Its............ Great!

Tony the Tiger...

Joe I Am

McCain taps into J the P energy.

Returning to his Roots

Remember during primary season, when Barack worked really hard to convince people he was the candidate who could bring change? Once he got the nomination, he changed all his positions, so pretending to be a new kinda politician seemed like a waste of all the money that Barbra Streisand, George Clooney and Steven Spielberg had been giving him.

Now, Barack tries to reclaim control of the conversation with a two minute ad that shows a desire to get serious, again, about pretending to be an agent of change.

Lipstick Attack

Barack gets attacked on lipstick by GOP.

Hitting a Girl

After having messed up on its initial response to the choice of Sarah Palin, Barack's folks are treading more lightly now, still off-balance from the surprise. Their first ad responding to her selection doesn't mention her - it just laments that he's still the same old John McCain.

McCain's Biden Ad

McCain already has the Biden ad in circulation.

Economy Ad

A well-done new ad for Barack. Not responding to McCain's celebrity theme directly, but sidestepping it and looking serious on the economy. Smart.



ABC's Jake Tapper nitpicks the ad:

There's some pretty iffy stuff in there -- Obama has voted to send tens of
billions to Iraq, too, though quite obviously he has also voted against funding
the war as well. And oil moneys aside, that's a pretty remarkable suggestion,
that the Iraqis are living high on the hog and screwing the very US taxpayers
who are helping them.

He's right, of course. But the ad still works.

Celebrity Redux

The McCain Campaign has a new spot, again asking if a guy who is nothing but a celebrity is the right guy to make president.

Barack's Oil(y) Ad

Here's Barack's new ad that attacks McCain for having accepted donations from Big Oil. It fails to mention that Barack has, too. New Kinda Politics, eh?

Barack Uses the Shield

Barack employs "The Shield" in a new TV commercial defending himself against McCain attacks. It's a high road tactic that softly accuses, with disappointment, the opponent of using the low-road. It gives a Barack a chance to resurrect the "old politics" accusation. Running against McCain, Barack likes to be saying the word "old" as often as possible.

Landstuhl Has Legs

John McCain is running an ad that goes after Barack for not visiting injured American troops in Germany.

During his trip to Germany, Obama was scheduled to visit the American hospitals at Ramstein and Landstuhl, but cancelled the trips after being told by Pentagon officials that he could only visit in his official capacity as a senator, not as a candidate.

The cancellation of the visit is the sort of decision that threatens to undo the positive image presented to U.S. military personnel from the photo-ops of Barack with troops from Afghanistan last week. Why did it happen?

I was going to be accompanied by one of my advisors (Major General Jonathan Gration), a former military officer." Continued Obama, "And we got notice that he would be treated as a campaign person, and it would therefore be perceived as political because he had endorsed my candidacy but he wasn’t on the Senate staff. That triggered then a concern that maybe our visit was going to be perceived as political.