Num num num num:
Personally, I would have found a way to put this picture in there, but maybe they are saving that for September and October:

It is such a touching and intimate portrait. You can almost see their tire gauges standing at full attention.
Teak111
Go Obama, go. Keep pounding the message. McCain=Bush. Over and over and over til it hurts.
bago
Obama v Hilton v McCain.
There’s at least one spot in that matchup where we can be guaranteed to find no bush.
the whacker
Nothing better than hearing the words coming out of McSame’s own mouth. Here’s hoping they run it until it catches on with the undecideds.
uh_clem
Two smart things about this ad:
1) it hangs the Bush 43 legacy around McCain’s neck like a 16 ton albatross. Perhaps the best overall strategy.
2) The voice over is done in a more restrained voice than the usual attack ads. Usually when I hear an attack ad, the stridency and assholishness of the voice over makes me want to dive for the channel selector to turn it off – regardless of which side the attack ad is aimed at.
DannyNoonan
This ad is exactly what Obama should be doing. Just put this message on repeat: McCain is Bush is nothing changes. McCain is Bush is nothing changes. McCain is Bush is nothing changes.
montysano
So, is Cindy McCain gonna get nekkid at Sturgis? Because, sad as it is, I’m totally down with that. Wrinkly White-Haired Dude’s wife is hawt, if you can get past the crazy eyes.
And how will BO respond?
But the “tire gauges standing at full attention” thing? John, you’re a cruel sombitch.
harlana pepper
singing: “Put your head on my shoooouuuulder! Take me in your arms, baby!”
bootlegger
I disagree with those who say Obama needs to attack McCain with the same Rovian tactics being used against him. I think he’s found a pretty good groove by pointing out the stupidity of the Rovian lets-see-what-shit-sticks machine. He looks smart, witty, and tough at the same time. I don’t think the Whippersnapper needs to go beyond the McCain=Bush attack tactic if he keeps counterpunching as well as he is.
Buck
Just reading this post almost put a little air back in my tire gauge.
Joshua Norton
So do his cheeks bulge like that from all the brain farts he’s holding in? Or is he storing nuts for the winter?
I’m just saying….
p.spoofasiak
The lack of enthusiasm for Obama in the downticket races is being seen already. On a stiflingly hot day, turnout was very low in the Missouri state primary election with about 300,000 Democratic votes cast. Chris Koster and Margaret Donnelly may go to a recount.
montysano
He just seems uppity to me.
The Moar You Know
Ouch. That’s gonna leave a mark.
Davis X. Machina
He just seems uppity to me.
Me too. And dark. Real dark.
Has anyone mentioned that yet? Because I think it could become a problem…
4jkb4ia
OK, it wasn’t nice to make fun of trolls like that. Nice pointed ad. Let’s see how much belief is out there that no Democrat will really cut taxes on the middle class.
Incertus
Melissa McEwan made this version of the McCain-Bush hug. I’d have linked her post if I could have found it.
Zifnab
I’m eagerly waiting for the 2010 and 2012 campaign ads that criticize Obama’s reckless tax cuts during a time of high deficits. How can you cut taxes on the middle class in a TIME OF WAR Mr. President?! Oh! Oh! The fiscal irresponsibility. Someone fetch the smelling salts.
Jake
Gosh, maybe Obama does know what he’s doing. Who’d a thunk it?
It’s been kind of interesting the past week or so, reading some of the lefty bloggers begin to morph into concern trolls over Obama’s weakness to McCain’s attacks. You’d almost think none of them witnessed the primary, where he, you know, eviscerated a lady who’s pretty good at the political knife-fight type stuff.
Brachiator
Gee, it’s kinda like “Brokeback Republicans.” There’s gotta be a picture somewhere of a Bush/McCain/Lieberman threesome.
Not that there’s anything wrong with it.
TR
I think they’re holding back the hug image until October.
Also, there are more recent quotes of McCain bragging about how he’s a loyal Bushie, and we’re going to see those brought out as well.
Dreggas
Are you f’ing kidding me? There is all kinds of wrong with that, least of which is I now need to bleach my brain.
Jay in Oregon
You’d almost think none of them witnessed the primary, where he, you know, eviscerated a lady who’s pretty good at the political knife-fight type stuff.
Ghoulish imagery aside, I would point out that Obama wasn’t really going at it alone; he had the entire neocon wing of the country as well as a good portion of the Democratic Party working on her.
Now, the neocons are going after Obama full-tilt, and the PUMAs and those Obama has managed to alienate for one reason or another (FISA, “a women’s right to choose with her doctor, her pastor and her family”, etc.) aren’t going to go to bat for him.
Incertus
And this one from Blast Off! is even better.
yet another jeff
Letterboxing is elitist.
Dreggas
My take on the strategy of this week for Obama here
Pb
Incertus,
I rather enjoyed this one…
Haha. I didn’t notice that at first. Good one!
The Moar You Know
OT: The kangaroo court does their job. I’m sure the world will see this as a legitimate exercise of justice.
Cruel Jest
That was a h/t to the General, right?
LarryB
bootlegger, who are “those” you speak of? I don’t see anyone except you making this claim. Anyway, you clearly don’t know what a “Rovian attack” looks like: Implying that Barack Obama is a an uppity negro who wants to f**k your (white) sister is a Rovian attack. Saying that McCain would be Bush III is just stating the facts.
cleek
well of course not. the PUMAs are Republicans.
harlana pepper
I truly think it *would* have been a nice touch to use the hug photo in the ad. I realize the Obama camp is above all that and stuff but McCain woulda done it. In a heartbeat. If Obama had nuzzled Al Gore like that . . .
D. Mason
If by “working on her” you mean registering as democrats to vote for her in primaries, then yeah, they were totally in the bag for Obama.
Kirk
The Moar You Know, sorry, but it didn’t do its job – in either direction.
He was supposed to get slammed with the Big Terrorism charge. Instead, the kangaroo pulled a minor charge out of its pocket – material support. So instead of the charge that says “eternal imprisonment”, it’s “Two years maximum time.”
In most of the civilized world, the sentence would include the phrase “time served”. Here, the Bush administration is going to get to explain why they’re going to keep this person in prison longer even after they’ve tried, convicted, and sentenced him. Not to mention the Bush administration gets to continue BSing about how this was supposed to be a Big Bad terrorist, and even with a Kangaroo court it couldn’t get the Big charge.
It would have been better, politically, if the kangaroo had acquitted. This is ugly from a PR point of view.
jake
Thanks. I’m going to pull my brain out and beat it with a rock now.
McCain as the Ancient Mariner. Me like.
Just Some Fuckhead
What the fuck is the “neocon wing of the country” and if such a thing actually existed, why wouldn’t it have backed HRC who enabled and supported the Iraq debacle and offered initial support for a new debacle in Iran?
Tsulagi
Good Obama ad. And yeah, they should have ended with that classic photo of Maverick McCain expressing his unconditional man love via a tender embrace of his younger daddy figure. So Republican. All they needed to complete the photo was his and his wetsuits hanging nearby for after the foreplay.
No doubt. But McCain should be careful handing out those tire pressure gauges to his base. How long before we see one of them in an autopsy report on Smoking Gun in three wetsuits with a McCain gauge up his ass?
DougJ
Slightly off topic, but I thought this was funny in today’s WaPo chat:
bago
Wasn’t the detonation of the H-bomb off of Bikini Atoll quite a bit later than 1932?
Svensker
Ummm?
No bikinis in 1932. Even there had been, can’t imagine Mrs. Roosevelt wearing one.
Davis X. Machina
McCain as the Ancient Mariner. Me like.
Not when it comes to terrorist attacks, because, as we all remember, the Ancient Mariner ‘stoppeth one in three’….
Zifnab
That’s better than the going rate.
Noah
John McCain endorses Barack Obama for President!
Matthew
Yes, that photo of their bromance hug should be used in an ad: “John McCain, remember when you used to embrace George Bush and his policies? We do.”
Matthew
Yes, I’ve long hoped that the photo of their bromance hug would be used in an ad: “John McCain, remember when you used to embrace George Bush, embrace him *and* his policies? We do.”
Brachiator
And McCain should know, since the wrinkly old dude was present at that campaign stop. But more likely, McCain is just lying again, and hoping that a lazy press won’t challenge him on this before some voters have absorbed this BS as gospel.
In the 1932 campaigns, the GOP tried to brand FDR as a traitor to his class. By the 1936 race, they tried to brand him as an elitist. Sound familiar?
And despite a bad economy, Landon kept holding on to phony GOP tactics like lies that FDR was going to raise taxes to unsustainable levels. The election even had the equivalent of PUMA, here the disaffected Democrats of the elitist Liberty League, who promised that they would help defeat FDR by forming a third party or by backing the Republicans. They tried to blast FDR with a charge that Obama might recognize:
But in the end, voters saw through the GOP smear, and so in the 1936 general election, FDR crushed Landon, winning 523 electoral votes to Landon’s 8.
So McCain clinging to Dubya and earnestly declaring, “I just can’t quit you!” is probably the best thing for Obama and the Democratic Party.
mark
The photo always reminds me of the final lines from 1984:
The Grand Panjandrum
Heh. Why do you think assholes like me keep coming back. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
D-Chance.
Why does Obama hate Arabs?
cleek
oh noes, pity the thrifty! won’t somebody think of the thrifty?!!?!?
thrifty.
i just like that word.
t h r i f t y
Hedley Lamarr
In that huggy photo, at least Sidney is not wearing his bleached chinos and the dorky baseball cap. Must be nighttime.