If you thought the McCain campaign couldn’t get any sillier or more irrelevant you were wrong. The odd thing is that, despite wall-to-wall coverage on cable news networks, attempts to portray Obama as an empty-suit, liberal elitist with a series of ill-chosen, superficial ads and misstatements, the net effect has been to diminish McCain’s image and dislodge the halo from his head.

It was bad enough when his campaign managers sought to deflate Obama’s success abroad by making him appear to be just another celebrity like Paris Hilton or Britney Spears in that stupid ad they concocted. It wasn’t funny as some Republican surrogates maintain except maybe on a grade-school level and it served no real purpose except to show just how empty McCain’s intellectual coffers really are.

But sillier still is the fact that McCain sees fit to respond to Paris Hilton’s own 'political video' depicting him as a ‘wrinkly white-haired dude’ who’s old as the hills but "is he ready to lead?" Her video is actually funny, but that’s not the point. How appropriate is it for a potential president of the United States get to into an exchange with a celebrity who has absolutely nothing to do with the issues he should be exploring? Can McCain be taken seriously by serious people other than Republican stalwarts who keep dreaming up improbable credentials for a man who seems more inconsequential every day?

Come to think of it, that other bright idea the McCain PR team had to conflate Obama with Moses in what some observers saw as an attempt to portray the candidate as "uppity" and self-anointed could have unintended side effects.Forget that it was gun-totin' Charlton Heston playing the part; guns hadn't been invented yet. After all didn't Moses part the Red Sea and wasn't he a strong leader who overcame tremendous odds? Some people still believe in miracles.

Giuliani, on MSNBC’s "Road to the White House" tried mightily to make the case that McCain should still be considered a maverick, as if that were some meaningful character trait distinguishing him from typical Washington pols. But, when questioned by David Gregory about how McCain had opposed the Bush tax cuts in 2004 because they favored the rich and now supports extending them, Giuliani switched from the maverick theme to the judgment theme whereby McCain is right to oppose raising taxes in a struggling economy.

The truth is, of course, that folks in the top-income brackets aren’t struggling, and the lower tax rates for businesses that McCain advocates would only increase corporate profit margins without helping lower and middle-class workers. It is often said that poor people don’t create jobs, the implication being that corporations are the most reliable job providers. Tell that to the thousands of workers who have been laid off or seen their benefits and retirement funds disappear while executives take home huge salaries and are protected by golden parachutes even if they fail to deliver and must be removed.

By trying to reassert McCain’s maverick credentials while at the same time stressing his superior judgment about everything from the surge to taxes to off-shore drilling, Giuliani struggled in the web of inconsistencies that have come to define Senator McCain - - kind of like a kid who tracks mud all over the living room floor and excuses the mess by saying “but I cleaned my room yesterday.” The truth is McCain is in the process of forswearing all his previously held principles to become just another Republican good old boy. As one comment to a previous post of mine put it, “it’s time to retire the word maverick” as it relates to McCain.

It may be true that the barrage of brickbats hurled at Obama have created doubts for some about his abilities and leadership potential. In the end, however, McCain’s seemingly impenetrable wall of military service and congressional experience may not hold up if he continues game-playing instead of policy making. In any case, regardless of how much coverage he receives, it hard to make a dull candidate exciting; the end result may be a great yawning ho-hum from an electorate lapsing into sudden, uncontrollable fits of slumber as the McCain campaign lurches along on its low-ground approach to winning the White House.