From the New York Times, “A Heartbeat Away” by William Kristol The Boss and I both found David Axelrod’s Fox News Sunday declaration, “We’re not running against Governor Palin,” to be rather pregnant with implications. After ten days of wild and sometimes unnervingly insane thrashing, the Obama campaign has decided to cease its hostilities against Sarah Palin and beat a manly retreat. Of course, much damage has already been done – to the Obama campaign, not Palin. In the preceding days, Barack Obama himself had gone on the attack against Sarah Palin. The top of the ticket attacking the bottom of the other ticket is unprecedented. Did Ronald Reagan attack Geraldine Ferraro? Did Bill Clinton go after Jack Kemp? It’s a rule in politics that you only aim up; by aiming down, Barack Obama diminished himself. By whining about being picked on by a girl and manfully vowing that he would not allow said girl to bully him, he diminished himself further. It’s hard to believe given the way the Obama campaign has determinedly machine-gunned its foot that Palin has only been part of the ticket for ten days. The problem with the Obama campaign’s plan to cease Palin related hostilities is that putting this genie back in the bottle won’t be easy. The anti-Palin pit-yorkies in the media are as unlikely to honor the call for a ceasefire as they were last week when Obama beseeched them to back off from the unfounded and unseemly rumors that they found so irresistible:
