Tom 'Puff' Daschle, Super Genius

Hmm, this guy is really perceptive. He detects a correlation between John McCain's ads goofing on Obama and The Messiah's decline in poll numbers.

Move to the head of the class, Puff.

I'd also suggest the public's Obama fatigue, the fact he has a tissue-thin resume, the absurd suggestion that proper tire inflation will save more oil than we can drill for ... and about a thousand other things.

But if you guys want to obsess over that Paris Hilton ad a week later, knock yourselves out.

A senior adviser to Barack Obama has blamed recent attack advertisements comparing the Democratic presidential hopeful to celebrities Britney Spears and Paris Hilton for a dip in Mr Obama’s polls with voters.

Tom Daschle, the former Democratic Senate majority leader, said in an interview with the Financial Times that the Mr Obama’s Republican rival John McCain was seeing a “short-term blip” as a result of the advertising, including one that used the image of Charlton Heston as Moses to mock the supposedly messianic Mr Obama as being “The One”.

And if Daschle and company are dumb enough not to realize more ads are coming, then they're dumber than I thought.

“To a certain extent the ads are having some effect,” Mr Daschle said. “But you can’t be thrown off your game plan by a momentary dip in polls.”

Until this week polls showed Mr Obama with a slight lead over Mr McCain. Some daily tracking polls this week showed the race tightening, however, leading some Democrats to wonder why Mr Obama has not commanded a bigger lead in an election year in which Republicans are disadvantaged by the unpopularity of President George W. Bush.

Mark McKinnon, a media strategist and former McCain adviser who worked for both of Mr Bush’s campaigns, said of the advertisements: “I think they’ve crystallised their message and I think they’re hitting a nerve.”
Political advertising is effective, he added, when it ties into an overall narrative. In this case, the message has been framed in a positive and negative way: that Mr McCain puts “country first”, while Mr Obama puts “Obama first”. The theme was repeated in a McCain advertisement rel­eased on Wednesday, showing flashing cameras and crowds chanting “Obama” as a voice asks, “Is the biggest celebrity in the world ready to help your family?”

The Obama campaign has sought to convey the message that the Democrat represents “change”.