He is a Man Who Will Fight for Your Honor

Obama can surely remark upon the tone of McCain’s campaign compared with promises he’s made to take the high road, though McCain’s ads have been pretty much within the scope of normal campaign exaggeration and have been fact checked with vigor by our friends in the media. But was today really the day to assault McCain’s “honor” with respect to campaign ads when Obama’s campaign has been fact-checked and found accidentally mocking McCain’s war injuries by the LA Times and ABC in its Friday ad, “Still?” On Friday when I first saw conservative bloggers claiming Obama was mocking McCain’s injuries, I had a feeling it was a bit of right-wing hyperventilation, but it seems that a Boston Globe article and a Slate article had in the past both made references to McCain’s discomfort in typing. To be fair, on other occasions, McCain has made reference to avoiding e-mail without specifying that his war injuries have anything to do with it, but it seems clear the Obama campaign should have been more careful about this line of attack. This was not the way it meant to “take the gloves off.” Much like Biden’s cringe-inducing introduction of Chuck Graham, the insult was surely unintentional, but phenomenally dumb, and worthy of at least some sheepishness on the part of the Obama campaign. Ironically, the Obama camp’s failure to recognize the vulnerabilities of the ad reveals a relatively un-‘Net-savvy moment for them, while research into all of McCain’s pronouncements about the Internet reveal him to be not nearly as Neanderthal as the ad suggests. Update: I had forgotten I heard Karl Rove go after McCain’s ads on Fox News Sunday. He said some of them had “gone one step too far in sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100-percent truth test.” He also went after Obama’s “Still” ad, saying it was fair game for Obama to call McCain a Washington insider, but that the campaign should have considered that his war injuries kept him from using a computer.