In some circles, these sorts of complaints from Fred Davis, John McCain's ad man, will be taken as proof of a simple proposition: McCain lost because he wasn't nasty enough. If he'd only harped on Reverend Wright, or ran against Obama on crime(?), then the race would have fallen the other way. But the more obvious conclusion is that ads didn't matter that much. The public could remember back to June. They knew who Reverend Wright was. When the McCain campaign went after Ayers, their poll numbers, not Obama's, dropped. Indeed, if you want insight into some of the problems with McCain's candidacy, you could note that his ad guy is lamenting his inability to run a yet nastier campaign, not his inability to convince his candidate to decide on a single affirmative case for his candidacy. But when distraction is the message, all the other campaign has to do is not get distracted.
