The Note: Baby One More Time

July 31, 2008 -- When Britney and Paris were thrust into the campaign, it was not a happy day in Obamaland.

Which is not the same as suggesting that it was a banner day for Team McCain.

It was a day where Sen. John McCain's campaign -- maybe for the first time in the general election -- found a coherent argument to effectively push. (Though it might not have been the argument McCain himself wants/needs.)

It was a day that made Steve Schmidt's team whirl with Rove-like efficiency. (And made John Weaver stir with un-Rove-like alacrity.)

It was a day that may have forced Sen. Barack Obama into a rare unforced error. (Yet may have forced McCain into the box he's been avoiding.)

It was a day when a quote -- however mischaracterized -- placed an exclamation point on a narrative. (Maybe two narratives, actually.)

"The new McCain ad depicts Obama as a celebrity akin to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton -- pretty, pampered . . . not up for being president," ABC's Jake Tapper reported on "Good Morning America" Thursday. "Now Obama is casting McCain -- who already has a reputation for having a temper -- as negative and angry."

Humor is humor, but there are other ways to make the same points about inexperience/riskiness/otherness -- frames that haven't been fully constructed yet.

The ad marks a critical point of concession: McCain is saying that the campaign isn't really about him, after all. And if he keeps this up, winning the presidency will continue to be far more about tearing Obama down than building himself up.

"John McCain's campaign gave its clearest signal yet that its main focus right now isn't talking about the presumed Republican nominee,"Bob Drogin and Peter Nicholas write in the Los Angeles Times. "Instead, it is trying to shape the public image of Obama -- in this case, by comparing him to two celebrities who are widely mocked as lacking substance."

(Was it a necessary concession? Sure, the campaign has been waged on Obama's terms to date, but things are tight as ever in new polling in battleground states.)

How long since the McCain campaign could count on this? "In a concerted volley of television interviews, news releases and e-mail, campaign representatives attacked him on a wide range of issues, including tax policies and energy proposals," Jim Rutenberg reports in The New York Times. "The moves are the McCain campaign's most full-throttled effort to define Mr. Obama negatively, on its own terms, by creating a narrative intended to turn the public off to an opponent."

"McCain's strategy is to leverage the enthusiastic crowds and personal charisma that have created excitement around Obama's campaign and use this celebrity to raise questions about Obama's depth," Jill Zuckman writes in the Chicago Tribune. "Framing Obama this way also allows the McCain campaign to highlight what some view as Obama's presumptuousness and inability to relate to ordinary people."

"The McCain campaign, under the direction of its new leader, Steve Schmidt, has settled on a storyline that could last through the election," Time's Michael Scherer writes. "It is, at root, an experience argument, adjusted to undercut the enormous enthusiasm that Obama generates."

This is a contrast ad disguising (thinly) as mockery: "Barack the Bimbo," reads the New York Post headline.

"Do the American people really want to elect the biggest celebrity in the world?" top McCain strategist Steve Schmidt said on a conference call with reporters, per ABC's David Wright.

"Oops! He did it again," said Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor, in response.

"Same old politics, same failed policies," says the announcer in Obama's response ad, with McCain next to another famous person: President Bush.

(What's next? How about a Madonna reference? Huge celebrity -- doesn't deliver at the box office.)

But if you treat someone like the frontrunner long enough, won't people start believing you?

"Senator John McCain has made a strategic decision to go directly negative much earlier than usual in the presidential race," Michael Kranish writes in The Boston Globe. "The McCain campaign hopes that the ads will define Obama before the presumptive Democratic nominee can fully introduce himself to voters -- a classic campaign tactic. But the taunting commercials also risk backlash if they are seen at odds with McCain's repeated pledges to run a civil campaign on the issues."

"Presidential rivals Barack Obama and John McCain both appear to be seizing the roles in which they have been cast: Sen. Obama as front-runner and Sen. McCain as underdog," Laura Meckler and Amy Chozick write in The Wall Street Journal. "Democratic Sen. Obama, who has taken to openly musing about the likelihood that he will be elected, risks coming off as arrogant and presumptuous. His Republican rival, who proclaims himself to be running behind at every stop and relentlessly attacks his opponent, risks coming off as negative and whiny."

Can the Straight Talk Express still run with this kind of overhaul? And who's driving, anyway?

Schmidt looks like he's at the helm, but: "The sharp-edged approach is being orchestrated for an unpredictable candidate who often chafes at delivering the campaign's message of the day," Juliet Eilperin and Robert Barnes write in The Washington Post. "It is that freewheeling style that has made him popular with voters and cemented his reputation for candor and straight talk."

"McCain's track record using negative ads has been and may still be problematic -- if not disastrous," Huffington Post's Tom Edsall writes.

As for those close to the candidate: "The ideological mishmash in McCain's Kitchen Cabinet lends itself to questions about who's crafting the campaign's message and highlights the tricky policy record McCain is struggling to navigate on the campaign trail," Politico's Kenneth T. Vogel reports. "McCain has staked out an eclectic and occasionally politically inconvenient hodgepodge of policy positions that has bucked the Republican line on some issues, backed it on others and -- on still others -- gone from bucking it to backing it."

There's a brand at stake here, and it's one that hovers above the trivial: "For McCain's sake, this tomfoolery needs to stop," John Weaver, a former top McCain strategist (and longtime loyalist), tells The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder. "For McCain to win in such troubled times, he needs to begin telling the American people how he intends to lead us. That McCain exists. He can inspire the country to greatness."

"It's not the John brand at all," Weaver tells ABC's Jake Tapper. "It's like asking Wilt Chamberlain to play point guard."

"John needs to be the deliberate, experienced veteran and not the grumpy old man," GOP strategist Ed Rollins tells the Chicago Tribune's Jill Zuckman.

The environment isn't all that terrible for McCain -- still keeping it close in national and state-level polls. The new Quinnipiac numbers: Obama up 46-44 in Florida, 46-44 in Ohio, and 49-42 in Pennsylvania.

Per the Q-poll release: "With likely voters concerned more about energy than the war in Iraq, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama's recent tour apparently didn't help, as Arizona Sen. John McCain gained on the Democratic front- runner in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania."