McCain playing the Veep card ... over and over

Hand it to the McCain campaign: it has done everything short of having McCain in Denver to steal some spotlight  from Obama.  A slew of new attack ads; surrogates crawling all over Denver; a Cindy McCain trip to Georgia; and of course incesant leaking about his Veep selection.

His Veep strategy has been a textbook example of how to leak effectively.  The talking-head chatter for most of today has been that McCain would leak his Veep pick tonight, and confirm it tomorrow morning.   It doesn't seem like that leak will actually take place, but it has kept the cable shows busy all day, and it will surely build to a crescendo tomorrow morning.  

I think this is the first time I've seen the "leak that there will be a leak" strategy, but job well done.  We don't actually know anything more about McCain's Veep shortlist, but I guess that was the whole point:  leak that it will leak, but then don't actually leak it.  And then announce it on the morning after Obama's acceptance speech. 

Tactically, it's pretty brilliant.  Look for Obama to do something similar next Friday following the Republican Convention to blunt McCain's bounce -- maybe a major speech somewhere, or an appearance with Bill Clinton, or something along those lines.  An appearance with Bubba would be brilliant -- it would own the news cycle and dominate the weekend cable coverage.   You reading this, David Axelrod?