Mike Leahy plays "Kristen". . .

. . .to Obama's Eliot Spitzer in today's Washington Post, dredging up complaints from the distant past by avowed McCain enemies alongside resolved differences he once had with his current allies. It's a pure hit piece, to put it charitably. What it really amounts to is showin' some love to the Obama camp, helping to knock the dirt off the suddenly beleaguered candidate's shoulder.

Mark Salter wrote in to Ramesh Ponnuru after having seen the piece linked at The Corner and gave the McCain campaign's account of just how this story came to be, and it doesn't reflect well on Mr. Leahy. Apparently, Obama's duplicity is a trait shared by his benefactors. Whether or not they developed the trait as a result of exposure to the crepe paper messiah, or if it's just the regular old run-of-the-mill sort of duplicity normally attributable to the Beltway press corps, I don't know. But, unless Mark Salter is an outright liar, in which case it seems incumbent upon Leahy to forthrightly state so, the very genesis of this story is enough to cast doubt upon it. The fact that it appeared on Page 1 in the Sunday edition should be a source of shame, even for a publication as shamelessly biased as the Washington Post.

What this all amounts to is a several-thousand-word collection of ancient complaints by embittered sworn McCainemies interlaced with long-forgotten differences between erstwhile foes, fishwrapped and delivered to the front door of Obama '08 headquarters. Obama's greatest asset is the fact that when he needs something to take his latest gaffe out of the headlines, he has friends who can make it so by hook or by crook.