A nice NYT article about McCain’s new "strategy" of lying through his teeth.

Mr. McCain came into the race promoting himself as a truth teller and has long publicly deplored the kinds of negative tactics that helped sink his candidacy in the Republican primaries in 2000. But his strategy now reflects a calculation advisers made this summer — over the strenuous objections of some longtime hands who helped him build his "Straight Talk" image — to shift the campaign more toward disqualifying Mr. Obama in the eyes of voters.

"I think the McCain folks realize if they can get this thing down in the mud, drag Obama into the mud, that’s where they have the best advantage to win," said Matthew Dowd, who worked with many top McCain campaign advisers when he was President Bush’s chief strategist in the 2004 campaign, but who has since had a falling out with the White House. "If they stay up at 10,000 feet, they don’t."

***

[Don] Sipple, the Republican strategist, voiced concern that Mr. McCain’s approach could backfire. "Any campaign that is taking liberty with the truth and does it in a serial manner will end up paying for it in the end," he said. "But it’s very unbecoming to a political figure like John McCain whose flag was planted long ago in ground that was about ‘straight talk’ and integrity."

The media blowback for this McCain’s strategy is relatively strong.  The question is: will people listen?  The McCain camp is betting not (and they’ll probably play the "media is against us" card).  The problem is, it might work.