Many pro-Obama and progressive commentators are noting the McCain campaign's recent ads allegedly about 'education' (really sex and children) and 'opposition research' (really about carnivores attacking women). As even a simpleton can see, the ads are based largely on obvious falsehoods, and even if not, it's not clear exactly what's so bad about the alleged behavior. But the trajectory of these adds convinces me that their purpose has very little to do with their overt content (which means that responding to the content is a distraction that will let them work unhindered).

Here's what I see: McCain and Schmidt, following the latest version of the Rove approach,  are systematically running ads designed to provoke strong atavistic emotions (even if only for a second). A viewer may watch the 'kindergarten sex education' ad or the 'wolves' ad, and afterwards say "Well, that didn't seem right, or fair." But while watching, the image of a lone alien male connected to issues of sexuality and children, or the image of a helpless woman facing a pack of predatory wolves, and their ripping her flesh, have laid down a track in our hindbrain memory, one reinforced by near-instinctive feelings of fear and disgust.

Now, for many voters, such memories won't have much impact, since their deliberative faculties will override the impact. But for someone undecided -- especially for a low-information undecided voter who enters the voting booth not quite sure, and ready to 'vote his/her gut feeling', those strong unconscious fears and emotions associated with one candidate can make the difference. And the election may well be decided by exactly such 'independent' and gut-feeling voters.

McCain's strategy rests not just on  mud and lies, I'm convinced -- and as the arrival of TWO such ads confirms. This is a carefully calibrated strategy, one driven by research on the emotional reactions of focus groups using lie-detector-like biometric technology. Even if the focus group doesn't 'agree' with the ad, McCain/Schmidt's people have measured their non-verbal emotional reaction, and they are tuning their ads for maximum impact at that level, without caring ,uch about the ads'  truth or even muddiness.

The question is: how does one fight back against this tactic? One possiblity is to counterpunch, using the same methods, but that's despicable.

Another is to widely disseminate disdain and mockery of the weakness the ads reveal -- but it's hard to know whether such mockery will reach the target audience.

A third is to build positive associations and warm fuzzies -- but warmth and identification, while powerful emotions, are more difficult to build than fear and disgust, which we are built to respond to immediatly.

A fourth, and an important one, is to powerfully push the meme that "you are being manipulated." People, no matter what their views, don't like being treated like puppets on a string. Somone - not necessarily the Obama campaign - probably needs to uncover the 'hidden persuaders' as loudly as possible. Remember how books on this topic keep being best sellers: we're vulnerable to this kind of manipulation, but we're also primed to be suspicious of being manipulated, especially nowadays.

I hope that the Obama campaign has expected these dishonorable tactics and prepared a powerful response!