This is the latest iteration of John McCain's "celebrity" meme:

Link

Notice the eager teenage-girl scrawl of the lettering.
Notice also the sidelong glance by Obama... is he checking out your teenage daughter?

It's pretty stupid, but par for the course in terms of politics.

What is arguably of some concern to Obama supporters is that McCain has successfully found a theme he can pound into the ground regarding Obama, from now till the election. It's not clear that Obama has found something similar regarding McCain.

One option is to portray McCain as someone who has "abandoned his principles." Think of the flip flops over the last few years, the overtures to the right wing fringe he had previously had so much disdain for. The lockstep voting with George Bush, abandoning the idea of being a maverick. And finally, the abandonment of his repeated explicit promise to conduct a respectful campaign based on an honest discussion of the issues.

The facts are all there to make this case. And the more John McCain smears Obama, the more Obama can get on McCain regarding his abandonment of civility in the campaign. Finally, Obama should explicitly and repeatedly draw the connection between an uncivil politics and an unhealthy system of governance. Bush has shown that you can win elections by tearing the country apart, but when the people are divided, the lobbyists and special interests move in and assert their control over our politics.

Why not a scary ad with lobbyists, backroom deals, George Bush, and shifty-looking politicians employing divisive political tactics, cementing in people's minds the connection between bad politics, corruption and bad governance? This would be a negative ad that targets a political style, not McCain directly. But McCain's negative political tactics then become a liability.