Sarah Palin is the McCain campaign's Poochie.

For those who don't know who Poochie is, a little background is in order.  On a classic Simpsons, The Itchy and Scratchy and Show is dropping in the ratings and the suits all meet to come up with a plan to get the show back on top.

Their solution is to add a new character to the classic cat and mouse duo, a dog named Poochie.  Figuring they need to appeal to hip youngsters they create a stereotype of how these empty suits view young people.  They come up with this:

Poochie is painfully obnoxious and "in your face" with an over the top attitude.

As the execs explain:

EXECUTIVE
(pause) We at the network want a dog with attitude. He's edgy, he's "in your face." You've heard the expression "let's get busy"? Well, this is a dog who gets "biz-zay!" Consistently and thoroughly.

KRUSTY
So he's proactive, huh?

EXECUTIVE
Oh, God, yes. We're talking about a totally outrageous paradigm.

Of course everybody hates Poochie and he gets killed off almost immediately.

We've all watched TV shows do this.  In the absence of fresh ideas, compelling stories or good writing they turn to a gimmick, in this case a gimmicky character.  You know when this character shows up, the show has jumped the shark and only the very young and the very stupid will be watching by the end of the season.

Some examples and types of Poochies are:

The Outrageous:

The Baby

The Hottie (Heather Locklear Category)

The Hunk (The Ted McGinely Category)

Well, Sarah Palin isn't a hunk but she is definitely a outrageous, in your face,  (in political terms) hottie with an ever increasing haul of babies.

See, the McCain campaign, unable to come up with any fresh ideas, a compelling narrative or good writing did it the Network TV way and got themselves a Poochie.

So in the quest to nickname her, to me she is Poochie.

Lets see how that works out for them.

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Swoosh

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The R Word

Of all the ways Palin impacts McCain's campaign (and they are myriad) there are two I haven't heard talked about so much.

The first is the fusing of a new adjective to the ticket.

You have all heard it about a million times by now and the great irony is that its association with Barak Obama was one of McCain's biggest weapons, but tell me how many times in a row have you heard this word in conjunction with the McCain ticket since you last heard it with Obama?

RISKY

Its a terrible word for a presidential candidate to be tied to.  Which is why Hillary and McCain labored so hard to attach it to Barak.  Once it is firmly affixed to the other guy, you open up the fear spigot until 51% of the population shits themselves and votes against their own interest.  Election won!

But McCain's campaign, being the rudderless ship it is, mindlessly stole the word back from Obama and slathered it all over themselves.  And then turned the fear firehose on full blast.  Its like they don't even understand Rovian politics 101.

So now they just spent three straight days telling everyone how much danger we are all in every single day and every time a speech ended the commentators came on (Democratic and Republican both) and said "Risky...Palin, McCain...big risk" over and over and over.

I think its disastrous for McCain on an almost subliminal level.

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Swoosh

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"Then I will campaign in the shade!"

I said two effects of Palin, right?

Remember two weeks ago when every pundit explained that McCain had brilliantly managed to run a ninja campaign, attacking Obama while staying invisible and turning the election into a question of "Obama: yes or no?" as opposed to "Obama or McCain?"

Seems like an eternity ago, doesn't it?

If McCain wanted his VP to steal the spotlight and blot out the sun, he got his wish.  Now can someone explain to me why the hell he wanted that?

The media is clearly obsessed with Palin as they haven't been with anyone since... Barak Obama.  Really in the last two decades, only Obama and Clinton rival her as political celebrities in terms of news interest.

Why don't you go ask Barak how that works out for a campaign.  The white hot light of media attention melted his 15 point lead into a tie.

Here is how I see it.  Obama had questions to answer and fears to allay.  All indications are that he (and Michelle and Hillary) did a spectacular job of this at the convention.  Then the Obama campaign disappeared into the long shadow of Sarah Palin.  The last taste most people have in their mouth of Obama is his command performance in front of 70,000 fans and 39 million viewers and it is an overwhelmingly positive image.

Just as McCain has managed to coast on his image from EIGHT YEARS AGO!!!! because the media kept finding better things to cover, Obama will get to relax, snipe and campaign hard in the battleground states while the media tears into Sarah Palin (she's a risky pick, did you hear) and a good chunk of voters last image of Obama was of him showing he is ready for the job.

I heard Buchanan and other pundits squeal delightedly that McCain "found his Obama" but I couldn't figure out why that was a good thing for him.

I got more, but that will do for now.