If the NRSC didn’t quite hit the target against Richard Blumenthal this week, it scores a bullseye on Barack Obama in its latest ad. It starts off with Barack Obama himself in New Orleans during the campaign, blasting George Bush for a slow response to Hurricane Katrina and vowing “never again” repeatedly in his promise to be more responsive. It then quotes a number of media analysts and prominently features Democratic strategist James Carville offering strong criticisms of Obama’s response to the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf — which will hit New Orleans hard, economically if not physically:

This may be one of the most effective web ads I’ve seen in a while. By fronting it with Obama’s criticism of Bush, the NRSC makes the argument that the issue is legitimate and open for criticism, and at the same time paints Obama as hypocritical. It also feeds into a very dangerous meme for Obama that is growing at the same pace as the spill: executive incompetence. And this time, the national media isn’t ignoring it as they did with the issue of executive inexperience when Obama ran for the presidency.