Could our side ever get away with a brutal ad like this?

A reader just sent me this video attack ad he made about John McCain. It's brutal. Here's the ad, followed by my commentary:



I could easily imagine the Republicans making an ad like this about Obama, and it would go viral across the country, and the media would rebroadcast it a thousand times, Swift Boat style, until it was imprinted in the head of every American voter. I'm pretty sure that if we did something like this, if a pro-Obama organization made a video like this about McCain, the Democrats would be roundly denounced and we'd spend every day between now and the election telling America that we really do think McCain is the greatest hero America has ever had.

Which leads to a larger analysis about why we could never get away with something like this - a video that concludes with a shot of the White House and the announcer saying "Sorry, John, your wife can't buy you this house" - while John McCain is repeatedly accusing Barack Obama of being un-American, and no one says a word. Note that the front page of the NYT and Washington Post have both highlighted a new anti-Obama smear book, and Larry King did a show about the thing. And that's okay. But when we smear back, we don't get the front page of the Post and the Times, don't get Larry King. Their attacks get treated as credible, ours get treated as venomous indications of how black our souls really are. (More on that later.)

Why do they always get away with this kind of attack, and we never do?