After a masterful rollout of the Sarah Palin announcement last Friday, the McCain campaign has now found itself behind in defining his running mate to the nation.  Stung by a series of rumors and innuendo, the Republicans plan to launch a full offensive today, coordinating it with a speech that will certainly get more attention than most convention speeches.  They plan on making direct comparisons of Palin’s experience to that of Barack Obama:

Mounting a ferocious defense of his embattled running mate, John McCain said he is buying a TV ad arguing that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has more experience than the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama.

In an effort to rev up conservatives, a campaign statement issued a list of critical media mentions that it called “smears” of Palin, who speaks in primetime at the convention on Wednesday night.

The campaign announced: “The McCain campaign will launch a television ad directly comparing Gov. Palin’s executive experience as a governor who oversees 24,000 state employees, 14 statewide cabinet agencies and a $ 10 billion budget to Barack Obama’s experience as a one-term junior senator from Illinois.”

The ad is what the campaign calls “a forward-leaning effort to counter the shameless smears that have prevailed during Gov. Palin’s introduction to the American voter.”

To a certain extent, the campaign has nowhere to cast the blame but on itself.  Instead of rolling out a series of ads extolling her experience and especially her record on reform, the campaign pushed itself into “non-political” mode for Hurricane Gustav.  They apparently believed that this would earn them some credit with the media, but obviously they miscalculated.  The dead air of the last three days gave the media a vacuum, which they filled with lies and innuendo immediately.

Now they face an uphill struggle to regain the narrative in this campaign.  Tonight, Sarah Palin will take the bull by the horns herself.  She has the opportunity to relieve all doubts with a dynamic, forceful address that encompasses her fight to reform Alaskan politics, often at risk to her own political career.  If she succeeds, then she can turn all of the slurs into weapons back at those who have thrown them at her.  If she doesn’t, it will be a long nine weeks to the election.

Today, the McCain campaign has rolled out a new ad — about four days late.  It consists of nothing more than Palin talking to the nation from her speech on Friday, which was definitely a good introduction to Governor Palin.  They plan on aggressively running this ad over the next few days as a means of reconnecting her to voters.  It’s not too late, but they’ve given the media a head start.

Update (AP): Between the Us magazine cover and Letterman’s Jerry Springer joke last night, I don’t think the worry is that she’ll be framed as inexperienced, I think it’s that she’ll end up being regarded as some sort of low-class freakshow whom no right-thinking person would take seriously. Even Gawker’s offended by the stereotype, but that’ll be a cold comfort if it catches on.