If Obama Loses

Forget all the rhetoric about four more years of Bush, Old Politics vs. New Politics and all that jazz. Absent any plausible reason for a late McCain surge and victory, the inescapable fact about an Obama loss would be an ugly truth to haunt American life for years to come.

Around the edges of all the opinion poll data about what will happen in just over 48 hours is an uneasiness that points to heavy turnout, early voting, the question of whether youth registration will convert into actual balloting, etc. as imponderables in this unusual election year that shows Obama outpolling McCain on almost every issue of voter trust.

But the GOP elephant in the room is race: How many "undecideds" are rummaging around the coded attacks on Barack Obama as a wealth-spreading, terrorist-friendly Muslim radical to justify their bone-deep need to vote against a black man as president?

If enough of them do, how can we explain it to ourselves--and the rest of the world?

No last-minute scare tactics about taxes or lame McCain cameos on SNL will suffice to explain away what, given all the truths of this campaign, would be a lasting American shame.

No Mo-Joe for McCain

After giving up Joe Lieberman as a running mate in favor of Mrs. Joe Sixpack, John McCain brought out Joe the Plumber for tonight's debate--to no avail. The networks' instant polling shows a third straight loss for the Republican's attempt to sell himself as the champion of the average Joe.

The candidates squared off after a day of dismal economic news--another stock-market plunge, retail sales down, factory orders at historic lows--and the best John McCain could do was jibe that, if Obama wanted to run against the Bush Administration, he should have done so four years ago.

But voters apparently aren't buying McCain's attempt to run away from the Bush-Cheney debacle that has left them distressed about their homes, their jobs, their retirement funds and savings for their kids' college educations.

McCain, who had promised to kick Obama's posterior, ended up flat on his own after another encounter in which his opponent looked presidential, often smiling at attacks, while McCain seemed barely able to control his anger and frustration with odd grimaces.

(Adam Nagourney of the New York Times notes, "The split-screen visual contrast between the two men--McCain often appearing coiled and annoyed, Mr. Obama seeming at ease and smiling--was striking.")

Obama did what he had to do, including sidestepping Bob Schieffer's question about whether Sarah Palin was qualified to be president, while McCain retroactively discovered that Joe Biden was wrong on several issues during their decades together in the Senate.

In his final statement, Obama summed up the campaign:

"I think we all know America is going through tough times right now. The policies of the last eight years and--and Washington's unwillingness to tackle the tough problems for decades has left us in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

"And that's why the biggest risk we could take right now is to adopt the same failed policies and the same failed politics that we've seen over the last eight years and somehow expect a different result.

"We need fundamental change in this country, and that's what I'd like to bring."

What Americans are facing will be longer and harder than Obama can admit or prescribe fixes for during a presidential campaign, but it's looking very much as if the average Joes are going to give him the chance to try.

Now that the debates are over, voters will wonder if they served any purpose. Let's leave the last word on that to tonight's moderator, who writes in his new book, "Bob Schieffer's America," that presidential debates are a 20th century invention and that "with the turn that modern campaigns have taken, maybe there is some merit in the nineteenth-century idea of just having the candidates stay home."

Race Race: The Final Lap

As his campaign dances at the edge of the subject, John McCain shies away but it is the Obama campaign that is confronting the racial issue directly.

After John Lewis' blunderbuss approach backfired last weekend, it is AFL-CIO leaders who are encouraging "blunt face-to-face encounter(s) to deal with those who say they can't support the Democratic presidential nominee because of the color of his skin."

In Ohio, the president of a government workers' union tells a rally: "(I)t comes out like this: 'I can't vote for him because he is a black man. He's not one of us.' Well, sisters and brothers, when you hear that, you know what you ought to say? This is what I say: 'That is bullshit! That is total, absolute bullshit!'"

The AFL-CIO campaign will make 70 million phone calls to union households in key presidential and congressional battlegrounds and mail 25 million pieces to rebut rumors that Obama isn't a Christian, wasn't born in the United States or was sworn into the Senate with his hand on a Quran. (Mailings show Obama being sworn by Dick Cheney, his hand on a Bible.)

Meanwhile, McCain dithers about race, joining in the William Ayers attacks but dodging questions about hitting Obama with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, as less fastidious conservatives like Tucker Carlson are urging him to do.

At tomorrow night's debate, the subject is sure to come up and both candidates will have a chance to drag it out into the open once and for all.

Presidential Reality TV

The two most recent occupants of the Oval Office were in prime time tonight, while aspirants to succeed them prepared to go to the White House tomorrow morning in a bizarre interactive TV reality show that will affect the financial survival of millions of Americans.

George W. Bush, who was voted off the island two years ago but refused to leave, looked voters in the eye and talked about panic and recession with a straight face as if he had just arrived and would fix it if only they cheered for his Hail Mary pass without delay and without asking too many questions.

His predecessor, Bill Clinton, with his usual maddening mix of half-faux sincerity and guile, was telling Larry King that Hillary had campaigned for the Democratic nominee more than any runner-up in the last 40 years, that he would join her in Florida after the Jewish holidays, that although he admired McCain and Palin was backing Obama and Biden but devoting most of his energies to making Americans good global citizens for the future. All in all, it came across as the pitch for a new Hillary survival show in 2012 or 2016.

With the past presidents on their way out, the two wannabes were trying to please the electoral audience. Chris Dodd, who is quarterbacking the Senate effort to make sense of the Bush $700 billion dollar plan, welcomed John McCain's interest but drily noted that his campaign suspension sounded more like a rescue plan for his own candidacy than the national economy.

This series will run for the next 40 days until viewers get a chance to vote for the ultimate survivor, but meanwhile the show keeps getting more tacky and there is no way to use a remote control to tune in on something better.

Obama Breaks the 50 Percent Barrier

As Wall Street numbers tank, the Democratic candidate rises past a milestone number in the campaign, leading John McCain by 52 to 43 percent in the new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

This "It's the economy, stupid" feat outdoes Al Gore and John Kerry, neither of whom broke the 50 percent barrier in pre-election polls while running against the Compassionate Conservative.

Part of the Obama bump may well come from his measured approach to the Congressional rescue effort, compared to McCain's yo-yo response from outrage and heads-will-roll to let's-do-it now.

Obama is taking a presidential stance of balancing the risks and rewards, while the former fighter pilot responds with his customary "let's shoot it down and ask questions later" mentality.

Voters who have been bombarded with attacks on Obama's "otherness" may be starting to feel that that risk is preferable to McCain's "more of the same." They may be watching more for signs of temperament than positions on issues in the first debate Friday night.

Biden

If Barack Obama was not already inclined toward him as a running mate, John McCain and Vladimir Putin in the past week should have helped make up his mind to choose Joe Biden.

His trip to Georgia as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee underscored his credentials to complement Obama's idealism with the experience and know-how to navigate through a world of treacherous policy decisions.

"We must help Georgia rebuild what has been destroyed," Obama said today in a speech at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. "That is why I’m proud to join my friend, Senator Joe Biden, in calling for an additional $1 billion in reconstruction assistance for the people of Georgia."

In the bitter campaign ahead, Republicans would have a harder time persuading voters of their candidate's superiority on national security against a ticket anchored by Biden's five-year record of attempting to resolve the political knots in Iraq rather than pushing on with McCain's mindless flag-waving about victory that is still costing American lives and billions of dollars.

The surest way now for Obama to answer attacks on his good judgment and doubts about his political maturity is to announce his choice of Joe Biden and get on with ending the Bush-McCain era in November.

Candidates in Church: The Big Question

By the standards of traditional politics, in tonight's talkfest with Rick Warren, John McCain "won," but the verdict of victory brings into focus the great unanswered question of this presidential campaign: Are American voters really ready for a new kind of politics?

In his answers, McCain was free of doubt, firm and decisive, directing his words to the audience and the cameras, while Obama kept eye contact in conversation with Warren, giving nuanced responses on complex subjects such as abortion and the relationship between government and faith-based organizations.

But until now, nuance has not been a winning strategy in political campaigns, and the wave of enthusiasm for Obama's approach will be washing up against McCain's rock-hard certainties when voters cast their ballots.

While professing strong personal faith, Obama seemed to be addressing Americans who can incorporate doubt into their belief and work to resolve conflicting values and desires, while McCain offered himself as a true believer with no leeway for ambiguity or ambivalence.

After eight years of Bush-Cheney's polarizing view of the world, Obama's approach should have widespread support, but can it overcome the appeal of straight talk that is not always supported by straight thinking?

When they meet in head-on debate, that will be Obama's challenge but, for one night at least, McCain made very good use of a bully pulpit.

A President From Nowhere

After Barack Obama or John McCain leaves the White House, where will future generations go to tour the boyhood home that shaped a president? Hawaii? Indonesia? The Panama Canal Zone?

For a long time, I lived near Hyde Park, where FDR was born and spent his years before moving into the White House. "All that is within me cries out to go back to my home on the Hudson River," he said as he was making history, and American generations can still visit, see and touch the reality that formed him and told him who he was and could be.

For the candidates in this election there is, as Gertrude Stein said, no there there. "Obama and McCain," Peggy Noonan writes, "are not from a place, but from an experience" and the "lack of placeness with both candidates contributes to a sense of their disjointedness, their floatingness."

This 21st century identity gap started with George W. Bush, who was born in Connecticut, grew up in Texas and spent most of his life before politics trying to figure out who he was and where he belonged. No matter how often we see him cutting brush, our sense of who he is and where he came from remains hazy.

For Obama, lack of a geographical label may even be an advantage, George Packer claims in the New Yorker, asserting that "a black man who, unlike Obama, is deeply rooted in America is probably unelectable today. His rootedness would be inseparable from his blackness, an identity that has to recede far into the background for a black candidate to have a chance."

And yet, anxiety about both candidates today may have much to do with the voters' sense that, as Noonan says, one of them is "from Young. He's from the town of Smooth in the state of Well Educated. He's from TV" and the other "from Military. He's from Vietnam Township in the Sunbelt state."

In the past century, Warren G. Harding campaigned from the front porch of his Victorian house in Marion, Ohio, which is still there for anyone who pays $6 to look at and wander through as is the boyhood home of Ronald Reagan in Dixon, Illinois, complete with a bowl of the popcorn he liked to munch before he went to California and invented himself first as an actor and then as a politician.

Our next president's defining home will not be geographical but a set of images on the Internet from all over the world, and we can only hope that that lack of a specific locale won't keep him from being grounded in reality.

Politicking Past the Water's Edge

John McCain says he is sending the Curly and Moe of his campaign, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman, to the Georgia war zone. To do what?

Their mission, according to the candidate, is to "receive an assessment of the situation and what we need to do in the future, to avoid further escalation, and also to protect the independence and freedom of the people of this brave democratic ally, the country of Georgia.”

They could do that by watching CNN and phoning the State Department, but it enhances the image of McCain as a commander-in-chief dispatching emissaries to war zones to feed into his decision-making.

For a campaign that goaded Obama to go to Iraq and then accused him of politicking when he did, the McCain high command has no compunctions about posturing over dead bodies in a distant land.

Moreover, nothing that Lieberman and Graham could report back would change McCain's long-standing support of Georgia's independence and his stumping now with Cold War rhetoric to emphasize how much tougher he is than Obama.

They used to say American politics stops at the water's edge, but for the Republican nominee-to-be, that's where it starts these days.

Obama's Inexperience, McCain's Instability

The campaign exchanges recall the clichéd barroom banter: "You're ugly." "You're drunk." "But I'll be sober in the morning." Barack Obama's so-called inexperience is fast disappearing as he is tested by world events under Republican fire, while John McCain's Cheney-on-steroids approach is becoming more pronounced all the time.

Abetted by his foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, who was lobbying for the Georgian government until March, McCain has been fanning the embers of the Cold War for some time now.

According to the New York Times, "The intensifying warfare in the former Soviet republic of Georgia has put a new focus on the increasingly hard line that Senator John McCain has taken against Russia in recent years, with stances that have often gone well beyond those of the Bush administration and its focus on engagement."

In a situation where the US and the UN have few practical options for restraining Putin, Obama is taking a more nuanced approach reminiscent of JFK and Reagan efforts to resist Soviet aggression without provoking needless showdowns by calling for direct talks for an end to the violence and emphasizing that "the United States, the United Nations Security Council, and the international community should fully support a peaceful resolution to this crisis."

After speaking with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, Obama dispelled any doubts about his firmness: "I condemn Russia's aggressive actions and reiterate my call for an immediate cease fire."

In an era too complicated for the pseudo-tough talk of the Neo-Cons, McCain is even getting some pressure for moderation from the poster boy of the 20th century cold warriors.

“If Henry Kissinger thinks that I’m wrong," McCain reveals, "he’ll pick up the phone--and he has, several times, and say ‘You’re wrong on this; you shouldn’t be so hard on the Russians, O.K.?'"

Obama's experience with foreign crises is sobering, but will McCain's attitudes be any less ugly the morning after the presidential election?

Dumb-Reasons-to-Vote Update

John McCain has inherited George W. Bush's mantle as the candidate you would most like to have a beer with, but Barack Obama is catching up with his choice by Lifetime cable network viewers as the most desirable nominee to carpool and share a vacation with.

Other races are tight. Latest poll information shows Obama leading in the Food Network's contest for the candidate to bring home for Thanksgiving dinner (the other guy could be too cranky), but McCain is well ahead in ABC Sports' race for who to watch the Super Bowl with (Obama might order pommes frites instead of pizza).

No word yet about who AARP members would like to sit next to at Bingo or the MTV vote on most desirable companion for a Rolling Stones farewell concert or the Cartoon Network's competition for the best candidate to caricature.

But voters will be better-informed to make those choices after the presidential debates.

The Inertia Issue

As much as Americans want something new in Washington, Barack Obama's promise of change is colliding with doubts, not all of them raised by attack ads, across the political spectrum.

A new poll reported by the Washington Post shows Obama with a 2 to 1 edge over John McCain among low-wage workers, but "many are unconvinced that either presidential candidate would be better than the other at fixing the ailing economy or improving the health-care system."

At the other end of the political spectrum, George Will in his Post column chides Obama for overblown rhetoric, while conceding that his hero Ronald Reagan was also "incorrigibly fond of perhaps the least conservative, and therefore the most absurd, proposition ever penned by a political philosopher, Thomas Paine's 'we have it in our power to begin the world over again.' No. We. Don't."

In classic conservative mode, Will claims "sweeping changes are almost always calamitous consequences of calamities...Wise voters...hanker for candidates whose principal promise is that they will do their best to muddle through without breaking too much crockery."

But after eight years that produced an unwise war and a damaged economy, both Will and his doubting low-income counterparts may want to look back to the time when Americans put their trust in a president who overhauled a failing financial system with the FDIC and SEC, saved farmers from the Dust Bowl and created Social Security for the destitute old, among other "changes."

Obama may turn out to be no FDR as McCain certainly wouldn't be, but this year is more like 1932 than Reagan's 1980, and "muddle through" won't quite cut it. Inertia is tempting, but it works better in a time such as Eisenhower's with a booming economy after winning a worldwide war. Now there is broken crockery to be swept up.

GOP Dope Dealing

Three out of four Americans are depressed about the way things are going, according to a new CNN poll, the worst national malaise since 1980, the last days of Jimmy Carter's era of inflation, gas shortages and US diplomats held hostage in Iran.

Ronald Reagan came along back then with a vision of "Morning in America" and the dark clouds lifted, at least for those in the upper tax brackets. Now Reagan's spiritual heir, John McCain, is elevating our mood with inspirational commercials featuring Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, which have the added benefit of provoking nostalgia for the good old days of the OJ Simpson trial with debates over who is playing the race card.

In Congress, McCain's Republican allies, with cheerleading from the Lame-Duck-in-Chief, are raising our spirits with promises to drill for more offshore oil that, in decade or so, could lower gas prices by a few cents and cornering Nancy Pelosi into allowing a vote or being blamed for not taking action to relieve the pain at the pump.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama isn't doing much to cheer us up, dwelling on such downers as the economy, health care, education and chasing down terrorists in Afghanistan or Pakistan or somewhere just as boring.

McCain's mood medication is beginning to show some lift in the polls and, if he keeps it up, we should all be high as kites by fall.

Obama's Fifty-Percent Barrier

As the new Gallup Poll shows him leading John McCain nationally by 49 to 40 per cent, there is the question. "Where's the Bounce?" from his apparently triumphant tour of the Mideast and Europe last week.

"Why is he not doing better?” the Times' Adam Nagourney asks today. "Even Mr. Obama’s advisers say they are uneasy about his difficulty so far in breaking the 50 percent barrier--a reminder, in poll after poll, that there are many Americans who are not yet ready to cast their lot with him, and may never be."

Some analysts compare Obama to Reagan in 1980, following the unpopular Jimmy Carter but needing to persuade voters he was credible as a president.

“It took a long while for the American public to test and look at Ronald Reagan before they were willing to go with him,” a Democratic pollster points out. “And then, when the dam broke open, it broke open very, very wide.”

It may be too optimistic to equate the comfort levels of American voters over a former actor with those of an African-American with less than a full term in the US Senate, but then again Ronald Reagan didn't have almost two years of exposure in a 24/7 media and internet world to familiarize them with what kind of president he might be.

With more than three months and two national conventions to go, Obama's prospects are looking good, 50 percent or not. Reagan had Jimmy Carter running against him as a living reminder of what the choice was, but John McCain keeps showing voters that he is George W. Bush's heir.

Repairing America's Image

The memory of angry millions in European streets five years ago to protest the imminent US attack on Iraq will be the background for Barack Obama's visit and speech in Berlin today that are expected to draw huge cheering crowds.

The contrast underscores one of Obama's main missions in seeking the presidency--to restore worldwide respect, if not admiration, for American ideals after eight years of Bush-Cheney arrogance that have sown mistrust, if not hatred.

Leaving Israel, Obama said his speech would be a "substantive articulation" of the relationship he wanted to see between the US and Europe.

"I think the world is keenly interested in this election and I think they're hungry for a sense of where America is going," he told reporters on his flight from Tel Aviv.

As John McCain keeps hammering at Obama with a rewriting of the Iraq disaster, the man who almost surely will have to repair the damage is making a start today on the other side of the Atlantic.

"Ich bin ein Berliner, Folks"

The vacillation over a speech site for Barack Obama evokes memories of previous fusses raised by American presidents in post-World War II Germany.

The Obama campaign has been searching for a suitable venue since Chancellor Angela Merkel deemed the Brandenburg Gate unseemly for a speech by a political candidate, and now the Victory Column less than a mile away seems to be the choice.

In 1985, there was a flap over President Reagan's visit to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to lay a wreath at the graves of German soldiers, including SS troops, over the protests of Elie Wiesel and other Holocaust survivors.

Before that, in 1963, President Kennedy made a stirring speech with the memorable line "Ich bin ein Berliner," followed by a semantic fuss about its translation, indicating that JFK may have unintentionally proclaimed himself, not a citizen of Berlin, but a jelly doughnut.

Whatever Obama decides to say to his German audience, he would be well-advised not to refer to John McCain as a hero, risking the possibility he might be understood to be calling the Republican candidate a big, fat overstuffed sandwich.

In languages as well as politics, it's easy for much to be lost in translation.

Iraq in the Rear-View Mirror

Barack Obama and John McCain are squaring off on foreign policy this week, but there is an oddly retrospective quality to the debate over Iraq. Both promise to end the war, albeit on differing timelines, but the main issue is whether we should have fought it at all.

In his foreign policy speech today, Obama's answer was a resounding no, claiming the effort should have gone into hunting down Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Taliban and terrorists responsible for the attacks, and that the billions spent on the war could have been invested in alternative sources of energy to "end the tyranny of oil" and strengthening our position in the world.

"Instead," he said, "we have lost thousands of American lives, spent nearly a trillion dollars, alienated allies and neglected emerging threats--all in the cause of fighting a war for well over five years in a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks,"

Meanwhile, McCain's foreign policy adviser is harrumphing that his candidate "would rather lose an election than lose a war and see the nation lose a war. Senator Obama seems to think losing a war will help him win an election."

New polls are reflecting uncertainty among voters on how to react to all this. In the coming weeks, after he travels to the Mideast, Obama is going to have to make an effort to persuade the public to sign on to his five foreign policy goals:

"(E)nding the war in Iraq responsibly; finishing the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban; securing all nuclear weapons and materials from terrorists and rogue states; achieving true energy security; and rebuilding our alliances to meet the challenges of the 21st century."

Three Speeches on an Historic Night

The sight of Barack Obama actually being named presumptive Democratic candidate for President, no matter how expected. is astonishing to eyes that saw black people forced to ride in the back of buses and send their children to segregated schools and attacked for daring to exercise their right to vote. But then came the speeches.

John McCain elbowed into Barack Obama's moment of triumph with a Back-to-the-Future revival of his 2000 straight-talking self to distance himself from Bush and belittle the man who made history tonight.

Hillary Clinton delivered what was expected to be her concession but turned out to be a victory speech and a valentine to herself that barely mentioned the opponent who had taken the nomination from her.

Then Obama came on to eulogize Clinton's campaign, praise McCain but deplore his record of supporting Bush, and then lay out his own vision of a new America.

The contrasts in style and substance were telling. McCain with a straight face painted himself as the candidate of change while demeaning Obama. "I don't seek the presidency on the presumption I'm blessed with such personal greatness that history has anointed me to save my country in its hour of need," he said. "I seek the office with the humility of a man who cannot forget my country saved me."

Clinton praised herself with abandon. "Because we stood our ground," she said, "it meant that every single United States citizen had a chance to make his or her voice heard. A record 35 million people voted in this primary...And I am committed to uniting our party so we move forward stronger and more ready than ever to take back the White House this November."

No mention of who will actually be moving in.

Obama, after a long tribute to Clinton, took on McCain: "I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine. My differences with him are not personal; they are with the policies he has proposed in this campaign...It's not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush 95 percent of the time, as he did in the Senate last year."

The Democratic candidate-to-be said he looked forward to debating McCain on policies and positions, "a debate that the American people deserve--on the issues that will determine the future of this country and the future of our children.

"But what you don't deserve is another election that's governed by fear, and innuendo and division. What you won't hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge, and patriotism as a bludgeon. What you won't see from this campaign or this party is a politics that sees our opponents not as competitors to challenge, but enemies to polarize. Because we may call ourselves Democrats and Republicans, but we are Americans first."

Let the debate begin.

An Affair to Remember

John McCain is cheating on voters with George Bush, but he's not good at it, getting caught in a quickie at the Phoenix airport before going off for their fund-raising tryst at a Scottsdale hideaway.

Barack Obama, the public moralist, ratted out the couple during an appearance in Las Vegas: “John McCain is having a different kind of meeting...behind closed doors in Arizona. No cameras, no reporters. And we all know why."

History shows it's hard for candidates to run away from their past. In 2000, to take voters' minds off Monica Lewinsky, Al Gore ran a Clinton-free campaign and may have lost the election as a result.

McCain's problem is even stickier. He has to hide his love child with Bush, the war in Iraq, while persuading voters about his superior political morality and the advantage of his experience over Obama's naivete.

There has never been any love lost between McCain and Bush since their disastrous encounters in the 2000 primaries but, like many couples with a history, they find it hard to stay away from each other.

In common with employees of the Washington Madam, McCain can tell himself he's only doing it for the money, but we know how that turned out.

Bush has been a stealth president for some time, so it may be possible to keep their connection furtive for now. But the real test will come in September: Will they be seen together at the Republic convention?

Obama-McCain Family Values

In warning Republicans to "lay off my wife" in their ads, Barack Obama yesterday was challenging John McCain to call off the dogs who are nipping at Michelle Obama just as they attacked Cindy McCain to give George W. Bush the nomination in 2000.

Opponents, Obama said on Good Morning America, "can say whatever they want to say about me, my track record. I've been in public life for 20 years," then added that if "they're going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful. Because that I find unacceptable."

The subtext of Obama's warning could be a reminder that, as late as last summer, Mrs. McCain was speaking out against such tactics, as the New York Times reported in an interview with her: "Ugly accusations about her family, she insisted, will not be tolerated this time. 'If that were to even bubble its head up again,' she said, "we’d knock that flat.'”

In 2000, the Rove smear machine attacked with slanders and push polls about everything from Mrs. McCain's one-time addiction to pain killers to rumors that their adopted daughter from Bangladesh was a black child McCain had fathered.

Eventually, Bridget, now 16, learned about that in a Google search of her name and went to her mother in tears. “She wanted to know why President Bush hated her,” Mrs. McCain said. “And I had to explain to her...how nasty campaigns can be.”

Now the question for the Republican candidate is: Can he control those same groups who also did the Swiftboat ads against John Kerry in 2004, which McCain publicly denounced?

On GMA, Obama praised his wife's patriotism and said that for Republicans "to try to distort or to play snippets of her remarks in ways that are unflattering to her I think is just low class...especially for people who purport to be promoters of family values."

McCain no doubt agrees, but will the man who claims to be strong enough to protect Americans from their enemies abroad be able to shield them from the sleazebags who make those commercials?