McCain's campaign strategy is confounding me

I used to think I was a fairly intelligent guy, but the McCain campaign's ad strategy is just dumb. Childish, and frankly, ineffective.

Take a look at this latest salvo that the Plain Dealer won't call a negative ad (even though nobody could find one substantive issue in the entire ad).  It actually concludes that Obama is "The One."  That's a dumb mistake, even for snark in a political ad.  Second, it reiterates something I'll get to later.

But third, there is an inescapable racist connotation to the ad: "How dare this uppity black man believe he is the one to inspire hope, confidence, and project American strength abroad.  I'm John McCain, that's MY job, even if I have never inspired hope or confidence and cannot even remember the basic facts of our current military conflicts and believe that Cold War nations still exists"

I understanding that a common campaign tactic is to take a strength that your opponent has that you lack and neutralize it as a value, but what is the value that McCain is really attacking here?

That unlike McCain's "base", Obama's supporters WANT him to be President?  And not just hard-core Democrats, but independents, and Republicans, too?

Seriously, can you find any example of any person who supports McCain who doesn't frame their support as being predominately about being anti-Obama?  Where are the pro-McCain people (they don't exist, like McCain's "plan" to balance the budget by the end of his first term.)  The Republicans are so ashamed of themselves and their ticket, that the NRCC actually advised their congressional candidates not to come to Minnesota and be seen supporting McCain and the rest of the Republican Washington establishment. (Steve Stivers has already taken the advice.  He's campaigning on how much he has worked with Governor Strickland, who recruited Kilroy to run in 2006, and issues press releases about how much his policies are like Obama's).  In fact, please add any link to the comments where an Ohio Republican figure in a competitive race associates themselves with John McCain.  This is an open-ended challenge.  I'll wait....

Yeah, I couldn't find any either.

So what's the real message being left by the McCain campaign?  Barack Obama maybe be an inspiring leader; but I'm John McCain?!?  Or worst, it's open resentment to the voters who dare to support an accomplished (after all John McCain's name is on several bills with Obama), intelligent black legislator who inspires you over white John McCain, aging former maverick whose own party can't stand him.

McCain has officially made his campaign the anti-change, anti-hope campaign.  Yeah, that's going to sell this year.

And where has John McCain shown leadership and that he's ready to lead?  When he opposed the Administration's anti-environmentalism efforts (something he praised in a prior ad) or when he reversed years of his position to suddenly embrace those very Administration politicies (like off-shore drilling... something McCain had historically opposed.)

When McCain made McCain-Feingold into law?  You know, the act that hasn't removed special interest influence from Congress, made campaigns (like McCain's current one) less negative and more substantive, and oh, by the way, has been found in more than one aspect to be unconstitutional?  In the past week, John McCain adopted the endorsement by the Iraqi Prime Minister of Barack Obama's timetable to remove U.S. military forces and conceded that Iraq has prevented the U.S. military for achieving its aims in Pakistan (another Obama position and why he was against the Iraq War in the first place.)  How many times can John McCain attack Barack Obama and then adopt his positions before people realize that Obama is ready to lead; McCain is ready to follow?

We as a nation (thanks to McCain's misguided policies) are at war on two fronts (one necessary, the other optional).  We have the highest national unemployment in years.  Costs of basic necessities are skyrocketing while our dollar has never been weaker.  Our housing bubble seems to be deflating over the same length of time it initially inflated.  And John McCain's message to the American people is: "Vote for me because all the other guy can do is inspire you to hope and believe in a better tomorrow?"

Ben Stein was right.  This is a worse campaign than Bob Dole in 1996.