Ben Smith, reports that Obama has threaded McCain’s gambling penchant to drive home that McCain is a risk the nation can ill afford.
The gambling line is, in part, a reference to a Wall Street culture that isn’t looking good right now. But it’s also a new character attack on McCain, part of the critique that included calling McCain “erratic” last week, and it may cut deeper than the plutocrat line that Obama’s campaign was pushing last month. That’s because it focuses on traits that really are part of McCain’s personality and his public image, and is the downside of the man-of-action persona his campaign celebrates.
I’ve been saying for a while that being “maverick” is hardly a sound leadership quality, and John McCain has been instrumental in proving that point. It is in a sense “Rovian” to attack someone’s strength — as the swiftboad ads so effectively demonstrated in 2004 — but this particular invocation has the benefit of actually being a serious weakness for McCain.
