They Must Windex Their Walls

I think the old saying goes, "People who live in glass houses should not throw stones."

The McCain campaign has made the peculiar decision to avoid dealing with the pressing issue of our slowing economy and its causes and effects both at home and abroad; instead, they'd like to make undecided voters afraid of Barack Obama. Ooooooh. Their present angle in this effort is to send good ol' Sarah Palin out on the stump with a speech chock full of hum-dingers aimed at tying Obama to William Ayers, the former domestic terrorist.

I think most reasonably unbiased news organizations have spent time investigating the link between Obama and Ayers and it's become pretty apparent that there is no evidence to support Palin's claims of the two of them "palling around" or even being close at all. Furthermore, Obama has gone out of his way time and time again waaaay back during the primaries (when all of this was actually relevant to the national discussion) to strongly denounce Ayers actions. Now, I do think it is completely reasonable to ask Obama and his campaign surrogates whether it was wise to continue serving on a charitable board with Ayers, knowing his past, as Mark Halperin did of one of Obama's senior advisors. But to belabor the point, as the McCain camp is doing, instead of dealing with the most important issue for the vast majority of voters is excessive and hopefully fruitless.

But here's what's really annoying. Some of the folks the McCain camp has sent out on the warpath to call Obama's judgment (and at times his patriotism) into question don't make a lick of sense. Number 2 on the list is former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, whose own track record of picking upstanding public servants of integrity was called into question in a pretty high profile way: (as Robert Gibbs pointed out on Fox the other day).

And of course, sitting at the top of the list is my favorite person in the race: Sarah Palin. "What?!" you exclaim, "What in the world could Sarah Palin be hiding/downplaying that could possibly be more damning than the tenuous-at-best relationship between Obama and Ayers???"



It's one thing to sit on a board with someone and it's a very different thing to be married to someone, supported by their cohorts, and delighted with their anti-US party. And I quote:

I am delighted to welcome you to the 2008 Alaskan Independence Party Convention... We have a great promise to be a self-sufficient state... Keep up the good work and God bless you. [emphasis added]

So if it's a bad idea to throw stones, how much worse is it to hurl flaming boulders of ire and hypocrisy?

UPDATE: Less damning but just as indicative of the senselessness of this whole political approach is this article on McCain's link to a certain guy we've heard a lot about lately...