The Anger Factor

"Goodbye to all that.

"With less than 60 days to Election Day, the rival campaigns are at each other's throats. In the last two days alone, put-downs have flown like daggers: McCain's campaign called Obama's 'disturbing,' 'desperate,' 'offensive,' and 'disgraceful.' Obama's campaign fired back with 'pathetic,' 'perverse,' 'dishonorable,' and 'shameful.' Though McCain has more often been the aggressor, the back-and-forth -- to borrow a recent McCain campaign description of Obama running mate Joe Biden -- has reached 'a new low.' "

The greatest anger I see is among liberal pundits who were once McCain admirers. I know the conservative indictment is that it was easy to back Mac against Bush in a primary, but harder when the opponent is their liberal love Barack. Still, I sense some genuine disappointment.

Time's Joe Klein is particularly exercised:

"Back in 2000, after John McCain lost his mostly honorable campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he went about apologizing to journalists -- including me -- for his most obvious mis-step: his support for keeping the confederate flag on the state house.

"Now he is responsible for one of the sleaziest ads I've ever seen in presidential politics, so sleazy that I won't abet its spread by linking to it . . .

"I just can't wait for the moment when John McCain -- contrite and suddenly honorable again in victory or defeat -- talks about how things got a little out of control in the passion of the moment. Talk about putting lipstick on a pig."

TPM's Josh Marshall can't resist an I-told-you-so:

"One of the interesting aspects of this campaign is watching the scales fall from the eyes of many of John McCain's closest admirers among the veteran DC press corps. I'm not talking about the freaks on Fox News or any of the sycophants at the AP. I'm talking about, let's say, the better sort of reporters and commentators in the 45 to 65 age bracket. To the extent that the press was McCain's base (and in many though now sillier respects it still is) this was the base of the base. And talking to a number of them I can understand why that was, at least in the sense of the person he was then presenting himself as.

"But over the last . . . maybe six weeks, in various conversations with these folks, the change is palpable. Whether it will make any difference in the tone of coverage in the dominant media I do not know. But it is sinking in.

"All politicians stretch the truth, massage it into the best fit with their message. But, let's face it, John McCain is running a campaign almost entirely based on straight up lies. Not just exaggerations or half truths but the sort of straight up, up-is-down mind-blowers we've become so accustomed to from the current occupants of the White House . . .

"So let's stopped being shocked and awed by every new example of it. It is undignified. What can we do? We've got a dangerously reckless contender for the presidency and a vice presidential candidate who distinguished her self by abuse of office even on the comparatively small political stage of Alaska."