I know you are, but what am I?

Recently, John McCain’s campaign has turned to an attempt to use Barack Obama’s associations – like Bill Ayers, ACORN and the unspoken specter or the Rev. Jeremiah Wright – against him to try and call his judgment into question.

Considering the campaign has a walking warning about McCain’s own judgment in his running mate, this seems to be an odd strategy, and it hasn’t worked particularly well so far. But one can’t fault a faltering campaign for trying to turn from issues toward anything that could give it some life.

Aside from Ayers, the next biggest focus has been on ACORN – the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now – and the supposed voter fraud they’ve perpetrated. Essentially, ACORN tries to register voters because that’s how democracy works. They made the mistake of offering monetary compensation for the workers who registered the most voters, which led to workers cheating to try to get the money by filling out registration forms falsely.

This will not and cannot lead to any votes being fraudulently cast. For one thing, ACORN does turn in all forms that are given to it, but it flags the ones that are likely to be forged, such as the “Tony Romo” and “Mickey Mouse” forms, for election officials to sort out – as the law demands. Also, it would not be possible for a person to show up to the polls and try to vote as Mickey Mouse, because that person doesn’t exist.

The argument gets even worse for the McCain campaign, though. You see, though it’s accusing Obama of consorting with alleged perpetrators of election fraud, the McCain campaign is actually getting involved with it. According to a Huffington Post article published Monday, the campaign, together with the Republican National Committee and California Republican Party, made a payment of $175,000 to Lincoln Strategy in June for the purpose of “registering voters.”

Lincoln Strategy is run by Nathan Sproul, who has been investigated on several occasions for attempts to suppress Democratic voter turnout and throwing away voter registration forms, among other things. His company essentially promoted collecting Republican registrations and destroying Democratic ones. He has disputed the allegations, but as Republican Congressman Chris Cannon said, “The difference between ACORN and Sproul is that ACORN doesn’t throw away or change registration documents after they have been filled out.”

So, essentially, McCain is doing what he accused Obama of doing – consorting with those who would defraud the vote – only McCain actually does it, and on a larger scale, basically rendering his own points moot.

For another example, McCain (with help) spent a good portion of the summer criticizing Obama for his perceived inexperience and produced an ad calling Obama “the world’s biggest celebrity.” Then, he chose Sarah Palin to be his running mate, who is not only far less experienced than Obama, but hasn’t even proven herself intellectually up to the challenge of being one step away from the presidency – as Obama has spent two years doing.

McCain would probably be doing a lot better in the polls if his strategy were something more than a pot calling the kettle black.