But sadly, I disagree about the ads, sort of.

It's true that celebrities are not necessarily classy in an old-fashioned sense. But a lot of Americans wouldn't know that sort of class if it ran them over in a Volvo. "Celebrity" is what counts as the top of the class ladder for your average 21st-century tv-watcher.

And the Republicans will blur boundaries between different sorts of elitism as needed. The Ivy League? Hollywood? France? They're not the same thing, but the point is that they're *not* Carthage, MO or Youngstown, OH -- and that'll do if your only purpose is to stir up ressentiment.

Moreover, as Josh & co. have pointed out, part of the effect is to identify Barack as an "entertainer" rather than a "leader" -- a task made easier by racial framing.

So I actually think the "celeb" stuff a pretty good strategy for McCain, and I don't expect it to disappear.

But I also don't think it'll work. The fundamentals are on our side. Economy's tanking. Eight-year itch. Barack is a great candidate. McCain is a serial flip-flopper who looks his age, can barely read a teleprompter and can't stay on the same message for more than six hours at a time. Poll numbers are stable. Financial advantage favors us. Etc. etc.

Some interesting Letters to the Editor today on Dowd's "Green-Eyed Monster" column on topic.

First, Jesse Jackson basically writes in to say "he's my kinda celeb." Reading that, I visualize Axelrod et. al. going "oh geez, pleez, why can't he shut up?"

More seriously, I thought the letters from Ted Brindisi and Thilo Weissflug expressed well the two main possible kinds of reactions to the McCain advertising theme. Brindisi is a swing type that the questions raised have affected, the "Mr. Cool" thing really bothers him, and the ads have reinforced it. He can be won over, though. The Weissflog letter, on the other hand, shows how it can backfire, lose him some voters.

Now I see what you mean by my last post being too "supercilious."

Ghengis, I was just getting ready to leave work and head off for a relaxing weekend free from urban concerns when I saw your post. As always you've earned my rec (particularly since I failed to show up at your fundraiser). As is sometims the case, I niggle. The problem with your theory, as I see it, is that you take the ad too literally. The question is not whether Obama is or wants to be a "celebrity." The message of the ad is "don't be blinded by celebrity." Put another way, Obama is being put on a pedestal he didn't earn. Obviously, this is an incredibly stupid ad - no other way to put it. Whether it is effective remains to be seen, but I think McCain will continue to hammer at this theme as it dovetails with the others you identified in your post. The Obama campaign has been remarkably slow footed in answering and putting out its own message.

What is the best response? I'd say more if I weren't headed for the door. Instead, I'll link to this outstanding piece which probably says it better anyway.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/drew-westen/why-voters-say-they-dont_b_117238.html

The celebrity meme reminds me of the Republican South Carilina 2000 primary. Here is a blast from the past:

Former First Lady Barbara Bush, George W. Bush's mother, complained to The Republic that the media were treating McCain like "sort of a star figure" and buying his campaign's "baloney" that her son was the establishment candidate.

"That's the silliest thing I ever heard," she said.

Back in South Carolina, the Bush campaign went negative, slamming McCain hard on taxes and veterans issues.

The Bush campaign's use of a marginal veterans rights activist named J. Thomas Burch to personally attack McCain for allegedly "abandon(ing) the veterans" incensed McCain. Five senators who fought in Vietnam led by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., even fired off a letter to Bush defending McCain's record and urging Bush to apologize and "disassociate" himself from efforts "to impugn John McCain's character and so maliciously distort his record on these critical issues."

McCain slugged back with particularly pointed TV ads.

The McCain spots accused Bush of lying like President Bill Clinton and asked viewers if they "really want another president in the White House that America can't trust."

Comparing a candidate to Clinton is "about as low a blow as you can give in a Republican primary," Bush groused.

Things spiraled downhill from there.

Bush's own anti-McCain campaign was overwhelming enough. But the third-party groups also ran TV and radio spots savaging McCain, and other foes deluged voters with anti-McCain messages ranging from the nasty to the outrageous. Political pundits still argue about whether some of those smears were linked to the official Bush campaign.

"In e-mails, faxes, flyers, postcards, telephone calls and talk radio, groups and individuals circulated all kinds of wild rumors about me, from the old Manchurian Candidate allegation to charges of having sired children with prostitutes," McCain wrote in Worth the Fighting For. "There wasn't a damn thing I could do about the subterranean assaults on my reputation except to act in a way that contradicted their libel. When things got so bad that I became discouraged by my own negative ads, we pulled them. But I spent too much of my time denouncing my opponent's campaign tactics instead of sticking with the message that I believed in and that had worked so well in New Hampshire."

The Manchurian Candidate was a 1962 Cold War thriller starring Frank Sinatra, Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey as a brainwashed former Korean War POW groomed by the Communists to infiltrate U.S. politics as an assassin. From time to time, fringe critics of McCain have sought to draw parallels between the movie plot and McCain's story.

A South Carolina mother brought to McCain's attention a story about a disturbing telephone call her 14-year-old son took. The youth, a Boy Scout, idolized McCain and became frightened and upset after the anonymous caller denounced his hero as "a cheat and a liar and a fraud."

McCain took the telephone call up with Bush, who denied having anything to do with it. "If I find out it was somebody from my campaign, they're not going to be in my camp anymore," Bush promised.

Another round of calls allegedly disparaged Cindy McCain as a drug user.

The more things stay the same, the more often Paris Hilton will change bikinis...

This is the summer doldrums, Genghis.

McCain is grasping at straws, any straws, in order to make Obama look "bad".

Ignore this. It doesn't matter, it won't take a foothold, and everyone who's a Republican already KNOWS in their heart that Obama is nothing but an arrogant showman.

In other words, "Nothing to see, here, ladies and gents.....move on."

My gut tells me that McCain will come to regret spending the summer months point out, basically, that people love Obama and don't care at all about McCain.