"...McCain, on the other hand, is running a campaign straight out of the playbook that lost the Conservative Party the last three British elections. The old Conservatives thought that if they just kept attacking Labor, the citizens would see the error of their ways.

It didn't work, and it's hard to imagine the American electorate buying McCain's new advertising effort to undermine Obama by accusing him of being a "celebrity" and comparing him -- OMG! -- to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton. McCain has made matters worse by falsely accusing Obama of wanting to raise taxes on electricity and by offering a phony account of why Obama decided not to visit wounded American soldiers in Europe.

By running an attack campaign that is almost a parody of George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 exertions, McCain is chucking away his greatest opportunity, which is to show that he could reform Republicanism and offer voters an alternative way of breaking with a past they have come to loathe.

Interestingly, Miliband put himself at the center of Britain's torrid political speculation with an op-ed article in the Guardian on Wednesday suggesting that even an incumbent party can turn itself into a party of change if it understands the fix it's in. "To get our message across, we must be more humble about our shortcomings but more compelling about our achievements," he wrote, noting that Labor "won three elections by offering real change, not just in policy but in the way we do politics. We must do so again."

It's true that Labor's record in Britain is more compelling than Bush's in the United States. That's why it's sad to see Brown, an intelligent and decent man, in such trouble. But Miliband and Cameron both have the right idea: Voters are in a mood to give the status quo a swift kick. Instead of offering puerile ads trashing Obama, McCain should show how he'd be the change we've been waiting for. " (Ibid)