Maybe The Time Has Come For Obama To Go On The Attack

From Gallup:

John McCain leads Barack Obama, 49% to 44%, in the immediate aftermath of the Republican National Convention, according to the latest Gallup Poll Daily tracking results.

OK, a post-convention bounce is certainly expected, but I'm tired of Obama's apparent refusal to really go after McCain with attack ads. If Obama continues to refuse to go on the attack, I just don't see him winning this thing.

The Obama Camp doesn't seem to have a problem calling McCain on all his bullshit. Here is Obama's response to the new McCain ad claiming that Sarah Palin opposed the Bridge to Nowhere:

Despite being discredited over and over again by numerous news organizations, the McCain campaign continues to repeat the lie that Sarah Palin stopped the Bridge to Nowhere. John McCain has voted with George Bush 90% of the time and he and Sarah Palin will continue Bush's economic policies, his health care policy, his education policy, his energy policy, and his foreign policy. McCain and Palin will say or do anything to make people believe that they will change something besides the person sitting in the Oval Office. That's the kind of politics people are tired of, and it's anything but change.

OK, that's a fine response, but why not respond with an attack ad instead, and saturate all of the battleground states with it?

Perhaps such an attack ad could incorporate this:

Key Alaska allies of John McCain are trying to derail a politically charged investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner in order to prevent a so-called "October surprise" that would produce embarrassing information about the vice presidential candidate on the eve of the election.

In a move endorsed by the McCain campaign Friday, John Coghill, the GOP chairman of the state House Rules Committee, wrote a letter seeking a meeting of Alaska's bipartisan Legislative Council in order to remove the Democratic state senator in charge of the so-called "troopergate" investigation. * * *

In his acceptance speech, McCain says that "change is coming," yet his involvement in attempting to derail the TrooperGate Scandal certainly sounds like "business as usual" to me.

Obama should use that in an attack ad. In a single 30-second spot, Obama could (1) accuse McCain of trying to cover up misdeeds of his running mate, (2) call into question McCain's judgment in selecting Palin in the first place, and (3) bring up the issue of McCain's advanced age and history of health problems, which McCain directly brought into play by naming someone as inexperienced as Palin to be, as they say, a "heartbeat away from the presidency." With regard to the age issue, the ad could simply state that Sarah Palin was chosen for the VP spot by a man who -- if he won in November -- would be the oldest first-term president in U.S. history.

Such an attack ad would, in my opinion, be supremely successful because it would highlight the inadequacies of Palin but would do so by attacking McCain, which is important because McCain is, after all, the one running for president. And most importantly, it would attack McCain on the whole "change" issue, which is critical because McCain is now trying to brand himself as the candidate of change. As Josh Marshall notes:

Embracing the idea that this is a change election puts McCain in a possibly winning but also extremely perilous position because the claim to represent change is inherently preposterous. The Obama camp should grab onto this concession, bank it and fight the rest of the election on these terms. How can a senator who's been in Washington for 26 six years and embraces all the policies of the president of the last eight years be change? It answers itself.

It's time to take the gloves off.