I think Hiatt is simply trying to state what many people here have known for some time:

"...it's what the campaign could have been about, if McCain had really wanted it that way. "

It seems to be more of an excoriation than an exoneration. And while he happily points out that "The mud flies both ways in this campaign, with Obama and his allies relentlessly pounding McCain as out of touch, erratic, dishonest and, over and over again, dishonorable." the point appears to be that McCain has chosen to devolve his campaign, and people should feel shame and remorse for what the campaign has become.

And, by simply stating what is largely basic facts, Obama *has been* framing McCain as all of these things over these last many weeks, without getting into causaility or blame or legitimacy thereof as opposed to his glaring highlight of the contrast between what McCain used to say about Obama and what McCain now says about Obama, it would seem to me Hiatt is attempting to avoid creating a moral equivalence here.

When Obama and his allies have called McCain "dishonest" and "dishonorable," they've been talking about the sleazy tactics Hiatt himself is criticizing. So Hiatt basically agrees with Obama on those points, but his quest for a false equivalence prevents him from saying so. Or, more likely, from even seeing it.

something else which just occurred to me: while I still don't see any attempt at moral equivalence, it does seem as though Hiatt is sort of blurring the line in regards to which came first, McCain's sleazy attacks or Obama's accusations of being dishonorable.

Of course, the way I see it Obama has never attempted to frame McCain as anything other than what McCain argues for himself. I think it is clearly obvious McCain was acting dishonorably long before that became an Obama meme. And I think that holds true for all of Obama's memes, that they did not become the meme until McCain made the case for it against himself.

Now the "How We Lost the Election" pieces will be cropping up. An early entry, this new piece from the Pope of Republican Populism, who basically throws Rove, Dick Morris and the rest of meanies overboard.

Time for smiles and better grammar, time for Republicans to walk and talk like Democrats. Love the pragmatism:

www.nytimes.com/.../13kristol.html

Only there are some other pragmatists, like Ailes, Limbaugh, and Hannity, who know the low road is the only road to keeping to those audience numbers high.

What's more important, ratings or winning the White House? Don't ask Roger Ailes if you're concerned about the future of conservatism.

(Or as Sarah says, "conservativism".)

MONDAY'S MINI-REPORT.... Today's edition of quick hits: * Wall Street had a very good day for a change, and the Dow soared 936 points, the biggest single-day point gain ever. As a percentage, the Dow closed 11.1% higher, the fourth...

John Judis begins a post over at the New Republic's  blog, The Plank:

In an op-ed, Washington Post editorial page editor Fred Hiatt, renown for putting his newspaper behind the Bush administration’s plans to invade Iraq, gently chides John McCain for running an ugly campaign against Barack Obama....

This was — again, just for the record — the same war supported by another publication called The New Repulic.

corner.nationalreview.com/post

Judis so inflates one fragment of Hiatt's column that is looks like willful misconstruction, and makes one wonder what journalistic axe Judis is trying to grind here (assuming a blog is indeed journalism, and for this I would direct Judis to today's Doonesbury strip).  Actually, Judis's axe is quite evident in the dependent clause of his first sentence.

The point of Hiatt's column was to bemoan in fairly gentle terms the ugly campaign McCain has run, and to hypothesize that McCain might have -- might have -- run a more effective campaign had he chosen to stick with a set of principles that Hiatt evidently believes McCain once possessed.

The fragment Judis seizes on in no way exonerates the smallness of McCain's campaign.  It does not suggest Obama threw the first punch or provoked McCain into a dishonorable campaign.  It does not pass judgment one way or the other on Obama's attack on McCain's honor.  It simply notes the existence of Obama's attacks and the effect such an attack might have on McCain's, and the McCain campaign's, self-definition.

Hiatt's silence on whether Obama was right or wrong to attack McCain's honor does not imply moral equivalence, much less disapproval of Obama's attack.  Indeed, by the entire thrust of the column it seems clear that Hiatt would agree with Obama's assessment that McCain has run a dishonorable campaign.  Who but the most die-hard partisan wouldn't?  But as a journalist responsible for one of the country's leading editorial pages it would be imprudent for Hiatt ever to say such a thing out loud.

I suppose bloggers have the luxury of never needing to pull their rhetorical punches.