Dishonorable

This ad was several weeks in the making.



It's kind of a combination attack. There's a pretty long history of the "he'll say anything to get elected" political ad. This one directly charges a loss of honor and a lack of integrity. For any other politician that might not be important, but John McCain is basically running on his honor, so this becomes a character-based attack in addition to the typical "stop lying about my record" fare. This is kind of tricky to pull off. Let's not forget that John McCain was the most popular politician in America prior to this election cycle. He was able to hide in the weeds while progressives really savagely pinned narratives on Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson, with a great deal of success. While policy differences and ties to President Bush were the battleground for much of the general election, nothing was done to depress McCain's favorables. So the media, and much of the electorate, I gather, made excuses for the dishonest and dishonorable campaign he was running.

But it became too much. Steve Schmidt and the boys laid it on too thick. And they engendered a backlash. With Obama taking the lead on this, it will become one of the defining narratives of this campaign, especially if it gets used in the first debate (there has to be a canned line written to attack McCain's honor).

I think this is going to play.