Obama: 'Celebrity'

I really love the olden days background music.

Loves it. By the Ben, can you guys stop with the "why is Obama not blowing McCain out, woe is me" 1) this little thing called the electoral college determines who wins and look on RCP 538- they all have Obama winning- so please give us the real story.2) if mcCain is so known to be a maverick and not George Bush 3- why is HE not pulling away- I know you guys are bored with silly with no Hillary to bash-but truly get a life:)

Obama is ever so slowly turning up the heat. By November McB-B-Q will be roasted! This is going to be GREAT!!! He doesn't need to compare McBozo to anyone but McClown himself...oooh, alright, he can compare him to his hero BigOilBush I suppose. 'Positive-Negativity' ads. Brilliant!

"Lurching to the right, then the left, the old Washington dance, whatever it takes. John McCain." AWESOME!!

Why polls aren't worrying Obama's team August 10, 2008Recommend (42) CAROL MARIN cmarin@suntimes.com Finally, for John McCain, a week to smile about. "Obama fatigue," a virus that's afflicted the GOP presidential candidate for sometime now, was discovered in a new Pew survey to have spread to 48 percent of the populace. And recent national polls now place McCain and Barack Obama in a statistical dead heat. Gallup's numbers have Obama 46, McCain 43. ? Click to enlarge image Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin RealClearPolitics' national average is about the same, Obama 46.9 to McCain 43.3. What does it mean? Next to nothing. And Obama's team not only knows it, it thrives on it. They think "horse race" in the classic Seabiscuit sense. Out of the gate, the thoroughbred who leads too early and by too great a margin is more often than not the vulnerable one, the one in danger of losing it all to the horse who strategically holds back, waits, and then thunders in the final furlongs to finish first. Obama's political guru, David Axelrod, and his Chicago-based firm, AKP&D lay it out on their Web site. "We win tough races. . . . campaigns no one thought could be won," it states. "The governor who came from 20 points behind" . . . (Iowa's Tom Vilsack). "The incumbent mayor who came back from 20 points down in only 20 days" . . . (Deedee Corradini in Salt Lake City) "The congresswoman who won Dan Quayle's old seat in an upset" . . . (Indiana's Jill Long). Axelrod & Co. can now include in its victory list the skinny unknown from Chicago who in one short year went from a mere 26 percent in the polls to toppling front-runner Hillary Clinton who was a full 22 points ahead of him last August. "The national numbers mean nothing," said John Kupper, the "K" in AKP&D, last week by phone. "These are not national elections but state by state elections. We have vote goals. We know prior performance models." In other words, this is now and always has been the sum of political component parts for the Obama operation, not a national popular election but a sophisticated, incremental accumulation of delegates in the primary, and electoral votes come November. It isn't that Axelrod's team has had no experience losing. Their most recent defeat came in 2006 and it stung. The candidate, Tammy Duckworth, was a charismatic Iraq war veteran, a pilot who lost both legs when her helicopter was shot down. Though Duckworth and AKP&D had a corner on charisma and a lot of cash, they failed to wrest U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde's former seat from Republican control. Obama can certainly lose this race. But McCain's going to have to find a better way to win it than by invoking Paris Hilton or by sniping in his most recent ad how "life in the spotlight must be grand but for the rest of us, times are tough." What's tough for McCain is that despite having had a practice run at the presidency once before, it didn't limber him up, cause him to realize that even the elderly now skillfully navigate the Internet or help him craft a "vision thing." In the short run, jealous jabs at Obama for having too much face time on the covers of Rolling Stone and GQ may appear to close the gap in national polls. But the aggregation of images -- Obama in Germany, Obama with his cute girls and beautiful wife, Obama visiting his grandmother in Hawaii -- is by dribs and drabs helping America feel familiar with him, visualize him on foreign soil, and see him, perhaps, as both human and presidential. In some ways the tightening numbers work for Obama, not against him. "No cause for panic," said Kupper. No, indeed, Obama is off to splash in the Pacific surf with his family. It's the horse race play. Or, as the Axelrod game goes, you always play the come from behind, even when you're ahead. Suck on those eggs

Yeah, that music is a nice touch. By the way Ben, why don't you try reading up on Georgia a bit before declaring McCain a "hero". The situation seems a bit more complicated than Russia Bad, Georgia Good. http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0811/p09s03-coop.html The fact that you are so quick to imbibe the myth of the maverick and the myth that McCain is somehow strong on foreign policy is bizarre. The truth is that the Georgian President is playing a dangerous game and he has Schenurman on his payroll because he has the support of a cabal of neocons who want to use Georgia as a front against Russia. Get your head out of your ass. Obama Bad, McCain good is formulation from you that is getting old and has been old for a long time. Notice that the number of comments people are leaving has dried up? Why aren't people coming around much anymore?

I really hope this doesn't go up during the Olympics...

Lame..McCain's Celebrity ad Was Waaaay Better....Obama not only Plagiarizes but can't get back at McCain with anything original. McCain's "The One" and "Celebrity"...Awesome!

When will the MSM tackle the issues of McCain's aboslutely horrible treatment of his first wife and the missing (re: hidden) military records? We listened to accounts of Obama's former pastor for months. There really does seem to be a double standard. McCain's greatest "achievement" is that he was an absolutely lousy fighter pilot. Take away the admiral father, the admiral grandfather, and the heiress second wife and nobody even knows who John McCain is. He is an opportunist not an achiever. Graduating in the bottom 1% of your class (any class) is an embarresment. There are corporations who routinely eliminate the bottom 10% of their workforce (e.g. General Electric used to do this) because statistically they know that this people will never rise in the organization as leaders.

I would have included more of McCain's many Hollywood credits in the ad, but I'll take it. I hate that Obama has to play this as during the olympics, but the GOP Hate Machine is ruthless. You can't give these bigots an inch.

hahaha...thats pretty good

Like the emphasis on OLD

Pwned

Key Quotes Been in Washington for DECADES, OLD

I think this ad is just as dumb and counter-productive as McCain's. It actually makes McCain look semi-exciting.

good, but derivative. Mccain got the most bang for his buck with the "celebrity" remark, this feels like the Obama team is playing cath up and that isn't a good place for the "front runner".

bubba, maybe the number of comments has dropped because of commenters like you who like to spout off the Obama campaign's talking points rather than make a genuine, personal comment on a story or the commenters who spout off complete non-sense unrelated to the story at hand. Or it could just be that people are on vacation.

I laughed when I saw this. It's good.

For me, the "fun" music in the background made it a lot less negative. Different music could have made a much more negative feel. I'm sure the Obama camp knows what they wanted to acheive out of it. A funny ad, in my opinion. Go Obama!

Ben, I noticed some other have commented on your site's need to put out a "Does Obama have a Problem with..." garbage every few days. The latest being your front pager today. After 4 months or more of the media running this storyline nonstop it's getting old and really silly, Ben. Obama is doing just fine and they don't seem to be worried. Maybe because the media is wringing their hands everyday for them. By the way, shouldn't you do some "Does McCain have a problem with.." as he doesn't seem to be doing so great.

So Obama criticized McCain's negative ads before he ran his own. Seems like he is taking both sides of the issue again. And of course he isn't wrong or hypocritical for doing it. Maybe he can blame it on his grandmother and throw her under the bus again.

I probably wouldn't have approved it, just because it puts a happy smiling John McCain on the air. John McCain hasn't been smiling much since realizing he wasn't facing Clinton. Again, low info voters don't hear what you *say*, just react to images.

The "celebrity" thing is dumb. The GOP is the party that gave us Sonny Bono, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Ronald Reagan the movie actor. Both candidates are well-known. It doesn't really merit a full ad response like this.

That is the key word here. OLD....McBush is OLD in every way....how about some reports on how badly McBush treated his wife and dumped her.....He was cheating with the stepford wife to be Cindy and even got his marriage lisence BEFORE his divorce was final

It's pretty juvenile. I think Obama should have made an effort st stay above this stuff.

I have to agree that the endless storyline about the frontrunner having so much to worry about is more than weird--it could influence the outcome, which is simply wrong. The best comment in this thread is is: why don't we have equally regular stories about what McCain has to worry about? e.g., a headline asking whether the Edwards story could be bad for McCain, who cheated on someone equally sympathetic to Eliz Edwards to get to Cindy, or a headline asking whether his tendency to take the advice of the last person he spoke with should disqualify him from being president, or whether maverick (or contrarian) is consistent with leadership, and so forth.

It's on now! Two can play this game you know. It was kinda getting boring with him not fighting back.

Hilarious!

I can't help but LOL on this advert. It is a negative advert but even McToast will laugh at it.

I like the part that McToast and his 'Band of Brother' were going for a hit job.

Funny!

Ironic, the old time swing band music. Is this an inference to McCain's age? I wonder what the response would be to an ad on Obama with some scenes of the ghettos in Obama's district juxtaposed with Rezko's Cash with some laid back Dj Screw tracks playing? What would the sages at the NYT say? I guess as in the primary fight with hillary in which sexism was more forgivable than racism, now ageism is less of a sin than racism. Is sexism combined with ageism as grievious a sin as racism?

I think this ad actually makes McCain look GOOD! He's laughing, smiling; showing him on SNL and The View gives him a hip look. Except for the inaccuracy about the vote, I don't think the McCain campaign will have a problem with this ad. Plus, unlike Obama, McCain is able to laugh at himself. Point for McCain!

I think the point is that McCain is OLD politics - and he knows the game. If you want things to continue as they have been, then he has the most experience to continue the status quo. McCain is THE Washington insider. He cares about promoting his own interests above the people's. People just don't pay the same dividends as lobbyists.