Today I heard someone say, earnestly, that if John McCain wants to win in November he should give up the silly “celebrity” attack ads and run on his positions on issues. What a charming idea!

Of course, it’s not going to happen.

McCain cannot run on issues because (1) he genuinely doesn’t want the American people to know his stands on issues, because he is way to the right of most people on most issues; and (2) Republicans don’t run on issues. Not for president, anyway. They run by smearing the Dem and turning him into a cartoon.

Some of you may remember that at one point during the 2004 campaign, several of us bloggers noticed that Kerry’s web site featured Kerry’s positions on issues, whereas the Bush web site was saturated with several cartoon drawings of Kerry. (I made a screen capture of this that I cannot find now. It seems to have disappeared from my archives, alas.) Not a single substantive policy position could be found, beyond “stay the course.”

And, notice who “won.”

As I remember it, about 95 percent of the Bush 2004 campaign consisted of ridiculing John Kerry. Republicans wore band aids to the Republican convention to ridicule Kerry’s Vietnam War injuries. GOP operatives were sent to Kerry rallies to wave “flip flops.” (Dem operatives, of course, were locked out of Bush rallies.) Once, after a story came out about Kerry going duck hunting, I recall Karl Rove and Karen Hughes popping out of Air Force One wearing duck hunting gear, complete with “Elmer Fudd” ear flap hats.

And, of course, the lazy sots that comprise “U.S. news media” covered the buffoonery and not the issues.

This strategy almost backfired. Dana Milbank wrote in the Washington Post (“Bush’s Cartoon of Kerry Failed to Show Up,” October 15, 2004):

By turning Kerry into a cartoon, the Bush campaign created such low expectations for the senator that he easily exceeded them in the debates.

Leading up to the first debate, the Bush campaign very effectively defined John Kerry as a wishy-washy flip-flopper who never knew where he stood, and then they get on the stage and here’s a John Kerry who differs from the perception,” said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster.

Marshall Wittmann, a former aide to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) now with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, said Bush had gone “over the top” in making Kerry seem ridiculous.

“It was a case of taking a caricature to such an extent and not realizing the caricature could be disassembled by the candidate himself in the debates,” he said. “You would have expected a hybrid of Jane Fonda and Ted Kennedy would walk on stage. . . . People expected to see a left-wing, beaded radical.”

If the election had been held immediately after any of the three debates, I believe the outcome would have been different. However, by the time election day came, the GOP successfully had re-booted the cartoon Kerry in enough of the public’s mind to keep Bush in the White House. (With some help with the shenanigans in Ohio, of course.)

So, expect McCain ads to do little else but lie about and ridicule Obama. Why tamper with success?

The swift boaters are back, too. Jerome Corsi has a new book out called Obama Nation (cute) that promises to do to Obama what Unfit for Command did to Kerry. Jim Rutenberg and Julie Bosman write for the New York Times:

Significant parts of the book, whose subtitle is “Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality,” have already been challenged as misleading or false in the days since its debut on Aug. 1. Nonetheless, it is to make its first appearance on The New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction hardcovers this Sunday — at No. 1.

The book is being pushed along by a large volume of bulk sales, intense voter interest in Mr. Obama and a broad marketing campaign that has already included 100 author interviews with talk radio hosts across the country, like Sean Hannity and G. Gordon Liddy, Mr. Corsi said on Tuesday.

That’s the plan. Write a book full of reckless and unsupported charges, kick it up the bestsellers lists with bulk sales by right-wing interests, then make the rounds of cable television and talk radio to “discuss” the book. It’s an effective way to spread lies and propaganda.

Watching politics these days, for me, is like watching the scariest, ickiest part of a scary, icky movie. This is the part where the cute, blond starlet doesn’t know the creepy thing that ripped all her friends’ heads off and sucked out their brains is right behind her. I much prefer movies with singing and dancing cartoon animals to scary, icky movies, and if I’m in a theater watching something scary and icky usually I don’t watch. I’ll look away or take my glasses off or something.

As I said, politics is like that these days. I don’t want to watch. The thing that rips off heads and sucks out brains, a.k.a. the Republican Party, is too close.

The GOP campaigns for the White House — and other elected offices — by turning the Democrat into a cartoon. They’re really good at that. It doesn’t matter who the Dems nominate; they could nominate Jesus, and the GOP would turn Jesus into a cartoon. And they hammer, hammer, hammer the cartoon Dem candidate into the voters’ heads, and if enough voters buy the message, the GOP wins the election without actually having to talk about, you know, issues.

Now we’re seeing what sort of cartoon they want Barack Obama to be. Carrie Budoff Brown writes,

Barack Obama’s critics laid down the foundations of the strategy months ago: The Republican National Committee started the “Audacity Watch” back in April, and Karl Rove later fueled the attack by describing the first-term Illinois senator as “coolly arrogant.”

It wasn’t until the last week, however, that the narrative of Obama as a president-in-waiting — and perhaps getting impatient in that waiting — began reverberating beyond the inboxes of Washington operatives and journalists. …

… And the snickers about Obama’s perceived smugness may have a very real political impact as McCain’s camp launched its most forceful effort yet to define him negatively. It released a TV ad Wednesday describing Obama as the “biggest celebrity in the world,” comparable to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, stars who are famous for attitude rather than accomplishments.

The harsher treatment from comedians and columnists — coupled with the shift by McCain from attacking on policy to character issues — underscores the fine line that Obama is walking between confident and cocky. Once at pains to present himself as presidential, Obama now faces criticism for doing it too well.

Jonathan Singer writes at MyDD that the McCain “Obama is arrogant” message is for media and Washington insiders, not voters. But if the McCain camp can sell this to media and Washington insiders, it’ll trickle down to voters eventually.

Here’s Obama’s response. You will need to be familiar with this to understand the next turn in the plot:

“John McCain right now, he’s spending an awful lot of time talking about me,” Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said today in Rolla, Mo. “You notice that? I haven’t seen an ad yet where he talks about what he’s gonna do. And the reason is because those folks know they don’t have any good answers, they know they’ve had their turn over the last eight years and made a mess of things. They know that you’re not real happy with them.”

Obama continued: “And so the only way they figure they’re going to win this election is if they make you scared of me. So what they’re saying is, ‘Well, we know we’re not very good but you can’t risk electing Obama. You know, he’s new, he’s… doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency, you know, he’s got a, he’s got a funny name.’

“I mean, that’s basically the argument — he’s too risky,” Obama said, per ABC News’ Sunlen Miller. “But think about it, what’s the bigger risk? Us deciding that we’re going to come together to bring about real change in America or continuing to do same things with the same folks in the same ways that we know have not worked? I mean, are we really going to do the same stuff that we’ve been doing over the last eight years? … That’s a risk we cannot afford. The stakes are too high.”

Jake Tapper, who needs to retire, reads between the lines of Obama’s response and projects onto it a whole lot of subtext that I don’t see, and comes up with this conclusion:

Correct me if I’m wrong, but does it not seem as if Obama just said McCain and his campaign — presumably the “they” in this construct — are saying that Obama shouldn’t be elected because he’s a risk because he’s black and has a foreign-sounding name?

Do you see what Tapper sees in Obama’s response? Because I sure don’t see it. But of course now the McCain campaign is whining that Obama is playing the “race card.”

If there is one thing Obama has been very cautious about, it’s bringing race into the campaign. As I’ve written before, he goes out of his way not to be the “black candidate.” He and his surrogates have brought up race occasionally, when they had to, but they drop it quickly.

Obama has also worked very hard not to display anger throughout his campaign; the cool demeanor may or may not be the “real” Obama, but he is incredibly disciplined about keeping his cool. And that’s because he understands that there are whites who can like a nice black man, but who will run screaming from an angry black man, even if the black man has plenty to be angry about.

So what’s left? Since the old angry black man stereotype wouldn’t work, the GOP has reached even deeper into white America’s racial memory and brought forth — the uppity black man stereotype.

Yes, Obama is a confident man. Think about it; is he somehow more confident than, say, Ronald Reagan? or John Kennedy, if you are old enough to remember John Kennedy? Or Bill Clinton? When you think about those pols from the past, and their public personas, is Barack Obama’s public persona in any appreciable way different? If it is, I’m not seeing it.

So, although the Barack Obama campaign did not accuse McCain of playing on racism — I am.

And what’s with the two white chicks — Paris Hilton and Britney Spears — the “celebrity” ad somehow associates with Obama? The subliminal message is too obvious — he’s not only an uppity black man; he’s an uppity black man being associated with two sexually available white women.

And just how stupid are “pundits” like Tapper not to see this?

But most of them don’t see it, or won’t, and so the dippy young starlet cheerfully walks down the dark alley with the brain-sucking thing right behind her. And I can’t look.