The Crossed Pond

Some disappointing but not altogether surprising news.

You’ve probably already heard about the salvos being fired off by the McCain campaign in Mitt Romney’s direction. It’s a strange affair, because…why Mitt? Romney’s campaign is doing about as well nationally as McCain’s, both of whom are getting whipped by Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani. Maybe it’s just the low-hanging fruit aspect of it, but still, it strikes me as a bit weird. If you’re going to get out the knives, Republicans, might I direct you to start sticking them in Rudy?

But the real story today, you might have heard the attack being floated against Bill Clinton the other day, that he allegedly received money a couple of years ago for giving a speech on 9-11. The attack was pretty weak for any number of reasons, namely: A. who cares, B. Bill’s not running for anything, and C. turns out it’s not even true. But, politics is a dirty business, so I just took it as par for the course.

Now it turns out that the attack was directly coming from the campaign of Barack “Politics of Hope” Obama.

Anybody who thought nothing negative would come out of the Obama campaign is more than a little bit naive, and as Rojas and I have discussed previously, there’s nothing inherently wrong with negative campaigning–it’s a way to highlight differences and to emphasize and bring to the forefront problems and faults of your opponents, which is surely worth knowing about if you’re the electorate. But it’s hard not to feel a little dejected that such a petty smear is coming so early from Obama 2008. Obama’s always had teeth to him, much more so than people give him credit for (see: every response he ever made to the Alan Keyes campaign in his 2004 Senate run), but this sort of attack doesn’t feel like defense or even legitimate differentiation. Just bottom-of-the-barrel business as usual.

And, like the stuff McCain is putting out but moreso: if you’re going to go negative, at least have it be aimed at the right person, and be strong stuff. I mean, come on. Bill Clinton made money off a speech he gave on 9-10-2006? That’s your opening shot? Really? In the entire pantheon of mud to sling at the Clinton dynasty, that’s your first salvo? Really?

Obama’s still the least depressing major candidate running, but it’s a little sad just the same.

Update: The Obama campaign is also circulating stuff jabbing at Hillary for taking money from Indian corporations. Some think there’s even a tinge of weird racism to it, a charge that, for my money, isn’t without merit.