Attack ads are the junk food of politics. And when you haven’t had junk food for a long time, the first bite always tastes good…even if it doesn’t digest well. So, upon reflection, I think I’ll downgrade the initial ad that was leaked from a B+ to a C+. And for the reasons outlined by Andrew Steele, this ad is a downright disaster – the short message from it is that Iggy’s a cool guy who likes Algoma Park. Ooo…scary…

That said, the Tories are in B+ territory on the other two ads they released. They’ve actually got the visual of Ignatieff refering to himself as an American – that video is a lot more powerful than just saying the guy taught at Harvard.

And while this one is just a retread of old Dion attacks, it does nail him on the economy, making it a bit more relevant.

How effective will these ads be? That’s difficult to say, although the chorus of media opinions that these ads will “backfire”, are “too mean”, and that “Canadians don’t like negative ads”, is a bit amusing since the same thing was said about the 2007 Dion adds.

I wouldn’t expect these to backfire, since I do think “time out of the country” is a legitimate angle to attack Ignatieff on. Unlike “not a leader”, “just visiting” isn’t an argument that Ignatieff would be a bad Prime Minister – it seems more designed to just bug Canadians and make them uneasy about the guy, so that voters are more receptive to future attacks. And, on that front, I’d expect some limited success.