underdog in the unscripted environment of the New Hampshire primary, makes his advisers cringe as he delivers the attack line -- and then keeps talking. In that respect, he is no Bush, his handlers say. The result is a presidential campaign that sometimes rolls between serious policy discussions about the nation's future and gotcha politics aimed at undermining his opponent's character. McCain himself is often caught in the middle, proclaiming his commitment to the former while participating in the latter.

MCCAIN'S CACOPHONOUS CABINET
(Kenneth P. Vogel, Politico)
Republican faithful have grumbled in recent weeks about the lack of a consistent message from John McCain’s campaign on key issues, leading observers to wonder what McCain’s top advisers are thinking. The answer, it turns out, could be part of the problem. Some of McCain’s most visible and engaged advisers have advanced positions that appear to conflict with the Arizona senator’s stances on hot-button topics ranging from climate change and oil drilling to tax cuts, contraception and education. Of course, it’s not unusual for politicians to seek advice from a variety of perspectives. But the ideological mishmash in McCain’s Kitchen Cabinet lends itself to questions about who’s crafting the campaign’s message and highlights the tricky policy record McCain is struggling to navigate on the campaign trail. 

OBAMA EMERGES AS MAJOR CAMPAIGN ISSUE--FOR BOTH CANDIDATES
(Bob Drogin and Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times)
With fewer than 100 days until ballots are cast, the presidential race chiefly appears to be a fierce battle to define the presumptive Democratic nominee for voters unsure about his abilities and values. "Right now, both campaigns have to do the same thing, which is establish who Barack Obama is," said Neil Newhouse, a Republican pollster based in Virginia. "That's the real battle going on." In trying to paint its image of Obama, the McCain camp has turned increasingly negative, even derisive. Obama, meanwhile, is still working to persuade voters to trust him enough to see him as a president, even after 18 months of largely positive publicity. Each candidate's tactics pose clear dangers, party insiders and analysts say. For Obama, the efforts to portray himself as presidential -- holding news conferences overseas, for example, or briefly using a campaign emblem similar to the White House seal -- run the risk of appearing arrogant or presumptuous... For McCain, the new and sharply negative tone toward Obama could damage the Republican's image as a maverick who rejects the attack-dog politics of traditional Washington.

MORE: McCain Tries to Define Obama as Out of Touch (Jim Rutenberg, New York Times)
Mr. McCain’s campaign is now under the leadership of members of President Bush’s re-election campaign, including Steve Schmidt, the czar of the Bush war room that relentlessly painted his opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, as effete, elite, and equivocal through a daily blitz of sound bites and Web videos that were carefully coordinated with Mr. Bush’s television advertisements. The run of attacks against Mr. Obama over the last couple of weeks have been strikingly reminiscent of that drive, including the Bush team’s tactics of seeking to make campaigns referendums on its opponents — not a choice between two candidates — and attacking the opponent’s perceived strengths head-on. Central to the latest McCain drive is an attempt to use against Mr. Obama the huge crowds and excitement he has drawn, including on his foreign trip last week, by promoting a view of him as more interested in attention and adulation than in solving the problems facing American families.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

There they go again.

In a "memo" sent to reporters earlier this afternoon, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis continues Crystal City's aggressive new anti-Obama messaging strategy by reviving the Republican Party's favorite trump card: elitism. Echoing Karl Rove's characterization last month of the Illinois senator as "the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by," Davis writes that "only a celebrity of Barack Obama's magnitude could attract 200,000 fans in Berlin who gathered for the mere opportunity to be in his presence." He continues:

These are not supporters or even voters, but fans fawning over The One. Only celebrities like Barack Obama go to the gym three times a day, demand "MET-RX chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars and bottles of a hard-to-find organic brew -- Black Forest Berry Honest Tea" and worry about the price of arugula. 

Other than the bit about celebrities fretting over the price of arugula--memo to McCain: they can afford it--there's nothing surprising about the GOP's decision to resort to this time-honored tactic. Why? Because it always seems to work. Consider Bush vs. Kerry. Hillary 2.0 vs. Obama. Andrew Jackson vs. John Quincy Adams. "Theoretically, it pigeonholes Obama as a northern liberal with effete tastes," writes the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder. "It works not because of the fact of the thing--windsurfing is not an elite sport--but because it allows partisans to feel superior and allows Republicans to begin to build an entire narrative around their opponents' purported elitism." The McCain camp wants voters to believe that Obama's "arrogance" befits his "celebrity" and makes him "selfish"--unlike (you guessed it) McCain, who always puts "Country First." Or so his slogan says.

The only problem? It makes just as much sense to call McCain an elitist as Obama. Nevermind that the Illinois senator is a bi-racial child from a broken family raised in a modest single-parent household. Or that there are plenty of "country clubs" still unwilling to accept African-Americans as members. Or that the last "celebrity" to occupy the Oval Office was Ronald Reagan, McCain's hero. Simply imagine the memo David Axelrod could send to reporters about the Republican nominee. "Only a celebrity of John McCain's magnitude could star on blockbuster television shows like '24' and appear in big-budget motion pictures like 'Wedding Crashers,'" it would read. "These are not campaign commercials or news interviews, but major Hollywood productions--which is no surprise, given that he's pals with Warren Beatty. Only celebrities like John McCain own seven homes, date Brazilian models, marry blond, jet-owning heiresses worth $100 million, ring up $500,000 a month on the family credit card, forget the last time they pumped their own gas and wear $520 black calfskin loafers by Ferragamo." Get the picture?

My point is not that both Obama and McCain are "elitists." It's that the entire discussion is asinine, and that neither Obama's protein bars nor McCain's loafers have anything to do with the business of leading a country. By the time a person decides to run for president--incidentally, a pretty elite office--chances are he or she is a) relatively wealthy and b) relatively out-of-touch with actual human beings, which is what happens when you spend most of your time around other politicians. Not only that, but running for president is by its very nature an elitist thing to do. (Is there a better word than "elitist" to describe someone who believes that he or she is best qualified to lead the free world?) Ultimately, both McCain, the war hero, and Obama, the biracial pioneer, have led extraordinary lives. That's OK. It's even desirable. Both still know hardship. Both still know adversity. Both would still bring a lifetime of trials and triumphs to the White House. If McCain disagrees, fine. He should explain why Obama--and not he--is too "elitist" to be president. But for the Republican to insinuate that exercise, organic tea and chocolate roasted-peanut protein bars somehow disqualify his opponent from serving is a disappointment. The only thing more unfortunate is that he expects the American people to buy it.

How's that for elitism?  

A few numbers worth pondering: 

FOX News Poll, July 24, 2008:
Nearly 7 in 10 Americans (67 percent) say they believe most in the media want Obama to win the November election--while a scant 11 percent think the media are pulling for John McCain. Moreover, only about 1 in 10 (11 percent) volunteers the belief that the media is neutral on the race to become the 44th President of the United States. When asked to rate the objectivity of media coverage of the campaigns, Americans feel Obama gets more of a positive spin by a better than 7-to-1 margin (46 percent more positive toward Obama; 6 percent more positive toward McCain). Just under 4 Americans in 10 (36 percent) says both campaigns are being covered objectively.

Study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, July 28, 2008:
Since the primaries ended, on-air evaluations of Barack Obama have been 72% negative (vs. 28% positive).  That’s worse than John McCain’s coverage, which has been 57% negative (vs. 43% positive) during the same time period. This is a major turnaround since McCain and Obama emerged as front-runners in the early primaries.  From the New Hampshire primary on January 8 until Hillary Clinton dropped out on June 7, Obama’s coverage was 62% positive (v. 38% negative) on the broadcast networks; by contrast, McCain’s coverage during this period was only 34% positive (v. 66% negative).

Bias, it seems, is in the eye of the beholder.

I get a lot of email accusing me of being a "liberal idiot." I also get a lot of email accusing me of being a "conservative butt boy." On Monday, for example, I was instructed to "try to not get that liberal nose of your's [sic] to [sic] close to Obama's ass" because "if McCain wins and Obama stops up short your whole head may go up to your very weak shoulders." On Tuesday another reader declared that "spineless Mr. Romano is clearly a graduate of the Fox News school of journalism."

For the record, I think there's a lot of bias in the mainstream media. It's a huge problem, in fact. But the issue isn't ideology. No reporter I've ever met sits around scheming about how to get his or her favored candidate elected. Do they have private political beliefs? I'm sure. Do these preferences occasionally skew their work? No doubt (mine included). But as a rule, reporters spend too much time with politicians to feel anything but skepticism. The really damaging bias is narrative in nature--bias for tension, bias for conflict, bias for drama. That's handy when there's actual drama--also known as news--to document. But often there isn't. Which is why the Washington Post gushes over Obama's international trip one day and pounds him for presumption the next. Or why positive coverage of Obama has declined from 62 percent in the primaries to 28 percent in the general. Ideology has nothing to do with it. No one is in control, and no one, sadly, can stop it. Despite tons of excellent individual work, this is just the way the mass media works--by constantly, collectively hyping the next plot twist, whether or not it's worth hyping.

The Internet doesn't exactly help. When it comes to campaign coverage (as I've written before) choosing scandal over substance is nothing new. But this is the first presidential election to move at the speed of the Web. Print set the pace in days; cable news, hours. Now, after years of dismissing independent political bloggers as peanut galleryists in pajamas, every major newspaper, magazine and news channel is requiring reporters to provide a play-by-play on the day’s developments at its in-house blog. Meaning we’re now stuck with a 1,440-minute news cycle. In theory, that’s dandy (no hiding); in practice, it totally skews the signal-to-noise ratio. While the demand (if not the audience) for campaign news has exploded, the supply has stayed the same (did more really “happen” in 2007 than 2003, or 1983, or 1923?). To fill the growing void, we make ever-bigger mountains out of ever-smaller molehills, 1,440 minutes a day. And the gap grows between the insight you expect and the “news” you get.

The great thing about the Internet, however, is that you can easily ignore the noise. Here at Stumper, I strive to analyze the presidential campaign without relying on ideology. I call it equal-opportunity skepticism. My approach isn't "just the facts, ma'am." We have the AP for that. Instead, I try to provide perspective--often with humor or opinion. Meaning that when I make fun of some silly thing that Obama has said, it’s because I think it was a silly thing to say--and not because I "hate" Obama. I do the same for McCain. There's no editor--liberal or conservative--telling me what to write. There's no "NEWSWEEK" demanding that I hew to some (nonexistent) party line. Nowadays, a lot of people gravitate toward media outlets that echo and reinforce their own points of view. I've always found such insularity sort of boring. I hope at least some of you--that is, the ones who aren't too busy calling me a partisan hack--agree.

Anyway, we now return to your regularly scheduled programming.
 

By Holly Bailey 

Is John McCain out of touch with... pop culture?

The Arizona senator's campaign is up this afternoon with a new ad called "Celeb," which dings Barack Obama for, you guessed it, being more of an international celebrity than a credible Commander in Chief. The ad highlights Obama's opposition to offshore oil drilling and questions his energy policies, but the real attention-getter is film of Obama juxtaposed with red carpet footage of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, a pair of Hollywood starlets who don't exactly have the most stellar reputations. Hilton, of course, briefly went to jail for drunk driving, and Spears had a widely publicized breakdown that culminated in a brief stay at the UCLA psych ward earlier this year.

So is the McCain campaign trying to equate Obama to a hotel heiress with a best-selling sex tape and a fading pop star who seems to truly dislike wearing underwear in public? Why no, the campaign innocently insists. In a conference call this morning with reporters, McCain manager Rick Davis said they included Britney and Paris in the ad only because "in our estimation" they are the two biggest celebrities in the world. "Britney is first, Paris came in second and third was Barack," Davis said. "Will people think of this as negative advertising? Look, it's the most entertaining thing I've seen on TV in a while. I wouldn't anticipate anything about this being negative."

The only problem with this argument: When was the last time Paris Hilton was on the cover of Us Weekly? Aside from a few paparazzi shots, McCain's new ad is the biggest spurt of publicity Hilton has gotten lately. After the conference call, the campaign released a memo from Davis backing up his arguments and adding a new celebrity name to the mix: Tom Cruise, whose ties to Scientology have gotten more attention than his acting roles lately. "It is beyond dispute that (Obama) has become the biggest celebrity in the world," McCain aide Steve Schmidt told reporters today. "It is a statement of fact. It is backed up by the reality of his tour around the world...The question we are proposing to the American people is this: Is he ready to lead yet?"

No surprise, the Obama campaign is attacking the ad as simply more negativity from McCain. "Oops! He did it again!" spokesman Tommy Vietor said. *Even a McCainiac agrees. This afternoon, former confidant John Weaver went on the record with Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic to call the ad a "childish" move that "diminishes" the senator. "There is legitimate mockery of a political campaign now, and it isn't at Obama's," he added. "For McCain's sake, this tomfoolery needs to stop."*

*UPDATE, 4:11 p.m.: Some smart analysis from Politico's Jonathan Martin:

The message is akin to the oft-heard line about Hilton herself: She's just famous for being famous. With Obama, the political translation is that, yes,' he's a rock star -- but does that mean you want him to lead the country?' And not just the country, but our country. It's no accident that he's called "the biggest celebrity in the world" and portrayed overseas. Nor is it incidental that he's described as being for more "foreign oil" "That's the real Obama," the ad closes.

"Celeb" represents a risk for McCain. His campaign seems to have made a conscious decision to use Obama's enormous appeal against him, with the hope that Americans will ultimately vote for the more familiar and less glamorous option. But by acknowledging Obamamania, they also reinforce the sense that the young Democrat has created an unprecedented and perhaps historic movement. It's quite a concession from somebody who himself was once a media darling and is close to a household name. They're trying to inflate Obama to tear him down -- but they also could just enhance his stature and send more buzz, money and supporters his way.

Carolyn Kaster / AP Photo

Breaking news, MSM: John McCain's presidential campaign isn't run by a bunch of morons.

Reading the political press over the past week--in which reporters have happily cataloged McCain's streak of seemingly avoidable public relations mishaps--it'd be easy to believe otherwise. The cheese-aisle press conference in Bethlehem, Penn. The bratwurst lunch alongside a used-car salesman in Columbus, Ohio. The canceled trip to a Gulf Coast oil rig. And, lest we forget, the golf-cart photo-op with 84-year-old former President George Bush in the resort town of Kennebunkport, Me. Not exactly the best way to counterprogram the images of a "young," "vigorous" Barack Obama swanning around the globe with foreign dignitaries, seducing 200,000 starstruck Europeans in Berlin and sinking three-pointers while playing pickup basketball with U.S. soldiers. "July has been a cruel month for McCain," wrote the Washington Post's venerable David Broder. "The worst week of his campaign," added Clive Crook of the Financial Times.

But Team McCain--now led by savvy Bush-Cheney veteran Steve Schmidt--may be a lot less idiotic than the chattering classes suspect. It's not just that the average polling gap between the Arizona senator and his rival from Illinois has narrowed to 2.6 percent in the wake of the latter's overseas adventure, or that 65 percent of voters say the trip left them with either a bad taste in their mouths or no opinion at all. (We predicted last week that Obama's jaunt would have little net impact.) It's that while Obama was abroad the campaign actually launched an crafty two-front ad strategy carefully calibrated to inflict maximum damage on the Dem with minimal backlash. The press may have been too focused on McCain's easily-mockable blunders to get the message. But we're willing to bet that swing voters weren't.

Here's how the strategy worked. Last week, the McCain camp released two ads. The first, "Pump," implicitly linked Obama's opposition to off-shore oil drilling--a stance that two-thirds of the country opposes--to skyrocketing gas prices. The second spot, "Troops," suggested that Obama canceled his visit to a German military hospital because "the Pentagon wouldn't allow him to bring cameras." Both claims were demonstrably false. I've already called McCain's "Troops" accusation "baseless." FactCheck.org says "Pump" is "absurd."

Sadly, however, a political ad doesn't have to be accurate to be effective. Just ask John Kerry.

The key difference between the two spots is their intended targets. Currently airing in 11 battleground states, "Pump" is "a heavy hitter in McCain's rotation," according to Evan Tracey, who tracks media buys TNS Media Intelligence's Gampaign Media Analysis Group. "Troops," meanwhile, ran as a paid commercial "roughly a dozen" times, total--just enough to get make it the subject of debate (and more than a hundred free, repeat screenings) on local, national and cable newscasts. Today's New York Times called this "a public relations coup that allowed [McCain] to show his toughest campaign advertisement of the year—one widely panned as misleading—to millions of people, largely free, through television news media hungry for political news with arresting visual imagery." But when coupled with "Pump" it's something more: a way for McCain to keep the national political conversation centered on Obama's "patriotism" and readiness to lead (free of charge) while quietly reframing the debate over drilling to his advantage in a slew of key swing states (free of national media interference). As we said earlier, crafty--if not particularly ethical.

For the first month of the general election, McCain seemed to lack a coherent message. But now it's clear that he intends to sow doubts about Obama's policies, experience and trustiworthiness however he can--even by misleading voters. The point: to raise the risk factor. Reasonable people can disagree over whether this assault will work. Earlier this week, for example, we wrote that McCain's nonstop negativity risks alienating moderates originally attracted to his unique brand, and some Republicans, like former McCain guru Mike Murphy, are already saying that the campaign "should ultimately be more about what Mr. McCain would do than Mr. Obama." But one thing that's no longer up for debate is whether Team McCain is getting its "message" out--however many cheese aisles the candidate happens to find himself in. 

We'll know in November if it was worth the effort.

*UPDATE: Changed from "savvy" in the headline to better reflect the point of the piece. (The rest of the item remains unchanged.) The edit was inspired, in fact, by a witty message from reader T.L., which I've excerpted after the jump...

By Holly Bailey 

John McCain talks often about how he wants to run a "respectful campaign" against Barack Obama, but that desire apparently doesn't extend to everybody in his party. Yesterday, a group of young women not affiliated with the campaign was selling buttons outside McCain's town hall near Reno, Nev., and their inventory of mostly pro-McCain pins included some very anti-Obama memorabilia. Some of the highlights seen above: "Spell Check Says Obama is Osama;" "Join the Communist Party...Apply now at BarackObama.com;" and a button showing the hammer and sickle affiliated with communism that read "Comrade Barack Obama." Not pictured: a button boasting the slogan "Barack Obama: The Most Popular Candidate in the Middle East."
 

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

AS A PROFESSOR, OBAMA ENTHRALLED STUDENTS AND PUZZLED FACULTY
(Jodi Kantor, New York Times)
The young law professor stood apart in too many ways to count. At a school where economic analysis was all the rage, he taught rights, race and gender. Other faculty members dreamed of tenured positions; he turned them down. While most colleagues published by the pound, he never completed a single work of legal scholarship. At a formal institution, Barack Obama was a loose presence, joking with students about their romantic prospects, using first names, referring to case law one moment and “The Godfather” the next. He was also an enigmatic one, often leaving fellow faculty members guessing about his precise views. Mr. Obama, now the junior senator from Illinois and the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, spent 12 years at the University of Chicago Law School. Most aspiring politicians do not dwell in the halls of academia, and few promising young legal thinkers toil in state legislatures. Mr. Obama planted a foot in each, splitting his weeks between an elite law school and the far less rarefied atmosphere of the Illinois Senate. Before he outraised every other presidential primary candidate in American history, Mr. Obama marched students through the thickets of campaign finance law. Before he helped redraw his own State Senate district, making it whiter and wealthier, he taught districting as a racially fraught study in how power is secured. And before he posed what may be the ultimate test of racial equality — whether Americans will elect a black president — he led students through African-Americans’ long fight for equal status.

MCCAIN GOES NEGATIVE, WORRYING SOME IN THE GOP
(Michael Cooper, New York Times)
In recent days Senator John McCain has charged that Senator Barack Obama “would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign,” tarred him as “Dr. No” on energy policy and run advertisements calling him responsible for high gas prices. The old happy warrior side of Mr. McCain has been eclipsed a bit lately by a much more aggressive, and more negative, Mr. McCain who hammers Mr. Obama repeatedly on policy differences, experience and trustworthiness. By doing so, Mr. McCain is clearly trying to sow doubts about his younger opponent, and bring him down a peg or two. But some Republicans worry that by going negative so early, and initiating so many of the attacks himself rather than leaving them to others, Mr. McCain risks coming across as angry or partisan in a way that could turn off some independents who have been attracted by his calls for respectful campaigning. The drumbeat of attacks could also undermine his argument that he will champion a new brand of politics.

FIVE THINGS THE AUDACITY OF HOPE WORLD TOUR TAUGHT US ABOUT OBAMA
(John Heilemann, New York)
McCain’s annoyance with what he sees as the infatuation of the press with The One, as his campaign has dubbed Obama, has reached Hillary Clinton–esque proportions. His envy of Obama’s rock-star status is acute as well, and made all the more searing by the fact that he views his opponent as a lightweight, a line-cutter, a hypocrite, and a phony. But Obama’s voyage and the adulation it received seemed to push McCain over the edge and his campaign into a harshly negative new mode. Obama’s responses have been far from the kind of bare-knuckled rejoinders that some Democrats would like to see. (While abroad, he said he was “disappointed” that McCain had accused him of being willing to “lose a war in order to win a political campaign.”) Is it possible that McCain’s sheer awfulness as a candidate and the wanton ineptness of his operation has lulled Obama into thinking he’s got this thing in the bag? Fearful Democrats worry that it has. And they hope that his bounceless return from abroad will steel his spine for the war at home.

PRESIDENT OBAMA CONTINUES HECTIC VICTORY TOUR
(Dana Milbank, Washington Post)
Barack Obama has long been his party's presumptive nominee. Now he's becoming its presumptuous nominee. Fresh from his presidential-style world tour, during which foreign leaders and American generals lined up to show him affection, Obama settled down to some presidential-style business in Washington yesterday. He ordered up a teleconference with the (current president's) Treasury secretary, granted an audience to the Pakistani prime minister and had his staff arrange for the chairman of the Federal Reserve to give him a briefing. Then, he went up to Capitol Hill to be adored by House Democrats in a presidential-style pep rally...  Inside, according to a witness, he told the House members, "This is the moment . . . that the world is waiting for," adding: "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions." As he marches toward Inauguration Day (Election Day is but a milestone on that path), Obama's biggest challenger may not be Republican John McCain but rather his own hubris. Some say the supremely confident Obama -- nearly 100 days from the election, he pronounces that "the odds of us winning are very good" -- has become a president-in-waiting. But in truth, he doesn't need to wait: He has already amassed the trappings of the office, without those pesky decisions.

THE UNTOUCHABLE
(Jack Shafer, Slate) 
You're welcome to believe otherwise, but I don't think the press has gone in the tank for Barack Obama. As long ago as March, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz demolished charges that the press was soft on Obama by cataloging the tough pieces published by reporters exhuming the candidate's past: his financial relationship with friend and fundraiser Antoin "Tony" Rezko, who is now a convicted felon; his friendship with former Weather Undergrounder William Ayers; his casting of 130 "present" votes as an Illinois legislator; his nuclear energy compromise in the U.S. Senate, said to benefit a contributor; incendiary comments made by his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright; and more. To that list add the recent critical dispatches tarring Obama as a flip-flopper... What's unique about Obama and his candidacy is that almost none of the stuff the press throws at him sticks. Nor is the press alone in its inability to stick him. Hillary Clinton hurled rocks, knives, and acid at her rival even before the primaries (see this Jake Tapper piece from ABC News) and later upped the ante in desperation. She claimed that he was unprepared to serve as commander in chief and accused him of insulting gun owners and the religiously faithful. The eleventh-hour tactics may have won Clinton votes, but they failed to undermine Obama. You could call Obama the Teflon-coated candidate, but this would miss the fact that his slickness goes all the way to the core. What has gone unexplored until now is this: How did Barack Obama achieve superslipperiness without becoming greasy?

OBAMA HAS CASH TO ATTACK MCCAIN'S BASE
(Jeanne Cummings, Politico)
In nearly every presidential cycle, candidates throw a little money at a state to try to turn it into a fresh battleground. It almost never works. But Barack Obama believes his historic nomination gives him more of an opening to press such a strategy. And what sets him apart from his predecessors is that he may actually have the money to attack his rival’s base on a broader scale and in a more sustained way than any candidate before him. The process has already begun. The Illinois senator last month began airing ads and opening offices in Virginia, North Dakota, Colorado and a handful of other states that have voted Republican in recent cycles. Obama is supplementing those high-profile moves with a potentially higher-impact investment in ground troops who can recruit volunteers, knock on doors, register voters and create a buzz around the campaign with bumper stickers and yard signs. To appreciate the aggressiveness of Obama’s operation it’s worth taking a closer look at the jockeying in Georgia... Last month, more than 20 paid Obama staffers were toiling away in the back conference room of a partially renovated law office in downtown Atlanta. And now their numbers are growing as they prepare to launch a voter registration drive that could see hundreds of thousands of African-American and young voters added to the voting rolls by November...[Meanwhile] McCain hasn’t hired any full-time field staff in Georgia and he’s not running any commercials on television there.

CONTINUED AFTER THE JUMP...
 

By Kevin Peraino
Crossposted from NEWSWEEK's "Why It Matters" blog

Nearly a week after Barack Obama made a brief campaign stop in Jerusalem, Israelis are still shaking their heads over the aggressive reporting of their local news media. Last week the Israeli daily Ma'ariv published a photo of the prayer note Obama tucked between the stones of the Western Wall--a common tradition among Israelis and foreign tourists. "Lord -- Protect my family and me," said the note, which was written on the stationery of the King David Hotel, where Obama was staying. "Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will." (Obama's spokespeople later declined to confirm or deny that the prayer was his.)

The theft--by a student at a local yeshiva--was quickly condemned by the religious figures in charge of the wall. "The notes placed between the stones of the Western Wall are between a person and his maker," Shmuel Rabinovitz, the rabbi who manages the site, told a local radio station. "It is forbidden to read them or make any use of them." Rabinovitz and his colleagues do occasionally round up the notes to make more space, but those prayers are then buried unread on the nearby Mount of Olives. In Obama's case, the yeshiva student ultimately returned the note, but by then newspapers around the world had published its contents.

Among Israelis, ever conscious of their country's image abroad, and especially in the United States, the theft continues to generate criticism in the local blogosphere. On the Web site of the Jerusalem Post over the weekend, one reader complained that the theft was a violation of Jewish religious law and demanded a public apology. "Just hope that Obama will refrain from suing the jerk, even though he deserves it," the reader wrote. Others called for a boycott of Ma'ariv for publishing the note. Still, other Israelis dismissed the theft and view the prayer note primarily as a savvy campaign ploy. "He wrote the note knowing it may very well become public," said one. "Obama is not stupid."

In which Stumper examines the Democratic nominee's possible--and not-so-possible--vice-presidential picks. (Previous Obama installments: Ted Strickland; Jim Webb; Wes Clark; Hillary Clinton; Kathleen Sebelius; John Edwards; Joe Biden. Previous McCain installments: Bobby Jindal</