From the team that brought you two wars, a recession, the housing crisis and so much more, a vicious campaign for a third term

In case you had any doubt, today's NY Times confirms that the Bush/Rove crew has taken over McCain's campaign:

Mr. McCain’s campaign is now under the leadership of members of President Bush’s re-election campaign, including Steve Schmidt, the czar of the Bush war room that relentlessly painted his opponent, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, as effete, elite, and equivocal through a daily blitz of sound bites and Web videos that were carefully coordinated with Mr. Bush’s television advertisements.

The run of attacks against Mr. Obama over the last couple of weeks have been strikingly reminiscent of that drive, including the Bush team’s tactics of seeking to make campaigns referendums on its opponents — not a choice between two candidates — and attacking the opponent’s perceived strengths head-on. Central to the latest McCain drive is an attempt to use against Mr. Obama the huge crowds and excitement he has drawn, including on his foreign trip last week, by promoting a view of him as more interested in attention and adulation than in solving the problems facing American families.

This is "strikingly reminiscent" of the attacks on Kerry because the same people are doing it. In fairness, this line of attacks just seems more ugly and egregious -- and not too subtly racist (despite Jake Tapper thinking otherwise).

The big questions are: 1) Will the Obama campaign respond more effectively than Kerry did. (They'd better, p.s.) And 2) Will the media actually cover the lies and distortions spewing from McCain's campaign. (The jury is still out on that one. Although some have risen to the task, many seem titillated by the brazenness of the attacks).

The other lingering question is whether the American people will fall for this crap this time. Under the leadership of George Bush and his team (many of whom are now on McCain's campaign), the United States is in the midst of two unfinished wars, stuck in a recession, caught in a housing crisis, experiencing an energy crisis and the environment is in serious danger. The same people who brought us all that are now injecting Britney and Paris into the political debate. Wow.