Did the Celebrity Ad Backfire?

Frank Rich is always right on the money as once again Mr. Rich proves he got a clear handle on the pulse of national politics. Mr. Rich’s column is another must read this Sunday.

The Candidate We Still Don’t Know.

McCain never called for Donald Rumsfeld to be fired and didn’t start criticizing the war plan until late August 2003 nearly four months after “Mission Accomplished.” By then the growing insurgency was undeniable. On the day Hurricane Katrina hit, McCainlaughed it up with the oblivious president at a birthday photo-op in Arizona. McCain didn’t get to New Orleans for another six months and didn’t sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras.

McCain long ago embraced the right’s agents of intolerance, even spending months courting the Rev. John Hagee, whose fringe views about Roman Catholics and the Holocaust were known to anyone who can use the Internet. (Once the McCain campaign discovered YouTube, it ditched Hagee.) On Monday McCain is scheduled to appear at an Atlanta fund-raiser being promoted by Ralph Reed who is not only the former aide de camp to one of the agents of intolerance McCain once vilified (Pat Robertson) but is also the former Abramoff acolyte showcased in McCain’s own Senate investigation of Indian casino lobbying.

I find that Mr. Rich makes one particularly revealing sentence about McCain age handicap:

Most Americans still don’t know it is precisely for this reason that the McCain campaign has now shut down the press’s previously unfettered access to the candidate on the Straight Talk Express.

McCain doesn't want press access, but makes an ad showing Obama's "celebrity" status which doesn't bode well knowing that McCain is fairly frighten of too much exposure. Remember that McCain only wanted town hall meetings as opposed to national debates? Obama knows why McCain can't handle celebrity status.

We all know why that is.