McCain surprise tonight?

Via Politico:

"Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) will talk directly to his opponents in a television ad his campaign is airing in battleground states tonight around the time Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) accepts the presidential nomination, his campaign said.

Aides would give few details beyond the fact that McCain will speak directly to the camera, addressing Obama...

...Matt Drudge of The Drudge Report, who has high-level McCain contacts, posted this morning: "SOURCE: NAME MAY LEAK AT 6 PM ET... WITH SOME SORT OF CONFIRMATION AT 8 PM."

Obama is scheduled to speak between 10 and 11 p.m. Eastern.

The leak of the name at the same time would cause a news frenzy at a time when the Obama campaign wanted viewers to be focused on Obama's economic and change messages.

McCain campaign communications director Jill Hazelbaker said in an MSNBC appearance that the battleground spot is 'an historic ad — I think this is the first of its kind.'

'Senator McCain is going to have an ad that's going to air in battleground states around the time that Senator Obama is speaking tonight,' Hazelbaker said. 'He's going to be talking directly to his opponent. So, I'm going to leave it there. But it's going be very exciting. I think that a lot of people are going to focus on it.'"

This seems like an odd decision to me from the McCain campaign, if they are indeed going to use the ad tonight to announce the VP choice. Unless he has chosen Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson or Joe Lieberman, and McCain is going to explicitly go after Hillary Clinton supporters and moderate Democrats, I don't see how an announcement of his VP choice at the same time as Obama's speech makes any sense. Sure, it may distract some of the media swirl around Obama acceptance, but I just don't see any way that he is going to eclipse him with any other choice.

In fact, the more that I think about it - if (and of course, that's a big IF) this is indeed how McCain will announce his VP, I think it points to a dark horse candidate. That is the only way the pick will really distract from Obama's speech. Think about it - most Americans already know something about Romney and Huckabee, and Pawlenty isn't all that exciting - especially not when stacked against a historic speech in front of 75,000 people. The networks would simply delay their coverage of the choice until after Obama's speech, and then talk about them collectively. They wouldn't necessarily need to do a big biographical rundown right away, as McCain might be hoping they would in order to pull attention from Obama. So does this point to Lieberman, Hutchinson, or perhaps, pro-choice Tom Ridge? That certainly would steal airtime away from Obama, and shift the focus of all analysis to the GOP and what McCain's pick means for the party and the election.

The political theater in this election never fails to amaze me. It is fascinating to watch.