On Monday I argued that the McCain campaign's strategy of using Bill Ayers to attack Barack Obama would not work because the economic crisis trumped all. Today, the McCain campaign has tried to link Obama's association with Ayers to the economic crisis in a new ad.
Will it work?
No.
The ad is practically schizophrenic. The first third attacks Obama's "blind ambition" for "working with Ayers." The remaining two-thirds is about the housing crisis and an attack on "Congressional liberals" for letting it happen.
The connection between Ayers and the housing crisis? Who knows? The ad makes no effort to explain it.
Which more or less proves the point -- there is no connection between Ayers and the economic crisis.
Instead of focusing on Ayers Senator McCain might have chosen to spend a day outlining a comprehensive solution to the mess we are in. But that would require an understanding of the problem and an idea of how to fix it -- which John McCain clearly does not have.
Right now the McCain campaign is having a conversation with itself and the Republican base, while the rest of the country -- and Barack Obama -- is focused on the greatest economic meltdown since the Depression. It's not a good place for John McCain to be less than a month before the election.