Get a load of this new Obama ad. It's a good ad.

I'm starting to have a little problem with the firestorm of blame you just know is coming if (when) McCain-Palin loses. It'll be all about pointing the finger at Palin. And this ad seems to put the blame where it belongs — on McCain and Co.

Is Palin blameless in taking on a role for which she is so incredibly unfit? Of course not. Will we see more of her? It seems likely. I just read Jane Mayer's article in the New Yorker. And it's clear Palin is much more intelligent (and ambitious) than her interviews and other unscripted appearances would suggest.

But let's remember where this campaign began — with the prospect of a woman in the White House. Rather than culminate in Hillary Clinton's taking office, though, the campaign season has led to this ad. Palin's wink at the end suggests all sorts of things: her knowingness in being used as a sort of trophy wife for the aging and unappealing McCain. Her complicitness in what is very likely to come: the fingerpointing followed, perhaps, by her rise as a national political figure in her own right. And how about this: The wink also lets us simultaneously accept the ad's Obama narrative ("Put the blame where it belongs: on McCain") while providing the spectacle of a woman taking the fall for the poor strategy and cynical tactics of a bunch of highly paid GOP operatives.

We may have celebrated those 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling — whoopie! — but this just seems like business as usual from the Obama campaign.