Of for goodness sake. What reasonable person believes this will be a "high minded" campaign? It will be one of the most personally destructive campaigns we've ever seen. Both candidates are claiming to be "change" or "reform" candidates, both are running against or away from their party's most recent administrations. What's left to run on? Personal biography and manufactured image. What will they spend most of their time doing? Everything they can to smear the other in the most personal terms and destroy their public image.

Of course, as has already been declared by a relieved media (so nice, and so much easier, to be able to play the same old game you've always played) they will also being going at each other "mano a mano" -- lots of tired mine is bigger than yours type of pointless challenges and imagery. What fun.

It's a race to the bottom. Once one person says something outrageous, it's fair game to say something silmilar on the other side.

I should have added that one of the candidates doesn't have much public resume to run on. Which means the opposition will attack him in the most personal manner -- on the basis of his personal biography and private associations, as well as focus on endlessly on "gotcha" moments and gaffes. Especially anything that can be used to point up his inexperience.

Obama needs "seasoned" surrogates to do this sort of thing for him, preferably a VP pick with lots of weight, but other surrogates if the VP is not well-positioned on any given issue.

That is correct, Michael. The back-and-forth dialectic can quickly descend to the schoolyard level and once there, is easily locked in. High-minded campiagns are not popular with many presidential candidates. Adlai Stevenson ran two of them and look where it got him. The last time that such a campaign was even considered by two candidates was when Barry Goldwater (at a time when the Republican nomination was just a gleam in his eye) and John Kennedy discussed touring the country together in the same plane but later that year, in 1963, Kennedy's assassination scotched that idea.

"Which means the opposition will attack him in the most personal manner "

Oh, you're so right - this never would have happened with Hillary.

Yes, politics is dirty, nasty.

Dog bites man

No, Mike, I don't buy Joe Klein's (or your) premise, to wit that getting the numbers wrong in Iraq is not very revealing.  To talk yourself into such a state of denial about the situation in Iraq that you now declare that troops are substantially lower than they actually are, or that the surge is "working," and in such tones of righteous indignation, betrays a kind of wishful thinking, of irreality, that is indeed revealing.

Daniel Larison has been arguing for months that a McCain-Obama race would be one of the ugliest in recent memory, precisely because both men's appeal is so grounded in themselves and not in their policies; the only way for Obama to discredit McCain, and vice versa, is to attack him on a personal level. Looks like Larison may be right.

Cheney is a pacifist compared to McCain. McCain seems to have found his "zone" - daily beating the war drums, talking about Obama like a guy who chickened out and fled to Canada...and it may work. The media seems impotent when faced with this nationalistic drivel. When will someone stand up to these blowhard neocons? Maybe Webb is the answer for VP. Maybe Webb would take on these bullies.

Fervent proponents of "The Surge," such as John McCain, need to be completely on top of these numbers. Because, after all, "The Surge" -- the greatest, wisest military action this nation has ever taken, according to some - is, when you get down to it, all about numbers, period.

Giving him a pass on this is like giving your company's accountant a pass when the IRS tells you $4 million has gone missing.

Woody, thanks.  You managed to articulate with your final sentence exactly what has been vaguely knocking about in my head without my being able to render it properly.

I'm sorry, but alleging that the surge IS over is patently wrong. It misleads anyone who might have heard that comment, coming from the experienced, CinC-type that McCain claims to be. What exactly was the tense that could have been used? WILL be over? When? MUCH different meaning...

I'm not so certain about the decline. What we have here is a policy issue, McCain's war stance. His promotion that the surge is over, supports his thesis that the surge 'was' (not 'is) justified. Obama is right to attack the factual assertion that McCain makes to support his position.

In addition, the positions of these candidates is so diametrically different on most issues that there is a clear choice, McCain will have to make it about personality and inexperience because his positions are not popular. blogs.tnr.com/.../bad-news-for-republicans.aspx

Obama staying ot of the mud will be difficult, but while close, I still think this is fair game. It is rebutting a factual assertion that supports a position. That's fair. Now if Obama has said (rather than us all infering) that McCain is getting old and his facts are slipping, THAT would have been below the belt...

WoodyBombay: Excellent summation.

The Democrats have to stop seeing themselves as victims and their competitors as bullies. It's time to stop making the most important, in fact the only and essential, argument in our presidential campaigns about who is the bigger dick -- and start thinking about who has the better grasp of the realities we face as a nation, domestic and foreign, who has the better grasp of who we are as a nation -- red state and blue -- and who would make the best executive.

It has been embarrassing to watch what I once thought of as "my" party and the media go psychotic over the possibility that the person at the top of the ticket might possibly end up being the wrong gender to play this trite, overdone and puerile game. Someone who can’t be charmingly photographed dancing around in gym shorts fanny patting his buds, swaggering out to the pick up truck, or prancing in a codpiece on an aircraft carrier.

Perhaps it’s time to stop worrying who can come out on top in the male preening contest and instead worry about whether they possesses actual competence.

If McCain is running on one issue - Iraq - and can't get the facts right, that's news. When he keeps getting his facts wrong, that suggests he's out to lunch. Pounce early and often. Keep him off stride.

Obama sounds fairly reasonable to me:

>>We all misspeak sometimes. I've done it myself. So on such a basic, factual error, you'd think that Senator McCain would just admit that he made a mistake and move on. But he couldn't do that. Instead, he dug in. And the disturbing thing is that we've seen this movie before -- a leader who pursues the wrong course, who is unwilling to change course, who ignores the evidence. Now, just like George Bush, John McCain refused to admit that he made a mistake. And that's exactly the kind of leadership that we've had through more than five years of fighting a war that should've never been authorized, and should've never been waged.

>>We don't need more leaders who can't admit they've made a mistake, even when it's about something as fundamental as how many young Americans are serving in harm's way.

This is not some side issue to McCain. I think this is a telling error.