I have lost all respect I once had for John McCain. The John McCain who really was a maverick and spoke out against torture in Iraq, and the John McCain who would have made a decent nominee in 2000 but was victim to the same divisive, smear politics that now fuel his campaign.

This lipstick-on-a-pig controversy is nothing but faux outrage. McCain has used that phrase to describe Hillary Clinton, Obama used it well before Sarah Palin entered the picture, but now the McCain campaign is acting as if it was some sort of out-of-the-blue sexist insult aimed directly at Sarah Palin.

And Obama has a point. You can dress up the McCain-Palin campaign with the labels of "maverick" and "reformer," but at the end of the day you're still going to find the same petty, divisive politics that Karl Rove used to get George Bush into the White House. And this latest flap proves it.

Don't forget what McCain's manager said just last week: "This election is not about issues." It can't be about issues for them to win. If it's about Iraq, they lose. If it's about the economy, they lose. If it's about health care, they lose.

So they have to make it about personality and mini-controversies. And the worst part of it is that the media just plays along. That's why I've never bought into claims that the media has an inherent liberal or conservative bias—it implies the media puts a lot of actual thought into its political coverage.

Most news outlets cover politics like a pack of dogs chasing a flashlight beam. They don't care where that bright spot on the wall is coming from. They see it and think, "Go get it!" Then it moves to the floor, and they run as a wild pack, barking at the top of their lungs, coming up with nothing. Over and over. Meanwhile, the guy sitting in the chair with the flashlight is doubled over in laughter at how easy it is to fool these simple beasts with such a basic tool.

Chuck today basically admitted as much this morning, saying "I think the McCain campaign is laughing their butts off this morning. That any of us have taken the bait on this lipstick thing, I mean, this is a joke. They have beaten the Obama campaign on these little -- what I call -- sort of shiny metal object days, right? They're able to say, "Oh, look, shiny metal object."

Obama at least seems genuinely interested in talking about the issues that matter in this election. Here's his response to today's controversy:

"See, it would be funny, but the news media decided that would be the lead story yesterday. This happens every election cycle. Every four years, this is what we do. This is what they want to spend two of the last 55 days talking about...Enough!"

But those tactics have worked before. And if they work this election, we'll see them again next time, and the time after that, until the American people prove to campaign managers that you can't win elections that way.