Sooner or later. . .

. . .someone in the press is going to have to struggle against their every instinct and put forth some pretense of making Obama accountable for his campaign's attacks on John McCain as a "warmonger". To begin with, his persistent disingenuous attacks on McCain's "100 years" statement are designed to paint him as precisely that. Furthermore, when he allows people like Ed Schultz to flat-out and unabashedly call him a "warmonger" just before he walks on stage to perpetuate the same discredited "100 years" mantra that he's been using for weeks, he is lending his tacit endorsement of that sentiment. For the Obama campaign to dismiss Schultz's comments as those of someone who is "not a surrogate" is, in fact, the very antithesis of the "New Kind of Politics" Obama purports to represent.

As if this weren't enough evidence of Obama's outright phoniness on this issue, bear in mind that Obama's campaign is currently being advised by a key campaign adviser to keep 60,000 to 80,000 troops in Iraq at the end of 2010 -- well after his promised "withdrawal of troops within 16 months". So, not only is Obama willing to mischaracterize his opponent's position (in the name of a "New Kind of Politics"), he's willing to do likewise with his own.

If anyone has demonstrated a new kind of politics, it's John McCain, who stepped forward immediately and denounced and apologized for the words of a local radio personality (like Ed Schultz) when he determined that they were not suitable for the kind of campaign he intends to wage against his opponent. It's notable that, when confronted with a strikingly similar situation, the Obama campaign, under the banner of a "New Kind of Politics", decided to issue the following statement to account for itself:

“John McCain is not a warmonger and should not be described as such. He’s a supporter of a war that Senator Obama believes should have never been authorized and never been waged.”