Rolling Out The Smears

It's kind of comical to watch the right flailing about, trying to come up with some narrative that will stick to their opponent so they can carry the hulking corpse of John McCain across the finish line in November. On the one hand, you have the creator of the Willie Horton ads trying to paint Obama as soft on crime and responsible for gangland murders while in the State Senate in Illinois. On the other hand, you have a depiction of Hyde Park, home to the University of Chicago, as some sort of free-love, terrorist-supporting freak show in the middle of the Second City (Milton Friedman, take note). And on the third hand, you have the royalists over at the National Review demanding that Obama release his birth certificate to prove wrong rumors that, among other things, his real middle name is Muhammad (I don't know, I would've changed it to something other than "Hussein" if I thought it'd be a political liability).

All of this, of course, is about Obama being less than American, part of the Marxist left, both scary black man and Muslim jihadist, and it's the direct descendant of those pesky email forwards. Fortunately, Obama is seeking to counteract those.

Barack Obama is recruiting senior staff to a new unit which will combat virulent rumour campaigns on the internet that threaten to cost him votes in the presidential election against John McCain.

The unit is part of a huge expansion of Obama's campaign team as he shifts from the Democratic nomination race to the campaign for November's election.

As well as the rumour-mongering problem, units are being set up to deal with other perceived vulnerable points, including off-the-cuff remarks by his wife Michelle. McCain's wife, Cindy, questioned Michelle's patriotism in February after she said: "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country."

Unfortunately, this is part of modern campaigning, but I'm glad to see Obama's team finally paying attention to it.