Can McCain Use Advice Clinton Got on Obama?

Clinton's risk, often cited by Penn's opponents inside the campaign, was that attacking Obama directly would only heighten negative impressions of her. She carried plenty of baggage as a polarizing politician; taking on Obama would have added to that baggage. Others in Clinton's high command preferred to portray her as more human. They did not think she needed to look more like a warrior.

Earlier this year, the McCain campaign, presumably unknowingly, adopted some of Penn's provocative 2007 playbook with an ad that talked about the presumptive GOP nominee as "the American president Americans have been waiting for."

That was even less subtle in invoking a cultural-values argument against Obama than Penn's suggestion to Clinton that she always tell audiences she was "born in the middle of America" and to talk about "the deeply American values you grew up with."

Interestingly, the most provocative of Penn's memos posted by the Atlantic -- the one that talks about Obama's lack of roots in American values -- went nowhere. "I don't remember there being a real discussion about this," Howard Wolfson, who was the campaign's communications director and who often differed with Penn on strategy, said yesterday. "It was universally rejected, and in fairness to Mark, I don't think Mark pushed it. . . . It's one of those things people heard and said, 'That's not a good idea.' "

McCain's campaign appears to have less hesitation than Clinton's did in going after Obama. For the past few weeks, it has run a series of negative ads -- some humorous, some not so -- that portray Obama as a famous but empty suit who is wrong on many of the issues Americans care most about.

The ads, at a minimum, may be getting under Obama's skin. It's possible they are doing real damage. Penn seems to believe that, based on what he wrote for the Politico. "Fair or not, as advertising it did its job," he said.

Just how far McCain's campaign will pursue this strategy isn't clear. There are risks for him, just as there were for Clinton. Obama has proven over this long campaign to be a difficult target to hit -- at least on anything more than an occasional basis. So the mileage may be limited long term.

More fundamentally, McCain risks damaging his reputation as a politician who has eschewed the politics of negativity. But what was considered out of bounds in a Democratic primary campaign may be less so in a general-election race, in which other voters come into play. McCain will have to make some difficult judgments about this in the final 82 days.