The other night on Countdown, Keith Olbermann asked Barack Obama about the apparently successful blitzkrieg campaign of lies and distortions that John McCain and Sarah Palin are waging against him.

Obama responded that "once the dust has settled," the American people will come to their senses and vote for the saner choice.

I'm here to tell you, Barack: the dust will not settle.  

Why?  Because McCain, Palin, Steve Schmidt and Karl Rove will keep kicking it up.

When Palin was tapped for VP, she seemed inexperienced, incompetent, and extremist.  How did the McCain campaign compensate for this?  Not simply by playing up her experience.  They went on the attack: "Sarah Palin has more executive experience than Obama and Biden put together!"

A whole variety of questions about Palin's qualifications have been shut down with the accusation of "sexism".  McCain and Palin, in stump speeches and massive ad buys, blithely repeat blatant falsehoods about her ("She opposed the bridge to nowhere") and about Obama ("he will raise your taxes").

Almost every day, for instance, McCain says rival Barack Obama would raise everyone's taxes, even though the Democrat's tax plan exempts families that earn less than $250,000. ...

For now, there appears to be little political reason to back down. A Washington Post-ABC News poll taken Sept. 5 to Sept. 7 found that 51 percent of voters think Obama would raise their taxes, even though his plan would actually cut taxes for the overwhelming majority of Americans. Obama has proposed eliminating income taxes on seniors making less than $50,000 a year, but 41 percent of those seniors say their income taxes would go up in an Obama administration.

Obama's response?  To continue to commend McCain's military service, and to call Palin's life story "compelling" ... oh, and to point out that "you can't just make stuff up."

Actually, Barack, they can.  And they are.  And they will keep doing so.  The dust will not settle.

Obama is cool, dispassionate, rational.  Like many progressives, he earnestly wants to move American forward with smarter policy choices.  He has the advantage of being extremely likable -- far more charismatic than any Democratic presidential candidate since Bill Clinton.  But these days, he seems afflicted by the same troubling lack of fire in the belly that characterized Kerry, Gore, and Dukakis.  In the words of W.B. Yeats: "The best lack all conviction, the worst are full of passionate intensity."

Understand: There is no blow to low for the GOP, no lie too outrageous.  And as quickly as one fire is put out, they will start another.  They've called Obama an elitist, a Muslim, and a terrorist sympathizer.  Now they are accusing him of supporting explicit sex ed for kindergarteners. 

It's not enough to respond to lies by pointing them out, or to have your campaign spokesman issue another verbose, whiny, confusingly worded statement:

It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls - a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds.

That's a 47-word sentence, with a dangling clause at the end that I still can't figure out.  Mitt Romney?  Whose friend?  What position?  WTF?  When will Democrats learn to talk and write like regular people?

We've seen this movie before.  Why would a Democratic candidate for president not be prepared for this kind of fight?  If you don't hit back -- and hard -- it looks like you just don't care when you're slandered.

But really, hitting back is not enough.  That's still reactive.  Hitting back is better than what Obama is doing now -- essentially, writing strongly worded letters of protest.  But even better than hitting back is what the Republicans themselves do: they hit first.

As I've been saying for years:

The single most shocking fact of our political system is that for years, the Democrats have been face to face and toe to toe with an aggressive, partisan GOP, and have watched that party win power with an attack-dog, take-no-prisoners attitude -- and yet the Dems have neither learned from nor emulated it.

Back in June, Obama quoted The Untouchables: "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun."  Sounds great.  But every Dem presidential nominee seems to tell a similar story to his own base, at fundraisers and rallies... and then goes out to the gunfight, with nothing in his holster except a strongly worded letter.

I believe Obama is capable of running a tougher campaign... and I believe it can be done in a way that is not as sleazy and dishonest as the Republican way.  The strongest moment of Obama's campaign against McCain thus far was the attack on McCain's inability to remember how many houses he has.  This was done brilliantly, quickly, repeatedly -- and truthfully.

We need more of this, and we need it yesterday.  Define new rules of play.  Knock them off their game.  Don't react mildly to their smears and insults.  Don't react strongly.  Stop reacting.  Start acting.

I'm no campaign strategist (altho, like all political bloggers, I play one on the internet!), but here are some ideas...

» Define Sarah Palin: Create a concise, negative portrait or label of Palin... or 2 or 3 (but no more than that)... then hammer her with them relentlessly.  John Kerry was successfully defined in 2004 as "elite" and a "flip-flopper."  McCain was, until the convention, widely viewed as "old" and "out of touch."  Initially, his choice of Palin seemed to support another negative definition of him: "cynical."  The question of the moment is: Who does Obama want people to think Sarah Palin is?  Right now, they think "hockey mom" and "reformer."  How about "incompetent"?  How about "fraud"?  How about "extremist"?

» Use explicit narratives that dovetail with implicit ones: Obama can't say that McCain is too old for the job.  But he can say he's "out of touch" and "can't even remember how many houses he has."  (And he did so, to great effect.)  Obama can't say that Palin is a religious extremist with a seemingly out-of-control family life (pregnant teen daughter, son who joined the military to escape criminal charges).  But he can say she's "extreme" politically, and "incompetent" as a public servant.  And those explicit charges -- which are fair game, and can be backed up by evidence -- reinforce the implicit ones that the Obama campaign can't make.  Leave those to tabloids, outside groups, and late-night comedians.

» Attack their strengths: For example: call McCain on his endless exploitation of his POW status.

» Open up new fronts: Get in their faces.  Ask questions they can't answer.  Start new fires that they have to race to put out.  I'm not going to try to offer suggestions here.  Obama's campaign staff can surely come up with some good ideas.  If they can't, he should fire them and hire new people.

And most importantly:

» Don't back down: Don't apologize.  Don't undercut your surrogates.  This looks weak.  This is weak.  No more weak sauce.  Americans like their sauce extra-strong.

People do vote based on rational calculations of self-interest... but also based on strong emotional motivations.  Prior to Palin's selection, Obama offered a stronger emotional connection to the public than McCain.  Now the shoe is on the other foot... and that foot is kicking our guy in the head, repeatedly.  Palin smiles perkily, as she and McCain lie and smear and keep sticking the knife into Obama.

Barack, please don't wait for the dust to settle, and for rationality to prevail.  Don't think you can just brush that dust off your shoulders, and offer firm, courteous, point-by-point rebuttals to their daily barrages of trash talk.  It will not work.

Yes, it's true... the dust will settle, eventually.  And I can tell you exactly when it will settle: on November 5.  But by then it will be too late.