Posted By: Stonecipher

July 31, 2008

If you’ve come anywhere near a TV tuned into a cable news channel in the past 24 hours you, no doubt, have seen John McCain’s latest ad attacking Barack Obama for being a celebrity. In case you missed it the first 36,574 times CNN, MSNBC or FOX News aired it, here it is:

I must admit I’m a bit confused by this. Never, in my life have I seen a candidate attack his opponent for being too popular. And not only did they attack him for being too popular, but they took it a step farther and went out of their way to exaggerate just how popular he actually is: "he’s the biggest celebrity in the world."?

Really?

I was going to move forward from this point in the article and question whether or not Obama really was the biggest celebrity in the world, but I can not compete with the entertainment that McCain Campaign Manager, Rick Davis provided journalists on a conference call yesterday morning. So here are a few excerpts from that conference call via Chuck Todd's First Read:

When asked what makes Obama a celebrity and not McCain, Davis said that he'd "love to think that John McCain was a big international celebrity, but he's not."

So, now, once again I am confused. Is this ad supposed to be an anti-Obama ad? Well, of course it is, the sinister voice tells us so. It just seems odd to begin an attack ad by starting it out with an admission that the other candidate is something (an international celebrity) that your candidate would like to be, but isn’t.

But it gets better. Davis is not done talking up the opposition:

"One of the points that should be clear here today is that the Obama campaign does a wonderful job of presenting their candidate in the most popular light that they can get, and I think they do a very good job at it," Davis said. "They have more fans around the world than Britney Spears does. I make that bold, blatant statement."

Wow. Rick, are you in the right business? Are you just making a statement of fact that your opponent is doing a fantastic job or are you confused as to what the role of a campaign staff should be? What light do you like to present your candidate in?

But no time to linger on that, there’s more:

McCain is more of a "global leader than a global celebrity," Davis added, saying that when other nations want to speak about the issues they turn to McCain. But, as Jonathan Martin points out, McCain’s "got a lengthy IMDB entry and had memorable walk-on's in both ‘24’ and ‘Wedding Crashers,’ the latter of which prompted a memorable Drudge headline.

McCain has also been applauded for his several appearances on Saturday Night Live and he has set records for his number of appearances on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Doesn’t seem like McCain is the type of guy who has actively avoided the label of celebrity. But moving on:

Why compare Obama with Spears and Hilton? "What we decided to do is find the top three international celebrities in the world, and I would say from our estimations Britney and Paris came in second and third," Davis said. "So from our perspective we have in this ad the three biggest celebrities in the world. But the McCain campaign didn't say where they got their celebrity rankings, and according to CelebrityPopularity.com, Obama is unranked. For the record, Britney Spears is No. 5 on the CelebrityPopularity list, Paris Hilton is No. 10 and apparently No. 1 is Eminem, followed by Mariah Carey and 50 Cent. (Another list found Obama No. 81. Miley Cyrus and Angelina Jolie were 1 and 2 in that one.)

I am the last person to claim to know anything about the world of celebrities, but I can't imagine that John McCain's staff has a much better grasp on it than I do, and the following excerpt seems to prove my point:

When asked if Obama was "frivolous" and "irresponsible," as is the perception with Spears and Hilton, Davis said, "Yeah" and "I think that's what we've been saying all along.... Apples to apples."

I know I already said "wow" in this piece, but WOW!

Apples to Apples!?! Barack Obama is apples to apples with Britney Spears and Paris Hilton? I’m no expert on celebrities, but have either Britney Spears or Paris Hilton ever done this:

I have a hunch they haven’t.

The notion that Barack Obama is somehow on par with Spears or Hilton in any way, shape or form is absolutely insane.

To be fair, however, Rick Davis did eventually provide an answer as to what this ad was about:

"Will people think of this as negative advertising? It's the most entertaining thing I've seen on TV in a while. I mean I don't -- I wouldn't anticipate anything about this being negative. I mean the point is this is the event he put on."

Well, good job Rick. 19 seconds of a 30-second ad spent on making the point "this is the event he put on." Thanks for clearing that up.

If this is your idea of a good, or even decent presidential campaign ad Mr. Davis, and if these are the messages you're trying to send to the American public, and if this is the level of complete and utter ineptness we can come to expect from you and your campaign, we're in for a boring election year.