The McCain/Palin have gone into high gear, quite openly and explicitly openly and explicitly shifting their strategy away from podunk thinks like "issues" and "policy" and in favor of -- well -- mudslinking, slime-smearing, and attacks on Barrack Obama's character.

Remember, folks, it's all about Changing Washington, as McCain and Palin keep telling us.

It all kicked off with Sarah Palin over the weekend dragging out the ol' Bill Ayers connection to Obama. Never mind the it's a tissue of lies and innuendo. The amazing thing is that it leaves McCain directly open to a counter-offensive noting all of his past dubious associates: Keating, Chalabi, Keating (again), Liddy, Singlaub -- and, heck, even some Palin associates, including a close, personal relationship with a long-time member of a secessionist group whose founder repeatedly stated his disdain and hatred of the United States ...

If that's the course the GOP has decided to fall back to, that's a challenge worth facing. The only way to break the back of the Rove/Atwater model of negative campaigning is to face it and defeat it. As Obama puts it:

One of the things we've done during this campaign: we don't throw the first punch, but we'll throw the last. Because if the American people don't get the information that is relevant about these candidates and instead in the last four weeks all they are hearing about are smears and Swift Boat tactics that can have an impact on the election. We have seen it before, and this election is too important to be sitting on the sidelines. If Senator McCain wants to focus on the issues then that is what we focus on. But if Senator McCain wants to have a character debate that is one that we're willing to have.

Ah, yes, character. Rolling Stone just released a lengthy, utterly damning article on McCain and his background. Questions keep getting raised over his well-known anger problems, his ties not just to the financial institutions that have (again) failed, but to Big Oil (and the succeeding changes in his policy positions). 

Meanwhile, the GOP has decided to turn Obama's grass roots popularity into something scary and sinister, implying that donors under the $200 reporting mark might be foreigners and other frightening sorts.

Over in Palinworld, when she's not being incoherent, people are asking questions why, if she's been claiming per diem for all those nights she spent sleeping at home, it's not showing up in her tax returns. Others are recalling a curious incident when her supposed religious devotion gave way to some good North Woods fun.

In other items that I'm too tired to try to fit into narrative paragraphs ...

• Palin and Biden exchanged words during their debate on McCain's health care "plan." Good. It bears discussion.
• Biden has been criticized by some folks for talking about where the Constitution defines the role of the Vice President. Except, it seems, he was right.
• It's usually not a problem when an incumbent decides to retire. It would be nice, though, if it weren't an indictment of the political atmosphere in Washington.
• Most economists like Obama better than McCain. Now, if only more people thought economists knew what they were talking about.
• Race continues to rear its head in the campaign. While some of the racism is clear and explicit, of continued worry is the more subtle kind. Of course, the best way to defeat that, over the long haul, is to get Obama elected ...

And so it goes.

Filed under :: Elections 2008
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