Back in 2000, in South Carolina, the robocalls--and calls to local right-wing talk radio shows--were about John McCain's "interracial child" and Cindy McCain's drug addiction. They were a craven, disgusting tactic by the George W. Bush campaign. McCain was, rightly, outraged by them.

Now McCain's campaign is making robocalls distorting Barack Obama's non-existent relationship with Bill Ayers:

The call begins: "Hello. I'm calling for John McCain and the RNC," before telling recipients that they "need to know that Barack Obama has worked closely with domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home, and killed Americans."

Now this isn't quite the spew that McCain suffered in South Carolina, but hey, he's got three more weeks to descend to that. Certainly, such calls are not the sort of activity normally attributed to "a man whose courage has never been questioned," as McCain described himself last week. Real men don't hide behind robocalls. It is nowhere near honorable.

But, my friends, I give you John McCain, 2008 edition--John McCain for the history books.

Update: Greg Sargent has all the skeevy robocalls...so far at TPM.

At least, not officially:

HOLLAND, Ohio - Joe the Plumber said Thursday he doesn't have a license and doesn't need one. Joe Wurzelbacher, better known as Joe the Plumber, the nickname Republican John McCain bestowed on him during Wednesday's presidential debate, said he works for a small plumbing company that does residential work. Because he works for someone else, he doesn't need a license, he said.

But the county Wurzelbacher and his employer live in, Lucas County, requires plumbers to have licenses. Neither Wurzelbacher nor his employer are licensed there, said Cheryl Schimming of Lucas County Building Regulations, which handles plumber licenses in parts of the county outside Toledo.

Wurzelbacher, who voted in the Republican primary and indicated he backed McCain, was cited by the GOP presidential candidate as an example of someone who wants to buy a plumbing business but would be hurt by Democrat Barack Obama's tax plans. Wurzelbacher said he was surprised that his name was mentioned so many other times.

"That bothered me. I wished that they had talked more about issues that are important to Americans," he told reporters gathered outside his home.

Wurzelbacher, 34, said he doesn't have a good plan put together on how he would buy Newell Plumbing and Heating in nearby Toledo.

He said the business consists of owner Al Newell and him. Wurzelbacher said he's worked there for six years and that the two have talked about his taking it over at some point.

"There's a lot I've got to learn," he said.

Here's what it looked like to Craig Duff and me...

You remember Iraq.

I've been guilty--a classic journalistic (and U.S. governmental) sin--of letting my attention slip as violence has waned, Afghanistan has ramped up and we've been having this slightly interesting presidential election this year.

But here, via the excellent Matt Duss, is the latest from AP about the continuing internecine squabbles--this time between the two remaining Shi'ite powers, now that Sadr has stood down. The current machinations may or may not turn out to be important...but it's interesting how my perspective on all this has changed over the past few months:

Given the fact that we're neck deep in an economic crisis at home--and the unraveling along Af/Pak border, where the real bad guys are--I don't have much patience for the eternal Iraqi shenanigans. I know that it's important that Iraq is kept from disintegration. But this is a different world now, and we will soon have a different U.S. president, and our ability--and the national desire--to referee the carnage is severely limited. It seems the Iraqis understand that and are jockeying for power. It would be nice if they could do this quietly, but somehow I suspect they won't.

It's a draw. This from the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project:

Prof. Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, issued the following statement:

“Analysis from the Wisconsin Advertising Project of Sen. John McCain’s television advertising for the week of September 28 to October 4 shows, in fact, that all McCain campaign TV advertising did have significant negative content - either spots that were comprised completely of attacks on the Democratic nominee or ones that combined attacks on Sen. Barack Obama with some talk about Sen. McCain’s own plans. We reported this finding in a press release last week that was widely publicized and this was clearly the number that Obama was citing in last night’s debate. That said, McCain’s advertising has not been completely negative over the course of the entire campaign. Looking at the tone of all of McCain’s advertising from June 4 to October 4, we found that 47 percent of the McCain spots were negative (completely focused on Obama), 26 percent were positive (completely focusing on his own personal story or on his issues or proposals) and 27 percent were contrast ads (a mix of positive and negative messages).

But what about Obama? Our analysis reveals that 39 percent of all general election Obama TV ads have been positive (solely about his record, positions or personal story), 35 percent have been negative (solely focused on McCain) and 25 percent have been contrast ads - mixing a bit of both. So, on a proportional basis, the McCain campaign is and has been more negative than Obama.

But, Obama has aired over 50,000 more ads than McCain. So, hasn’t he simply aired more of everything - including negative ads - than McCain has this year, or than anyone in history, as McCain may have alleged?

If one just looks at pure airings of negative ads, McCain has aired more than Obama. If one allocates contrast ads as half positive and half negative or considers contrast ads as negative - as the Advertising Project does - the tone of the McCain and Obama campaigns has been absolutely identical.

Joe the Plumber was not the only person who got a shout-out last night. This from Jeff Chu as Fast Company:

It wasn't a surprise that both candidates, who have used the words "reform" and "change" about a million times in an effort to be seen as forces of reform and change, tried to align themselves with the only woman in Washington who can unmistakably be called a maverick and a reformer. Obama praised her as a "wonderful new superintendent"; McCain tried to pull Rhee over to his side, citing her as a supporter of vouchers. Obama shot back that she was a supporter of charters, implying that she was against vouchers.

Who was right? The National Review and the Washington Post’s Marc Fisher came down on McCain’s side, claiming that Rhee supports vouchers. Mike DeBonis of the Washington CityPaper reminded readers that Rhee told the Wall Street Journal she “would never, as long as I am in this role, do anything to limit another parent’s ability to make a choice for their child. Ever.”

But as far as I can tell, it was the blog Sassafras Mama that got it closest in its liveblog, saying “Michelle Rhee, the Superintendent of D.C schools supports charters, but as I understand it, she doesn't support a widespread system of vouchers.” Rhee’s office quickly issued a statement that said she “disagrees with the notion that vouchers are the remedy for repairing the city’s school system.“ But she reiterated to Fast Company that she has “not taken a formal position on vouchers,” and she said she won’t—because she’s more concerned about fixing the schools where nearly 50,000 kids are still being educated.

From TIME's Massimo Calabresi:

In the nearly sixteen thousand words uttered last night in the debate between John McCain and Barack Obama, one was noticeably absent: God. The deity got not a single mention, not even a perfunctory “God Knows,” or “Good God,” or “God Bless America”. In fact, in the three presidential debates, McCain and Obama have completed a surprising sweep: no mention of “God”, the “Lord”, or even a higher power.

In contrast, the word “God” was invoked twice during the first Bush-Kerry debate (both times in closing God Bless Americas by the candidates), twice in the second debate (once in a Kerry reference to the Pledge of Allegiance, and again by Bush with a departing GBA), and fully nine times in the third Bush-Kerry debate, seven times by Kerry and two by Bush. Sprinkled throughout the Bush-Kerry debates were the occasional “Lord”, “heaven” or other divine references.

Why the God-free gab fest this time? A few possible reasons leap to mind. First, the country’s focus is very much on real-world problems of everyday Americans right now. The economic crisis has eaten up much of the time in these debates, with lengthy exegeses on plans for job creation, tax plans and the $700 billion bailout plan. If there are no atheists in foxholes, perhaps there are agnostics amid bank runs.

Just as important, though, are the individual candidates. John McCain believes religion is a private matter. He was raised an Episcopalian but now occasionally attends Baptist churches. Various political consultants, including Karl Rove, have encouraged McCain to wear his religion on his sleeve, but McCain is resolute about not faking it. That goes for his top campaign advisers as well.

Obama has his reasons for not bringing the subject up. If he did, it could remind people of his pastor problem: the fact that he attended for 20 years the church of the firebrand preacher Jeremiah Wright, whom Obama was forced to repudiate last spring after a variety of offensive comments surfaced.

The personal reasons may, in fact, be more important than the larger political context. Neither Joe Biden nor Sarah Palin were so restrained in invoking the deity. “God” was mentioned seven times, five by Biden, twice by Palin. And in some ways, both running mates have been carrying the religion ball for their candidates since they were chosen in August.

The last reason why neither Obama nor McCain may have elided “God” in the debates is that the issue was to some degree taken off the table by the “summit” on faith and politics hosted at Saddleback Church by the Rev. Rick Warren. That gave both candidates time to air out the extent to which religion informed their positions on public policy.

Still, the fact that both Obama and McCain chose so assiduously not to invoke “God” in any form in any of their debates is noteworthy, not least to people who care about the presence of religion in politics. "Whether intentional or not the discussion of God and the role of faith appears to have been relegated to the Saddleback forum in this general election,” says Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, who calls the development “troubling.”

I'll have more to say about the debate in my print column, which releases later today. But I did want to say a few things about my colleagues--in general, no names--and the coverage of the campaign this year.

Pundits tend to be a lagging indicator. This is particularly true at the end of a political pendulum swing. We've been conditioned by thirty years of certain arguments working--and John McCain made most of them last night against Barack Obama: you're going to raise our taxes, you're going to spend more money, you want to negotiate with bad guys, you're associated somehow--the associations have gotten more tenuous over time--with countercultural and unAmerican activities.

Again, these arguments have "worked" for a long time. The Democrats who got themselves elected President during most of my career were those most successful at playing defense: No, no, I'm not going to do any of those things! And so the first reaction of more than a few talking heads last night was that McCain had done better, maybe even won, because he had made those arguments more successfully than he had in the first two debates. I disagreed, even before the focus groups and snap polls rendered their verdict: I thought McCain was near-incomprehensible when talking about policy, locked in the coffin of conservative thinking and punditry. He spoke in Reagan-era shorthand. He thought that merely invoking the magic words "spread the wealth" and "class warfare" he could neutralize Obama.

But those words and phrases seem anachronistic, almost vestigial now. Indeed, they have become every bit as toxic as Democratic social activist proposals--government-regulated and subsidized health care, for example--used to be. We have had 30 years of class warfare, in which the wealthy strip-mined the middle class. The wealth has been "spread" upward. The era when Democrats could only elect Presidents from the south, who essentially promised to take the harsh edge off of conservatism, is over. Barack Obama is the most unapologetic advocate of government activism since Lyndon Johnson--which is not to say that his brand of activism will be the same as Johnson's (we've learned a lot about the perils of bureacracy and the value of market incentives since then)--and he seems to be giving the public exactly what it wants this year. Who knows? Maybe even the word "liberal" can now be uttered in mixed company again.

Journalism is, naturally, about the past. We are much better at reporting things that have happened than in predicting the future. We never seem so foolish or obnoxious, especially on TV, as when we accede to the constant demand for crystal-balling. But the obvious danger inherent in journalism is that we tend to get trapped in the assumptions of the past. Too often this year, my colleagues--especially those who are older than me, but also my fellow baby boomers--have seemed a bit moldy in our questioning of politicians: What are you going to do about budget deficits? What are you going to do about entitlement programs?

These are valid questions, but less relevant in a financial crisis that will probably lead to a severe recession--and especially after 30 years of government neglect of its basic responsibilities. We need to spend money now to create jobs, to keep up with the rest of the world on alternative energy and high-tech infrastructure...Oh, and by the way, if government activism is now back on the table, we can begin to talk about the real answers to our entitlement problems: Medicare and medicaid can only be solved when they're included in a comprehensive, regulated and managed universal health insurance system.

The point is, this is a very good year to be Senator Government. Ronald Reagan used to say that the most frightening nine words in the English language were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." That is no longer true. This year, the most frightening eight words are "I'm John McCain and I approved this message."

Update: My print column. Wish I'd thought up the "I'm John McCain..." line last night.

And more: A Klein consensus.

From TIME's Amy Sullivan:

In politics it is generally not considered a good sign when voters are laughing at you, not with you. And by the end of the third and last presidential debate, the undecided voters who had gathered in Denver for Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg’s focus group were “audibly snickering” at John McCain’s grimaces, eye-bulging, and repeated references to “Joe the Plumber.”

The group of 50 uncommitted voters should have at least been receptive to McCain—Republicans and Independents outnumbered Democrats in the group by almost 4 to 1, and they started the evening with much warmer responses to McCain than to his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama. But by the time it was all over, so few of them had declared their support for McCain that there weren’t enough for Greenberg to separate them into a post-debate focus group. Meanwhile, the Obama supporters had to assemble in two different rooms to keep their discussion groups manageable.

Half of the voters thought that Obama “won” the debate, with 24% giving McCain the victory and 26% seeing no clear winner. As with previous debates, however, the divergent personal reactions to the candidates were most striking. And those ultimately may end up defining the campaign for McCain. He emerged from the Republican field as the candidate who was least associated with the damaged GOP brand, the one least able to be tied to George W. Bush, and he has largely maintained that image: a large plurality (40%) see McCain as a maverick, and over the course of the evening there was a 52-point shift on the question of whether McCain offered a different path than Bush.

Yet if McCain has proved resistant to the Obama campaign’s mantra that he would be “More of the Same,” the results of focus groups over the past month seem to show that he has hurt his own chances of winning the White House by misreading the emotional mood of the country. Once again, the focus group dials dove whenever McCain went on the attack, particularly when he talked about Bill Ayers and ACORN in what turned out to be the longest segment of the evening. The audience that started out giving McCain a 54/24 favorability rating (and, incidentally, liked Sarah Palin a lot more than Joe Biden, with +6 and -20 splits) ended up almost evenly divided between warm and cool feelings toward him (50/48).

Obama started off with a lower, and divided, favorability rating (42/42) that climbed to 72/22 after 90 minutes. “Boring” and “zzzzz” were popular reviews of Obama’s performance from blogosphere pundits, but apparently the people have had enough excitement watching the market plummet and are in the mood for some mellowness.

McCain’s strongest area of the night was the issue of energy independence. The dial responses were highest for his comments in that area, and McCain eliminated Obama’s 18-point advantage on the issue by the end of the debate. He also continues to hold strong advantages as the candidate most trusted to handle national security and foreign policy issues, even though the final debate was mostly focused on domestic questions. And McCain is still the candidate voters are most likely to see as a “strong leader,” although his 36-point lead on that issue shrank to 22 over the course of the evening.

One of the most significant factors in the campaign may end up being Obama’s fundraising, which he has used to run ads across the country criticizing McCain’s health care plan. The undecided voters started the evening preferring Obama’s approach 54 to 4. McCain won over an additional 14% of them in the debate while Obama’s number remained unchanged, but the 40-point gap on a key issue is still hurting the Republican candidate.

As for Obama, he continued to win over undecided voters on critical questions: Does he have what it takes to be president? A 38/50 split flipped to 56/34. Can voters trust him to make the right decisions? Obama rose from 30/50 to 48/40. Is he best equipped to handle the economic crisis? Voters split evenly between the two candidates at the start preferred Obama by 30 points by the end of the night.

Perhaps most significant was Obama’s success in reassuring voters that he understands who they are and what matters to them. He went from a 16-point to a 24-point advantage on “Is he on your side?” and made similar gains on the question of whether he would “bring the right kind of change,” from a 18 to 38-point advantage. And while the two candidates were even on the question of “who shares your values?” at the beginning of the debate, Obama held a 24-point lead by the end.

The “values” undecided voters seem to have in mind this year seem a long way from the focus on abortion and gay marriage in the 2004 campaign. Voters reacted most positively to Obama’s remarks during the segment on education that parents needed to take personal responsibility to improve their children’s learning environments—Greenberg noted that the dials went up to 80, the highest score of the night. Similarly, women reacted particularly well to his comments on abortion, but it was his suggestion that there could be common ground in supporting policies to reduce the rate of unintended pregnancies that really spiked the dials in CNN’s focus group of undecided Ohio voters.

Soon enough we’ll have election results instead of focus group responses to tell us which candidate will move into the White House in January. The number of voters who remain uncommitted dwindles by the day. John McCain’s challenge in the last three weeks of the campaign is to make sure that they don’t break the way these Denver voters did. He’d better hope that Joe the Plumber has a lot of friends.