Obama's next attack ad: President Putin of Germany

The Georgian government has just declared "a state of war" with Russia. As I write this, 1,600 have been killed after Russian forces pushed into Georgia. This a real political and humanitarian crisis.

It also needs to be the subject of a Barack Obama attack ad on John McCain. Remember McCain flubbing Vladimir Putin's role repeatedly in speeches, even calling him "the President of Germany"?

Aside from the obvious gaffes here, Germany doesn't have a President anyway, they have a chancellor. Quick, someone try to get McCain to say "Mikhail Saakashvili" (that's Georgia's president).

This is also a chance for Obama to use a timely issue, the Russia-Georgia clash, to advance two valuable narrative themes -- that McCain is a befuddled old man ill-prepared to lead, and that Obama has the advantage on international diplomacy. It's a valuable broad-stroke rhetorical attack.

It's also timely and germane to the Russia-Georgia issue. One of McCain's top advisers was also a paid lobbyist for the Georgian government, and actually lobbied McCain staff while working for the campaign. So it's not like there's a lot of independent credibility going on there even if McCain could figure out who the country's leaders were.