Back on June 5, I wrote:

To be frank, McCain won in spite of, and not because of, his maverick and iconoclastic views and attitudes. Conservative Republicans still bristle that he gives them too little respect. That very quality is now his ticket to competitiveness in the general election. Remember the Mitt Romney ad depicting McCain as the Democrats’ best friend? McCain could practically run that as his own ad in the general election.

Today John McCain has a new ad. Hmmm. It’s not that far off the Romney ad. Here, though, I suspect that the intent is not just to burnish McCain’s bipartisan credentials but to inoculate him against what may be a barrage of “hitting back” ads and comments from frustrated Democrats. But we know the Barack Obama line by now, right? “He’s not the John McCain I knew.”