Lipstick on a pig

Someone on TV explained the Karl Rove political strategy to me the other night. It goes something like this: take your opponent's strengths and turn them into weakness. And take your weaknesses and turn them into strengths. This week the McCain campaign discovered a new one: take your weakness and turn them into your opponents.

The last 24 hours have seen them call Obama variously "sexist"* a "smear merchant" "desperate", and "a liar", all the while selling McCain as the agent of "change". Hypocrisy is gets nowhere near the mark: its more like transference. The McCain campaign aren't so much describing Obama as dwelling on the worst attributes of their own campaign and then projecting them, guiltily, onto their opponent. They'll be calling him white soon. Or a Bush-flunkie. The ultimate McCain ad would consist simply of Obama's face and underneath it the word "Republican."