McCain’s bad Rezko Ad

McCain has finally released his Rezko ad:

Too bad for McCain that we’ve already been through the Rezko deal and most of the points he’s trying to make in his ad are bunk.

While the ad is technically correct as it’s worded that Rezko bought a piece of land that Obama couldn’t afford since the seller wanted to sell both pieces together (Obama bought the house, Rezko bought the other land), the ad leaves the impression that Rezko helped Obama buy his house, which isn’t true – Rezko only bought the adjacent land that Obama couldn’t afford, but didn’t pay anything for the house.  One could argue that this constitues “helping Obama buy a million dollar mansion” but this is admitadely stretching the understood meaning of the comment in the ad.

There is also one more slight problem.  The “$14 million in favors” that Obama supposedly did for Rezko – consisting of Obama writing favorable letters about Rezko which helped lead to him getting funding to build some apartments – occured in 1998.  The housing deal, however, took place in 2005.

However, McCain’s ad clearly suggests that the housing deal lead to the $14 million in deals:

One of his “biggest fundraisers” helped him buy his million-dollar mansion.

Purchasing part of the property he couldn’t afford.

From Obama, Rezko got “political favors” including “14 million from taxpayers.”

Now, he’s a convicted felon, facing jail.

So, not only does the McCain ad get the order of events wrong, clearly insinuating that the home deal led to the $14 million in favors, when the $14 million issue with Rezko actually took place 7 years before the house deal, but the ad also insinuates that Rezko is a convicted felon because of this deal (note the “now” as if the fact that he’s a convicted felon is a consequence of the political favors).

So this ad takes some real facts (Rezko and Obama joining in a deal so Obama could buy a house) but then twists them to suggest three clear falsehoods:  That Rezko helped Obama buy the actual mansion itself, that this purchase led to political favors, and these favors led to Rezko being convicted of a felony.  It’s pretty bad.

As for whether they were actually favors, it is unclear whether anyone asked Obama to write the letters.  If Obama wrote the letters unprompted, the argument that they constituted “favors” becomes much harder to make.

Obama may not name veep until Saturday

There is somewhat decent word that Obama had planned on announcing today, but decided that the meme from McCain’s “how many houses do I own, again?” blunder was too good and that they wouldn’t step on it by announcing a veep.

Along the same lines, Obama could hold off announcing tomorrow for the same reason if they have some good plans to expand on the “McCain is out of touch” meme.  If the story survives strong after 2 days, it may survive a weekend VP announcement, and I’m sure that speaker after speaker will hit on the theme at the Democratic Convention.

Noun, Verb, POW

McCain’s latest rebuttal of Obama’s jumping on McCain’s statement that he isn’t sure how many houses he really owns ends up being pretty lame, if not very predictable:

This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison,” spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post.

So basically, it doesn’t matter how rich McCain is, it doesn’t matter how many houses he has, or how much money he thinks you have to earn to be “rich,” the fact that he is a POW erases all of it and proves that McCain can relate to ordinary Americans.

The bet McCain is making here is that they think Obama will balk whenever faced with a POW reference (something I hope he doesn’t do here) and if he doesn’t, McCain can try and claim that he’s demeaning McCain’s service.  However, this seems like such a ridiculous retort to begin with, I’m not sure how much luck McCain will have with that.

Yet Obama is the ‘elitist’ celebrity…

Even though McCain doesn’t even know how many houses he owns.

This may look innocent but really, if Obama and the democrats give this play, this is just the type of quote which could really make McCain look completely out of touch.