McCain mocks Obama's premature inauguration plans, but...

John McCain has mocked Democrat Barack Obama all week as so cocky that he is already “measuring the drapes” in the White House Oval Office. The Republican's audience usually boos on cue.

On Saturday, McCain found new ammunition (see video by clicking on the Read more line below) in a newspaper story on White House transition planning that every presidential campaign begins by now (inlcuding the Republican's).

Campaigns, however, are usually careful to keep such planning behind-the-scenes to avoid inconvenient accusations of being presumptuous or over-confident.

Today's erroneous New York Times story said that part of Obama's transition team, John Podesta, who was President Bill Clinton's fourth chief of staff and now is an Obama advisor, already has drafted a sample inaugural address for the Democrat .

Obama aides quickly pointed out that Podesta wrote the speech even more prematurely -- when he was still working for rival Hillary Clinton's doomed campaign -- and published his offering in a book last summer.

A statement posted on the website of Podesta's think-tank....

GOP celebrity Sarah Palin calls in TV celebrity Elisabeth Hasselbeck for Florida help

John McCain's campaign is still fighting for Florida's electoral votes. So it's sending in its big gun, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, this weekend to campaign on the race's second-to-last Sunday.

And Palin, in turn, is calling in Elisabeth Hasselbeck, a co-host on ABC's televised morning coffee-klatsch, "The View." It may have something to do with the all-important female vote.

Hasselbeck, the token conservative and McCain supporter on the female panel of talkers, announced that the Arizona senator's campaign had called and invited her to introduce Palin at some Sunshine State rallies this Sunday.

"I am more than honored to be invited," she said. "So I'll be flying there to travel with her and meet some pretty interesting people, I have a feeling," said Hasselbeck, whose husband, Tim Matt, is a professional football quarterback.

She promised to tell some stories on Monday's show.

The subject turned to what Hasselbeck was going to wear, which she said was undecided. The ironically named Joy Behar, an outspoken Barack Obama supporter, suggested a Hefty bag with shoulder pads.

--Andrew Malcolm

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Photo credit: ABC

Ralph Nader gears up to set a record

In so many ways, this has been a campaign for the record books. One only need to look to fundraising totals for proof.

Now, Ralph Nader wants a piece of the action. So when the third-party presidential candidate woke up this morning, he set out to break a Guinness World Record.

Nader will hold campaign events in 21 cities across Massachusetts today in an attempt to break the world record for the most speeches in a 24-hour time period. The campaign is calling it Nader's "Massachusetts Marathon."

The candidate is scheduled to deliver more than 315 minutes of speeches and drive more than 365 miles today. Each speech will last at least 10 minutes and will tackle a separate issue, according to a Nader/Gonzalez news release.

If Nader breaks the record, we at The Ticket would not be surprised. After all, the four-time presidential candidate is nothing if not tenacious.

-- Kate Linthicum

Ticket Notice: Sunday shows -- McCain, Bayh, Ridge, Rubin

ABC This Week: Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric; Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C./McCain supporter) and Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill./Obama supporter); roundtable with Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal and Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson and George Will of ABC News.

CBS Face the Nation: Robert Rubin (former Treasury secretary/Obama economic advisor) and Douglas Holtz-Eakin (former director of the Congressional Budget Office/McCain policy advisor); Govs. Ed Rendell (D-Pa.) and Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.).

CNN Late Edition: Sens. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.); Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and Heather Wilson (R-N.M.); GOP strategists Alex Castellanos and Leslie Sanchez and Democratic strategists Donna Brazile and James Carville; CNN correspondents Candy Crowley and John King and CNN anchor Campbell Brown.

Fox News Sunday: Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia (Obama national co-chairman) and former Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania (McCain national co-chairman); political strategist Karl Rove; roundtable with Brit Hume of Fox News, Mara Liasson and Juan Williams of NPR, and Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard.

NBC Meet the Press: Republican presidential candidate John McCain; roundtable with Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report, Kelly O'Donnell of NBC News, and Chuck Todd, political director of NBC News.

--Leslie Hoffecker

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Photo credit: Kevin Lemarque / Reuters

A look back at the ads of the campaign: lots of new, some of the same

Political advertisements are more than just commercials, they’re artillery. And they’ve played a key role in driving the news cycle and shaping the narratives –- and even the vocabulary -– of this presidential race.

Now, as election day looms, and as Barack Obama and John McCain's campaigns unfurl increasingly negative ads at an increasingly rapid pace, the Ticket wondered: Is this normal?

So we turned to David Schwartz, a campaign commercial expert and the Chief Curator of the Museum of the Moving Image. Schwartz, who is the brain behind The Living Room Candidate, an online archive of presidential campaign commercials from 1952-2008, says this year's collection of ads has been exceptional in both quantity and creativity.

The campaign has seen a mix of ads this cycle, according to Schwartz, with campaigns making traditional television commericals (like Hillary Clinton's "3 a.m." spot) and also online-only videos (like this new Republican National Committee-sponsored ad attacking Obama for his ties to Tony Rezko). The Web spots are cheap to make and free to post to YouTube, so the campaigns can churn out dozens of new ones each week.

When making any kind of ad today, the campaigns are always thinking about the kind of life it will live on the Internet. So, like any good viral web videos, many campaign ads now aim to be funny or provocative. Consider, for example, "Celebrity," the McCain campaign's 30-second spot that compared Obama to stars like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton.

Schwartz thinks that videos like these are designed mostly to get attention from the media. And often, they do.

Schwartz said he admired McCain's "Celebrity" ad because it was different. "It was creative and it seemed to help [McCain] for awhile," Schwartz said. "That's a new line of attack, to attack a candidate for being too popular."

This season's ads have focused more than ever on the personalities of the candidates, Schwartz said. While McCain has painted Obama as a "celebrity," and, in recent weeks, as dangeously mysterious (a recent McCain spot asks ominously, "Who is Barack Obama?"), Obama has tried to portray McCain as erratic and out of touch.

Negative ads are nothing new, of course. They start cropping up at a certain point in every election, Schwartz says. "The candidates introduce themselves early in the campaign with positive ads and biographical ads and then . . .

Gay marriage foes pray for money and pass the collection plate

Backers of California’s Proposition 8 invoked a higher authority, as they ramped up their television advertising by an additional $1 million, and asked for more money.

In an e-mail appeal for more cash, campaign strategist Frank Schubert says foes of the initiative on the Nov. 4 ballot to ban same-sex marriage continue to outspend them.

Schubert had warned earlier this week that the "Yes" side would lose unless it could raise millions more in the campaign’s closing days. The missive apparently is having its intended effect, given the new ad buys.

Still, high-dollar donations to both campaigns reflect the money disparity.

In a 72-hour period ending Friday, Proposition 8 foes disclosed raising $3.6 million in donations of $1,000 or more. Backers, primarily Mormons, conservative Christians and Catholics, raised $661,000.

Proposition 8 would ban same-sex unions by creating a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as being....

John Moody of Fox News goes out on a political limb -- and apparently is still on it

We waited patiently, wondering through the evening and into this morning whether John Moody, the executive vice president of Fox News, would modify the bold prediction he made Thursday night in a blog posting.

In case you missed the item on the Fox Forum, headlined "Moment of Truth," Moody wrote about the the young, white John McCain volunteer who, as he summarized it, "says she was mugged at an ATM machine in Pittsburgh ... by a big black man. She further says he threw her down, then disfigured her by carving the letter B into her face with a sharp implement when he saw that she supported McCain, not Barack Obama."

If true, he opined, some voters "may revisit their support" for Obama "because they suddenly feel they do not know enough about the Democratic nominee."

But, he added, "If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Sen. McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting."

Well, in fact, the obviously disturbed 20-year-old woman made the whole thing up, it was revealed Friday.

As a result, we thought maybe Moody would decide he was just a tad hyperbolic in his first take on the matter. But apparently not; no update has appeared on Fox Forum.

So there you have it: A Fox News honcho has declared the presidential race over, with McCain the loser.

While perusing the blog, one Friday posting caught our eye -- a brief plug for an interview that Fox's Neil Cavuto conducted on the collapsing economy. His guest: that noted financial expert, rocker Ted Nugent, holding forth with his prescriptions for turning this mess around.

Seriously. We can attest to it, having seen the tete-a-tete live. Every fair, balanced and totally off-the-wall minute of it.

We can only assume that Joe the Plumber was already booked.

-- Don Frederick

Sarah Palin plus or minus: A discussion with video

The assumption in promotion has always been:

Never mind what they're saying, as long as they're talking about you, it's good. (By the way, is Joe Biden still the Democratic vice presidential candidate?)

The vice presidential selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin by Sen. John McCain may cause a reexamination of that theory. She's certainly been the most talked-about and most-viewed since she exploded on the political scene Aug. 29 in Dayton, Ohio.

But is that good? Some recent polls have shown she's hurting McCain in some sectors. What do you think?

Watch this video discussion about her and then leave your reaction/opinion/views below, please.

--Andrew Malcolm

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McCain-Obama race now so close, they decide on a dance-off

Why bother with expensive campaigns and elections? And all that travel day and night. And those contradictory or possibly erroneous polls?

They go on and on forever. And they're sooo serious.

When you can simply get a couple of political crews -- the Obamas and McCains -- together and settle the whole thing right here and right now.

But there might be a surprise in the works.

--Andrew Malcolm

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Unbelievable McCain Vs. Obama Dance-Off - Watch more free videos

Joe Lieberman on Sarah Palin: Training still needed

Here's the latest from the "with friends like these ..." department:

Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, on a conference call with reporters from his home state, was asked if he believed Sarah Palin would be ready from day one to be president.

The "day one" phrase made the question a bit of a set-up, but Lieberman bit (eagerly). He replied, "Thank God, she's not gonna have to be president from day one, because (John) McCain's going to be alive and well."

The Democrat-turned-independent-turned McCain booster quickly added that "if, God forbid," Palin at some point would have to assume the top job, "she'll be ready. She's had executive experience. She's smart. And she will have had on-the-job training."

In a McCain administration, there's a good chance much of that instruction would come from Lieberman.

Here's more on what he had to say, including a pledge to, if necessary, support a Barack Obama presidency.

-- Don Frederick