Blog Buzz: John McCain's Ads and Barack Obama's Audacity

Our daily look at stories and topics lighting up the Internets:

McCommercials

So, is the McCain campaign backing down on its false ad about Obama wanting to bring the media to the troops? (Conservative answer: Even if the specifics are off, Obama was still wrong.) Regardless, he's got a new ad up trying to portray Obama as a political version of Britney or Paris (oh, how the McCainiacs wish there was Berlin Hilton or Berliny Spears). So, is the McCain campaign trying to paint Obama as "uppity"? Or are they just going Harold Ford on him? Libs say the ad simply makes Big McC look either ridiculous or like C. McC-gomery Burns. Conservatives disagree, of course. The important point, one conservative argues, is that they're closing the Obama money gap by getting the media to run their commercials over and over and over.

The audacity of audacity (or is it the audacity about audacity?)

The burning question today: Did Obama say that he had become a symbol of America possibly returning to its best traditions? Dems have been furiously trying to contextualize the controversial quote—he was saying that the campaign is bigger than him (does that mean that McCain would return the country to its worst traditions?)—but conservatives say it doesn't matter: Even in context, some say, Obama comes across as an arrogant blowhard; others say that the comment shows that the Obama campaign is about feelings, not ideas. (Maybe they miss the robots the Dems have run the last couple of cycles.)

—Robert Schlesinger