When I think of George Voinovich, I think of his inane blubbering about the shamnesty debacle. Blubber, blubber.

I think of his crusading for the massive auto bailout.

And I think of his mortifying meltdown in opposition to John Bolton’ UN ambassador nomination in 2005, which prompted embarrassed conservatives to start a “Console George” campaign to send him tissues.

The ironic thing is that Malkin had a lot of fun with liberal Democrats (”nutroots”) who wanted to purge their party of Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) in 2006 and 2008. But of course, all Lieberman did was side with President George W. Bush against the Democrats’ Iraq policy, then endorse GOP presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, rather than President-elect Barack Obama. Voinovich wanted to give work visas to Mexicans.

Now the McCain camp is trying to get in on the action.

Some of Obama’s primary successes look obvious in retrospect. He empowered volunteers to download call scripts and phone lists, for example, to contact voters in primary states where his field staff was thin.

The McCain campaign discovered people power.

It sounds basic, but traditional campaigns don’t like to release phone numbers for unsupervised calling. Not based on experience, mind you — since most avoid it altogether — but out of fear, or top-down habits, or inertia.

Obama’s operation showed that it worked fine, sabatoge was rare and Clinton was copying the tactic by the end of the primary.

Now it’s McCain’s turn.

A new McCain campaign email, written by a deputy campaign manager, flashes the tactics of Obama and the people-powered language of Howard Dean in a pitch for their new “online phone bank”:

We need your help to combat this and get the truth out to these voters. You are the most effective surrogate we have in this campaign. By reaching out to undecided voters, one by one, you are taking a crucial step towards our victory. (emphasis in original)

While any effective tactic will spread in politics, from online fund-raising to twittering rapid response, what’s striking here is the inclusive, people-powered language. McCain has been trying to wrest “change” from Obama, but who knew he was gunning for “community organizer,” too?