Given the size of this year’s political war chest, and the determination of the Obama campaign to carry the fight far beyond the old familiar swing states, this summer and fall many more Americans can expect to see political ads, with their competing narratives about the candidates, than saw ads in the elections of 2000 and 2004. For a take on who is winning the message war, Salon asked Kathleen Hall Jamieson, professor of communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, to watch and grade three ads from the Obama campaign and three ads from the McCain campaign. Jamieson is the author or coauthor of 16 books on political media and advertising; her most recent is “Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment.” Salon spoke to her by phone.

Do you have a sense of which candidate or which side might be doing better so far in terms of better production or better appeals in their ads?

Until recently, the Obama campaign had ads that were more carefully crafted and more strategic. The McCain campaign has now closed that advantage in its recent advertising — probably within the last three to four weeks.

When you say the McCain campaign has closed the gap, how so? What indicates that it’s closed the gap?

One test of effective advertising is whether it piggybacks well on news content, to the extent that an ad can move very quickly into news commentary with material relevant to the news agenda. The McCain campaign has had trouble doing that until very recently. They just simply hadn’t been moving quickly enough off the block and engaging the news agenda to their advantage. They started doing that within the past [three] weeks, much, much more effectively.

With his ads, it seems as if McCain is trying to define Obama in McCain’s own terms. Do you think he’s succeeding?

Each campaign has tried to define the other. So the notion that one campaign is strategically moving to define the other but there isn’t response in kind from the other side is mistaken. The McCain campaign has tried to define Senator Obama. The Obama campaign has tried to define Senator McCain.

Many pundits have said some variation of the following: If the election is about John McCain, McCain loses. If McCain can make the election about Barack Obama, McCain wins.

I don’t agree with that. It depends on what about Senator McCain is the focus of the issue. If the focus is on Senator McCain and the issue is terrorism or the issue is anything that ties back to military and is focused on the “surge,” Senator McCain is advantaged. If the issue is how did we get into this war, then Senator Obama is advantaged. I think it may be a little too simplistic to say that if the focus is on Senator McCain, the issue agenda necessarily benefits Senator Obama and that the reverse is true. [T]he polls would suggest, at least on offshore drilling, an advantage to Senator McCain at the moment.

Why don’t we talk about specific ads now? What about the McCain Web ad “The One,” in which the McCain campaign mocks Obama by comparing him to Moses?

The first advantage that this ad has is that it’s using Senator Obama’s [own] statements in actual video clips. It heightens credibility. The second advantage to that ad is that its use of humor is effective. Charlton Heston as Moses is unexpected the first time you see the ad, and the juxtaposition with the theme of the Obama quotes on each side is effective. And so unlike the “Celeb” ad [featuring Britney Spears and Paris Hilton], in which the test of plausibility is immediate, in that you can begin to ask, what are these two women doing in this ad; you’re far less likely to ask that in “The One.”

Across those ads you’re seeing the same basic theme: Is Obama ready to lead? The Republicans have found their theme and the question becomes, is it a theme that is ultimately disadvantageous, [if] in the debates Senator Obama establishes that he is able to hold his own with Senator McCain. Debates provide a test of that. We’ve seen it historically across campaigns. John Kennedy was advantaged in 1960; that was the question being asked by Richard Nixon at the time. In the first debate, Kennedy established that he was as competent, not more competent, but as competent as Richard Nixon, and he was advantaged. John Kerry was advantaged in the same way in the 2004 election because after the scare tactics that were employed by the Republicans against him had potentially gained traction, the debate gave him a chance to step beyond the caricatures. So the danger in the Republican strategy is that it sets up an argument that can be rebutted by performance of the opposing candidate in a debate. Nonetheless, the ad called “The One” is an effective ad because its use of humor works, because its use of quotations by Senator Obama works. As a result it passes the plausibility test.

What about in terms of the history of political advertising — is this ad anything new, this sort of tone and focus?

I don’t know of a political campaign that has made this appeal in this way. But certainly the windsurfing ad used to attack Senator Kerry in 2004 is making the same underlying claim — the notion that the person is elitist and out of touch. One of the things that is interesting about this ad, by the way, is that it potentially draws forward a lot of arguments that were used against Senator Obama earlier in the primaries. It’s really unusual in politics for an appeal to emerge and gain traction in the short term very quickly. More generally what you see is that an argument gains some traction across time and you build on that.

The so-called bitter comment that was used against Senator Obama by Senator Clinton in the primary is premised on the notion that he is out of touch, that he is elitist. He doesn’t share the values of ordinary people. The notion that percolated in the primaries is being built upon in this ad without making any explicit reference to that earlier exchange. The most effective moments in politics are moments that build on an intuition that the electorate already has some reason to have.

Ad: “The One”
Effectiveness: A-

What about the “Celeb” ad, which features Britney Spears and Paris Hilton?

When you call it the “Celeb” ad you feature the fact that Britney Spears is in it. Paris Hilton is in it. You don’t feature the “Is he ready to lead?” tag at the end of the ad. You don’t feature the recasting of the audience in Germany. The amount of content in the ad that focused on [his being] ready to lead, much more of the ad focuses there.

Across the history of presidential politics, who is the real person underlying the candidacy is a stock question used in attack. When you call it the “Celeb” ad, you actually assert that he is a celebrity. When you ask who is the real Obama, you’re asking a different question. You’re suggesting that rather than being the empty suit, the person with the eloquent words that don’t translate, there may actually be a substantive Obama who has different policy positions than those you might want to grant him. The ad almost seems to be at war with itself as a result, because if the Britney Spears, Paris Hilton reference means anything, it means empty, it means superfluous, it means celebrity for the sake of celebrity, and that’s consistent with the line of attack the McCain campaign uses against the Obama campaign. “They’re eloquent words, but …” “He gives a great speech, but …” The ad, however, doesn’t stay with that position. At the end of the ad, what it’s trying to do is ask, Who is he really? In fact it’s suggesting the traditional Republican attack on Democrats — he’s going to raise your taxes, he has policy positions you wouldn’t support if you really understood them.

The other thing that interests me about this ad is that it is visually and verbally recasting the speech in Germany. And that is important because there is a view that is offered by the Obama campaign, largely reinforced in news and in the talking-heads commentary on cable, in which that speech is a symbol of Europeans expressing support for America’s role in the world and the form of leadership that Senator Obama would bring. If that is your view of the speech in Germany, then it’s a very positive signal.

If, however, that visual of the 200,000 people is transformed into not an affirmation of an important U.S. role in the world and a European willingness to embrace that role, and a willingness to embrace Senator Obama, but rather a crowd chanting his name and an audience transformed into a crowd [that] just looks like a large mass, [the image has] been stripped of some of its power and now there’s a vaguely menacing sense about the chant and about this undifferentiated mass audience.

That’s the argument this ad is making. That is a very different visual and verbal image than the one that was conveyed by the speech itself or the interpretation of it offered in news. And that part of this ad is very effective and largely unremarked on.

Ad: “Celeb”
Effectiveness: C-

With the “Love” ad, the McCain campaign sort of switched gears. What did you think of that one?

They open this ad with the 1968 pictures, and they’re using a reference point that much of the electorate has no experience with whatsoever. So the danger is it sets McCain into the distant past. What the ad is attempting to do is ally the Obama campaign with those images and those are not so much the positive images of Woodstock as images of Woodstock that make Woodstock and that era look more frivolous. Part of what happened in 1968 is you had another young generation protesting a war and that’s not what’s being recalled here. [McCain wants to] ally him with the Reagan tradition and [with] hope in a way that suggests that the message of hope is not one he’s going to cede to Senator Obama. That he’s not the candidate of the past, he’s the candidate of the future. The problem with the ad is it’s not forecasting pictures into the future in a way that lets you see that future. So the ad seems to be largely about the past, not largely about the future. But these are very effective, evocative images of the McCain past, making the argument that he’s a different kind of Republican. And associating him with Ronald Reagan, hence disassociating him with the image that’s being offered by the Obama campaign of Senator McCain as President Bush.

What about the message of him putting country before everything else? Does that come through effectively?

To the extent that you anchor that claim in his military heroism, it makes sense. If you then tie that into his claim in the ad or the announcer’s claim in the ad that he is a maverick, that he is a reformer, what you are essentially suggesting is that all of those things are in service of country, not partisanship. And as a result, he would be a president who would transcend partisanship. And act in the best interest of country. If that set of interests works for the audience, then that is a very effective set of moves. And that’s what the ad is trying to accomplish.

Ad: “Love”
Effectiveness: B+

How about an Obama ad? What did you think of the “National Priority” ad, which compares Obama’s energy policies with McCain’s?

The Obama ads are offering a high level of detail, a high level of policy details, high levels of issue specificity. And they are doing it for a number of reasons, but one of them is important in the context of a claim made by the McCain campaign. When the McCain campaign reprises the argument made by Senator Clinton that Senator Obama essentially is offering the rhetoric of hope and a rhetoric of change, but doesn’t have a history of delivering change, it is making a claim about inexperience and about a lack of legislative record. One way the Obama ads counter that is to offer high levels of details about the specific legislative past that Senator Obama has had to offer — the work with Senator Lugar in taking control of loose nukes.

The Obama ads come back with very specific policy claims — he will do this, he will do this, he proposes this. That move is a rebuttal. It [rebuts] the charge that the rhetoric is highly abstract and self-centered and narcissistic and instead says, Note what I, Senator Obama, am trying to do, with very specific policy details, very specific legislative proposals with tiny print on the screen citing details. The one overarching point that I take from the ads by the Obama campaign is that they are working aggressively to refute the charge that their rhetoric is empty.

Is this ad effective?

The most important thing an ad can do on an issue is to differentiate a candidate from the opposing candidate. Contrast ads are more effective than attack ads, because they both attack and make a case for the candidate. This ad is a contrast ad. It suggests that Senator McCain is part of the problem and Senator Obama is part of the solution.

That’s a classic challenger ad. You’re basically positioning Senator McCain in this ad as the incumbent and Senator Obama as the challenger. Now for practical purposes, neither one of these candidates is the incumbent. They are both, to some extent, challengers. But by indicting McCain for his long time in Washington, they tie the age issue to McCain, they make experience a negative and then, with the specifics identified against McCain, suggest what he has done with that time has not been advantageous. The beginning of that ad is very effective if the audience finds it plausible. The topic of the ad is important because this is the issue the American public is focused on at the moment. And by virtue of focusing on it, the candidate says, I care about this issue.

The difficulty for Senator Obama is on the issue of offshore drilling. He is on the wrong side of the polls. Depending on how people interpret his [recent] statements, he may be leaning closer to being on the same side as the polls. Senator Obama was in the difficult position on offshore drilling of either having to take on public opinion and tell the public that it was wrong in its inference that this was the best strategy, or shift his position so the public could hold its position and believe that Senator Obama’s position was consistent with it. I think he’s moved to that second posture.

The way people interpret ads is not in isolation. People interpret ads in the context of their lives, so what are they experiencing at the gas pump, and once we get into winter, what are they experiencing with home heating prices? And then what are they hearing in the news? And Senator Obama very effectively moved to take the windfall profits that were focal to [recent] news and translate them into a proposal for an energy rebate, which you’re seeing in a lot of his ads. As a result, they’re more tightly tied to news, and it’s the more effective ad because you’re able to say, Yes, windfall profits, yes that’s just outrageous, I heard about that in the news. I’m outraged and I’m standing at the gas pump as I’m experiencing this crisis, and what is Senator Obama doing but taxing those windfall profits, translating it into an energy rebate. He basically moved from a disadvantaged position on offshore drilling to reframe the debate on what to do with those windfall profits in that move.

Ad: “National Priority”
Effectiveness: B

What about Obama’s “Low Road Express” ad, which accuses McCain of misrepresenting his positions and fact-checks McCain’s statements?

This ad makes a character attack on Senator McCain. When you see fact-checking aggregated this way, and it is a common move, that is essentially a character attack. [When] you have a lot of the fact-checking outlets drawing the same kind of conclusions, you can expect an ad instantaneously using them. It says when you hear Senator McCain make statements in this topic area, don’t believe him. Reputable news outlets have said that [what he says] is false, is misleading. It’s not clear what exactly is false or misleading, but the inference you’re supposed to draw is you can’t trust Senator McCain.

Attacks on consistency or attacks on factual accuracy are very effectively deployed in ads when they have the backing of reputable news organizations. That’s what this ad is attempting to do. And then laying in place the specific alternatives that are the Obama campaign’s legislative agenda in this area. Effective ad.

What about Obama’s approach generally of seeming to take the high road in response to negative campaigning? Does that work?

When you’re attacking the opponent and attacking his positions and attacking his character by attacking the truthfulness of his advertising claims, they’re global attacks. You might ask the question, Are you not engaging in attack as well? And since there isn’t a specific statement of what these fact-checks found problematic about Senator McCain’s ads, haven’t you just engaged in low-road express advertising as well? If there is anything illegitimate about your attack, you raise the question of whether you’re engaging in the exact same tactics.

That being said, there’s always an advantage for a campaign when the major outlets that engage in fact-checking find something problematic about the attacks on the other side, as they did with a series of claims in McCain ads. And if you’re watching the news and you heard that there were fact-checking outlets that said some of the claims in the McCain ads were false, and you now see this in the Obama campaign’s advertising, you remember that you heard it on the news, you see it reinforced in ads, and the credibility of the claim as a result is enhanced. The Obama campaign is advantaged.

The question for the audience [about whether to believe a fact-check ad] always becomes, based on what else I know and what else I believe. Because audiences are most likely to selectively perceive what reinforces their existing beliefs. So they would selectively perceive the evidence to support their own side. The person who is the McCain supporter will look at that and look at it very, very critically. The person who is the Obama supporter will look at it and accept it at face value. And the reverse will happen when you see the ads for the other side.

If one wanted to really do an analysis with what voters do with advertising, one would simply make one statement: What voters do with advertising is ordinarily reinforce what they already believe. They selectively distort what they’re not disposed to believe and remember the most evocative visuals and what’s humorous.

Ad: “Low Road Express”
Effectiveness: B+

And finally, what about Obama’s bipartisan “America’s Leadership” ad, the one about loose nukes?

This is another very important ad for the Obama campaign. And the reason it is important is that the Republicans are arguing the empty rhetoric charge. The Republicans are predicating their claims about Senator Obama on the fact that he did not have a long or deep legislative record. Many of the Obama ads are drawing on work that he did in Illinois and did not do in Washington, D.C. The work with Senator Lugar is an accomplishment in D.C. It is an accomplishment that identifies a specific problem that can be tied back to the terrorist threat, hence to national security. The Obama campaign would like you to draw the inference from this instance that there are many other instances in which he has done the same.

What ads always hope you will do is overgeneralize their statements about the accomplishments of the candidate. Hence, the assumption that if he did this, he must be a person who reaches across the aisle, is the assumption that is being invited by the ad. To the extent that a voter grants that assumption, it’s a more powerful ad.

One of the things that’s notable in the Obama ads, is the extent to which he’s seen speaking. By contrast, you rarely see Senator McCain speaking in the McCain ads. To the extent that you are susceptible to the charge that what Senator Obama offers is just simply rhetoric and not a legislative path and ask for evidence and turn to the Obama ads, in the ads where Senator Obama is speaking, what you see is the eloquent speaker tied to the specifics.

Ad: “America’s Leadership”
Effectiveness: A-

So Wallace, following a 92nd Street Y panel last night, said this:

“There will be pressure to elevate a woman but there will be an equal amount of pressure to pick someone who is prepared,” Wallace said.

And then she said this:

Wallace flagged one female official in particular who she thinks would be a good choice this year.

“Nikki Haley — she’s great,” she said. “She’s the most effective surrogate Romney has.”

If the Sarah Palin problem was a problem of preparation and vetting, Haley … might present some issues? Specifically an odd and mostly unsubstantiated sex scandal and also these rumors that she might at any moment be indicted on tax charges. The tax thing might be bullshit and the affair story was the product of a self-promoting creep but they’re “out there,” as they say.

More important, Haley has been governor of South Carolina since January of 2011. As in very slightly longer than one year. And slightly less time being a governor than Sarah Palin had in 2008. It’s almost as if Wallace is making a pick not based on the principle of Who Would Be Best For the Nation but on demographics and optics?

Wallace also apparently suggested Carly Fiorina, which, lol. Romney/Ex-CEO who famously received a giant golden parachute when she was forced out of her company 2012, everyone! Just the ticket for the new economy.

That is sort of a shame. The Palin thing is the most heavily over-covered story line of the entire 2008 campaign, so focusing on it might be totally logical from a marketing perspective, but it’s unfortunate from an artistic one. The film re-creates various moments of YouTube campaign ephemera very well — remember when that old white lady called Obama an Arab and McCain looked uncomfortable? When it takes us behind closed doors, it’s to witness scenes any moderately close observer of the election and its aftermath could’ve dreamed up him- or herself. It might have been fun to see a TV movie about the Democratic primary fight; the personality clashes of the disastrous Clinton campaign would have made for entertaining television, and Mark Penn is surely a creature crying out for a grotesque Emmy-winning portrayal by, say, Paul Giamatti.

Instead, McCain has won the nomination three-and-a-half minutes into the film. Soon we’re watching Julianne Moore watch Tina Fey on TV. You remember the “SNL” sketches making fun of Palin, right? In case you don’t, “Game Change” airs lengthy chunks from most of them. It also has tons of actual footage from CNN and MSNBC and Fox News, and it re-creates debates and speeches and the Couric interview and the Charlie Gibson interview and a bunch of other things you saw either live or on YouTube when they happened.

Moore’s performance is not just fair but maybe even flattering. (For one thing, she doesn’t hit those flat upper Midwest vowels as gratingly as the real Palin.) Woody Harrelson plays strategist Steve Schmidt — the film’s protagonist — as a grizzled, “too old for this shit” campaign veteran called back to the trail against his better judgment. Jamey Sheridan is given barely anything to do as Mark Salter, McCain’s “conscience.” Salter, the primary author of his “Maverick” mythos, is limited, after the Palin selection, to making a hilariously over-telegraphed face of concern as everyone else in the war room applauds her first speech.

But the film is about Schmidt and Nicolle Wallace because they were pretty clearly Halperin and Heilemann’s primary sources, and we watch them become horrified by the depths of Sarah Palin’s ignorance at exactly the same time as everyone else in America became horrified by her ignorance.

Because it’s Hollywood, there’s very little politics in the film’s depiction of politics. Policies are simply things for Sarah Palin to write on note cards and not memorize. Operatives confidently declare, in faux Sorkin-ese patter, that if this or that meaningless decision is made, it means “we’ll lose by five.”

There is a sheen of faux cynicism (McCain swears like a sailor!) but it masks complete naiveté: Everyone is basically honorable and decent. Nicolle Wallace — a member of the Bush administration communications team — is sincerely alarmed at the prospect of someone as dangerously ignorant as Sarah Palin in the White House. On election night, she breaks down in tears as she admits to Schmidt that … she didn’t vote. They embrace.

The film subscribes to the simplest theory of Sarah Palin: That she is childlike, vain and incredibly ignorant but also an essentially decent person and wonderful mother. The moments that come closest to “unfair” — Sarah Palin doesn’t know that the head of Great Britain’s government is the prime minister, not the queen — are basically plausible. This isn’t Andrew Sullivan’s conniving, dangerous pathological liar. It’s an overwhelmed working mother whose most unhinged moments are explained by a crash diet. Her convention speech is largely stripped of its snarling attack lines, imagining a world in which it appealed to “the base” because of Palin’s heartfelt commitment to special-needs children and not because she was very good at saying mean things about Obama. (The film actually repeats the bullshit story that her teleprompter broke midway through, and she kept going.) Even when the film has her take a major heel turn — “if I am single-handedly carrying this campaign, I am gonna do what I want!” — after “winning” her debate with Joe Biden (played by video footage of Joe Biden), she is still basically an innocent seduced by the adoration of riled-up crowds and national attention. (Todd Palin barely does anything.)

The constant use of actual news footage adds a bit of verisimilitude but also constantly raises the question of why this lightly fictionalized version of the election actually needs to exist. “Game Change” is not really for serious political junkies, who remember all the stuff that did happen and will scoff at the stuff that didn’t. (At one point, John McCain answers his ringing iPhone in the middle of the night. He used a BlackBerry, HBO.) But if casually politically involved people want to see their assumptions about Sarah Palin reinforced, well, there are still those “SNL” sketches.

In the end, the Republican operatives who foisted Sarah Palin on an unprepared nation are rightly horrified that they created a monster, but at no point does anyone act concerned that their actual candidate was himself an angry, warmongering old crank with extremely fungible principles. Sure, Sarah Palin didn’t know what the Fed did. Do we have any proof John McCain knew what it should’ve done? Maybe everyone actually was totally unfair to poor Sarah Palin.

Rice, the national security advisor in George W. Bush’s first presidential term and secretary of state in his second, is currently a professor at Stanford with the requisite right-wing think tank fellowship. She has not said or done anything “political” in years. But Curl has been hearing things!

America’s first black female secretary of state is quietly positioning herself to be the top choice of the eventual Republican presidential nominee, ready to deliver bona fide foreign-policy credentials lacking among the candidates. The 56-year-old has recently raised her profile, releasing her memoir in November and embarking on a monthlong book tour.

After 2 1/2 years as a professor at Stanford, Miss Rice is reportedly getting “antsy” to get back into the political game. “She’s ready to go,” said one top source.

Oh, a month-long tour in support of her book about her time in the Bush administration! She must be running for vice president, along with Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney and Scott McClellan and George W. Bush.

There’s more. (And not just the part where Curl calls Rice “a spicy Rice dish” and waxes fetishistic about “her guns” being “a match for those of our first lady Michelle Obama.”)

Plus, her selection would be a giant chess move to counter the expected replacement of Vice President Joseph R. Biden with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Sure, the White House denies and denies, but that should really make any political watcher more suspicious. One White House insider even told me that the position swap was the only reason Mrs. Clinton joined the administration in the first place.

Curl has so many inside scoops packed into this column! I had no idea that our first presidential running mate swap since Ford’s 1976 campaign was basically a foregone conclusion and not just a weird Beltway journalist fantasy! But yes, I can see why the still  un-chosen GOP candidate would definitely be looking pretty closely at Rice — who’s been strongly making the case for her selection by not explicitly denying interest in the position — in case Obama replaces Biden with Clinton, which he will surely do.

The column gets worse (“Funny thing is, she is, unlike Barack Obama, an ‘American black’”) but that’s not really important. What’s important is exploring how someone like Condoleezza Rice ends up a perennial name on the fantasy ticket list.

Rice has been a subject of these columns since 2005, when she became Bush’s second secretary of state, and the White House tasked communications operative Jim Wilkinson — previously known best for inventing the false story of Jessica Lynch* — with getting Rice (and her boss) some much-needed positive press. Wilkinson did his job beautifully (remember when Rice’s knee-high boots were a topic of actual serious news coverage for weeks?) and Rice began receiving the “rock star” treatment.

In the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler, author of the 2007 Rice bio “The Confidante,” summarized the exact moment of the birth of the presidential speculation:

In March 2005, before Rice sat for an interview with the Washington Times, Wilkinson slipped a note to the editorial page editor, Tony Blankley, suggesting that she be asked whether she would consider running for president. It was an audacious proposal — she had been secretary for only six weeks — but such speculation would bolster Rice’s image as a leader. (Wilkinson and Blankley said they do not recall the incident, but others present said they saw Wilkinson’s note.)

Oh, the Washington Times.

Shortly thereafter, Dick Morris wrote a book claiming — nay, insisting — that 2008 would be “Condi vs. Hillary.”

As Iraq descended into a violent civil war in 2006, Rice-for-president buzz bizarrely grew. There was enough of a false grass-roots movement for a paint-by-numbers AP trend piece with a silly nickname and everything. Tim Russert asked her point blank. As always, she said no in no uncertain terms.

Then, of course, everyone began to speculate that she’d be McCain’s running mate. Robert Novak claimed as much on Fox. Dan Senor said she was pushing for the pick on some Sunday show. Hendrik Hertzberg wrote a Talk of the Town piece on the subject! McCain and Rice both finally denied “reports” that she was angling for the spot on the ticket.

Now, I guess, it’s time to start up the rumor mill anew.

But before you put pen to paper on that column about how a Gingrich-Rice ticket would surely win moderate women in Ohio, consider this: In addition to the fact that she’s always denied wanting the job, and in addition to the fact that she was an unmitigated failure in the Bush administration, downplaying terrorism as a priority prior to 9/11 and selling the public on the Iraq invasion with untruths, Condi Rice is pro-choice.

*Update: Jon Krakauer recently rescinded his claim that Wilkinson, then a communications aide to General Tommy Franks, was responsible for the initial false Washington Post report on Lynch’s apparent heroics before her capture. Though Wilkinson was obviously involved in the PR campaign surrounding Lynch’s rescue and return to the U.S., he apparently isn’t responsible for falsifying her actions or leaking that false story to the press.

The New Black Panther Party is a cartoonish fringe group of a couple guys who play “’60s radical” dress-up and say mean things about whitey for Fox cameras in order to scare old white people. They have been explicitly rejected by the old Black Panther Party. For some reason, various conservatives have dedicated themselves to proving that this weird, marginal group of Nation of Islam cast-offs is somehow supported by or deeply connected to the Democratic Party and the Obama administration in particular, because, you know, Eric Holder and Barack Obama, those are two guys who very obviously share the values of extremist anti-white proponents of racial separation.

So Breitbart “proves” something or other about the essential anti-white racistness of the Obama campaign by noting that members of the inane New Black Panther Party were spotted by cameras near Obama, at various times, and also NBPP head Malik Zulu Shabazz spoke at the event.

(Brietbart goes on to publish two pictures of the event despite the photographer withholding permission, because “The First Amendment allows photographs of such enormous public importance to see the light of day.” Good luck with that argument in court?)

Andrew C. McCarthy gleefully endorses Breitbart’s story in a breathless post at the National Review’s The Corner:

This is a shocking story, and a breathtaking indictment of the mainstream media which went out of its way to avoid vetting Obama as a candidate — and to make sure anyone who tried to do due diligence got no sunshine. A candidate who chose to appeared in the company of, say, the KKK, would have provoked relentlessly hostile media coverage and, in short order, have been marginalized as disqualified to hold responsible elective office.

If only the media had reported that some fringe weirdos also participated in this event that both Democratic candidates and thousands of other people participated in, and then the fringe weirdos sort of followed Obama around for a while. That would’ve opened America’s eyes! (I mean the media besides NPR, which did report that the NBPP was there.)

Here’s the bit of this sad, desperate reach that is the saddest and most desperate: “Andrew further reminds us that, in March 2008, the Obama campaign website posted an endorsement of Obama by the New Black Panther Party.” Whoa, did they really? Shocking if true! It is, of course, not true. It was a user-generated blog post on the Obama campaign site that the campaign removed as soon as they became aware of its existence. Because websites do not “post” things to themselves, generally, McCarthy’s statement can’t even be charitably described as technically accurate. It’s just a lie.

A random stupid incorrect Breitbart smear is worth paying attention to only to the extent that the smear threatens to bubble up to the more reputable conservative press, or Fox, or Republican elected officials. The McCarthy endorsement means keep an eye on this one!

Here’s my reaction to those revelations: Sarah Palin is a person! She’s done drugs and pissed people off and slept with people, like 90 percent of American humans. If Sarah Palin was smart she’d dismiss the book with a chuckle, say nobody’s perfect, laugh off the “gossip,” and move on.

Sarah Palin might not be smart.

The Palins always prefer grand self-pitying martyrdom to quiet dignity, of course, which is why picking on them can be so profitable: They will always respond, and always help you drum up more publicity for your Palin-attacking venture. Instead of depriving the book of oxygen, they launched a multimedia attack on Joe McGinniss before he’d finished the first draft, and what they accomplished was … giving him more material and ensuring that even more breathless anticipation awaited the book’s release.

Now that the book’s rollout is underway, the Palins might as well get paid for their marketing efforts. Todd Palin angrily denounced it, again accusing McGinniss of having a “creepy obsession” with Sarah Palin. Oooh, it’s so creeeepy to write an unauthorized biography of a prominent public figure, right?

How bad did the Palins allowed themselves to be trolled? Sarah Palin’s people released a statement on behalf of Brad Hanson, Todd Palin’s former business partner, with whom Sarah Palin is alleged to have carried on an extramarital affair, some years back. The statement is a blanket denial, but what does having the supposed beau directly address the press accomplish, exactly? It just drives more interest in the book’s salacious, shocking revelations about the secret life of Sarah Palin. This guy, of all guys, should be kept out of it.

I am sure that Todd and everyone else is very personally pissed off that McGinniss went to Wasilla, talked to a bunch of people who hate them, and published a book full of stories about how bad and awful they are, but blowing up publicly just sends the message that there’s stuff in the book worth getting worked up about.