Celeb

The latest ad from the John McCain campaign is clearly hitting home. Here it is:

The Obama campaign is screaming like a stuck pig over that one, so clearly McCain is hitting them where they hurt. Some liberal writers are claiming the ad is racist, it's trying to make voters think Obama has a thing for young white girls, or the GOP is trying to compare Obama to Hitler. Ross Douthat pretty much knocks that last one down:

Here's a tip for liberals: If your candidate is going to stage enormous rallies in front of tens of thousands of chanting Germans (with monuments to Prussian military might in the background) in the middle of his Presidential campaign, it isn't the GOP's fault if the footage comes out looking a little like Hitler at Nuremberg.

Senator Lindsay Graham, who is surgically attached to McCain's hip, was asked about the ad and had a pretty good response:

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina)

Well, one thing's for sure. If you embark upon a world tour, and you decide to make a campaign speech in a foreign country in front of 200,000 Germans, and you act like you're already president, people may notice.

And that's what this is about: that he chose to go to Germany and do something I've never known a candidate to do before. You know, he orchestrated the press conference with the French president. He said something, yesterday, basically, that he embodies everything good about America. Well, you know, it's good to have self-confidence. But you can, maybe, go too far.

The whole ad is about the idea of fame without portfolio. Paris Hilton is famous for being famous. She draws a crowd for no apparent reason. Well, I think he has, you know — in Senator Obama's case, is the effort to be commander in chief and the leader of the free world about portfolio?

He is a celebrity, no question about it. Somebody asked me about Germany. I said, "There goes Germany. We're going to have to get to 270 without Germany." (LAUGHTER)

But this is a hysteria around a personality that's attractive, but when you look under the hood, there's not a whole lot there. So fame without portfolio is, sort of, fashionable. But leadership without experience is dangerous.

Exactly.