Since Obama disposed of Hillary it’s become clear that in order to crush him McCain must resort to The Big Negative. Obama’s got too much momentum and money and charisma for McCain to waltz into office by way of a friendly popularity contest.

Well, Wednesday the old admiral – or the old crowd that’s moved down the street from Bush Headquarters to McCain Central – started blasting away with 16-inch guns.

Now, to work, The Big Negative has to latch onto a flaw that people see in Obama. This may sound like a Pollyanna, but the big lie just doesn’t work. McCain bashing Obama with a fiction or half-truth will backfire, and Obama is likely to land with a roundhouse counterpunch right on McCain’s chin.

Obama’s fatal flaw, as McCain tells it, is celebrity. Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Barack Obama, McCain says, are three peas in a pod.

And to reinforce his point he had his campaign manager send an email Wednesday. Here’s a loose translation:

‘Obama is the biggest celebrity in the world… like Britney and Paris.… Only a celebrity of Barack Obama’s magnitude could attract 200,000 fans in Berlin… fawning over The One.… As the world’s biggest celebrity, Obama’s developed a presumptuous arrogance…’ and so on and so on.

McCain also blasts Obama for eating ‘chocolate protein bars,’ drinking ‘Black Forest Berry Honest Tea,’ and worrying about ‘the price of arugula.’

So here’s John McCain’s case: Barack Obama is not qualified to be President because he drinks the wrong kind of tea. Now if that’s true McCain just won the election. But if it’s not he’d better duck.

Because Obama’s already swinging back. And he’s chosen a deadly weapon: Humor. He’s basically saying, ‘Look at this. John McCain’s calling me Paris Hilton.’

Senator McCain may have just proved another old-fashioned political truism that goes hand-in-hand with The Big Negative: When you start throwing political hand grenades, be careful not to blow yourself up.

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