In the heat of the summer, the presidential race seems to have lost its fire. The contest between McCain and Obama had promised to be a clash of starkly different histories and personalities, and - thanks to both candidates' commitment to bipartisanship and dialogue - had even promised to be about something, about lofty visions as well as the detail of meatier policy issues. Obama claimed to have ushered in a "new politics", a claim bolstered by the resilience and high-mindedness with which he overcame the rancorous Hillary Clinton. These pretensions look threadbare amid an increasingly dreary squabble.
There is little "new" - in that sweeping sense that the word gains when associated with Obama - to be found in the war of impressions that has occupied the US media in recent weeks. Obama's successful trip to Europe won him a good deal of glowing press coverage. In response, the McCain camp has attacked the Democrat's "celebrity" (video below), linking Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.
The ad follows in the vein of McCain's strategy of striking principally at Obama's character, suggesting either a deficit of Americanness, experience, or substance, or all three. Note especially in this ad how McCain himself barely appears. The McCain camp have realised that there is little they can do to tear the limelight away from Obama. Thus the ad seeks to turn the international enthusiasm for Obama into pubescent sychophancy. By this reasoning, it's acceptable that McCain will never draw the crowds that Obama does, because those crowds represent drooling fandom, not meaningful political judgement.
The Obama camp has hit back with an ad of its own, arguing that McCain has taken the "low road" in his attacks, and repeatedly lumping McCain with the "old policies" and "old politics" of the Bush years. Obama does stroll through much of this ad (one of his crowning strengths, after all, is his presentability). But there is something quite dispiriting in its insistence on pushing buttons, on linking Bush to McCain (a strategy this blog has always been wary of since there is much to suggest that McCain would make a very different president), on the below the belt repetition of "old".
At a tactical level, of course, this is totally kosher campaign "politics". For us optimists, however, who were ready for something - is it alright to hope? - different, the much-vaunted "new politics" are nowhere in sight, sacrificed for "the brain-dead, instant-rebuttal paradigm of modern democratic politics", as Clive Crook at the Financial Times puts it. To be fair, such "difference" is more incumbent upon Obama than McCain. At the moment, Obama has yet to live up to his golden promises.