John McCain’s latest ad attempts to leverage the Greek temple from Barack Obama’s Invesco Field acceptance speech while tying him to the rest of his party as “more of the same”. The spot, called “Temple”, hammers the meta themes of higher taxes, more spending, and underscores their definition of Obama as a doctrinaire liberal rather than a post-partisan with new ideas on governance:

Expect more exploration of this theme as the general election proceeds. Obama likes to claim that he can heal the partisan divide, but he has no track record at any level of being anything more than what Power Line describes: a go-along, get-along careerist who works within the Democratic machine.  This answers the silly McSame theme from the Democrats, who claim that McCain voted with his party 90% of the time (actually 88%) during the Bush administration.  Obama voted with his party 97% of the time.

Team McCain needs a parallel theme to this, because while this spot is effective, it may be a little too subtle.  New spots should demand an answer to this question: What has Barack Obama ever accomplished, as a reformer and as a “post-partisan”?  With Sarah Palin on the ticket, John McCain can answer both questions with solid track records.  Obama, on the other hand, can only point to some nice speeches he gave.