Bob Herbert Gets It

Yep.

Gee, I wonder why, if you have a black man running for high public office — say, Barack Obama or Harold Ford — the opposition feels compelled to run low-life political ads featuring tacky, sexually provocative white women who have no connection whatsoever to the black male candidates.

Spare me any more drivel about the high-mindedness of John McCain. You knew something was up back in March when, in his first ad of the general campaign, Mr. McCain had himself touted as “the American president Americans have been waiting for.”

There was nothing subtle about that attempt to position Senator Obama as the Other, a candidate who might technically be American but who remained in some sense foreign, not sufficiently patriotic and certainly not one of us — the “us” being the genuine red-white-and-blue Americans who the ad was aimed at.

Since then, Senator McCain has only upped the ante, smearing Mr. Obama every which way from sundown.

McCain's campaign has gone totally into the gutter. But unlike Rove's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, it has no issues, no credibility, and frankly no competence.

I'm obviously no fan of the Bush campaigns, but even they were above running ads with Britney, Paris and Moses. Everyone is pretending to be worried and/or outraged over these ads, but I find them patently ridiculous. McCain may get some short term bounce from all the free media he's getting, but at a serious long term cost.

McMaverick's credibility is now in the toilet.