Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin are bashing the Los Angeles Times for "withholding" a videotape of Sen. Barack Obama attending a 2003 party for Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American professor and critic of Israel.
Mr. Khalidi and Sen. Obama were colleagues at the University of Chicago and reportedly are longtime friends, but both publicly have acknowledged their stark disagreement about Israel. The Los Angeles Times, as is its right, is protecting the source of the tape.
Countless independent analyses have reached the same conclusion: At best, McCain-Palin is trying to make something of nothing; at worst, the GOP campaign is engaging in gross misrepresentation of the facts.
No one doubts that McCain-Palin is making a play for skittish Jewish-American voters in battleground Florida -- it's a transparent, Ayers-esque move, born of desperation and consistent with the campaign's dedication to fear mongering over the last week.
Hard to believe, isn't it, that an event that happened five years ago and that the Los Angeles Times wrote about seven months ago suddenly is a big deal?
Oh, the guilt-by-association tactic will work on a handful of shallow-minded voters -- it already has -- but that's just sad commentary on an impressionable electorate. Sadder still, however, is seeing how low Sen. McCain is willing to stoop to scratch out a few votes.
It seems he has nothing else to offer.
In related news, as they say, at a rally today in Defiance, Ohio, Sen. McCain made a point to recognize the presence of Samuel Joseph "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher.
"Joe's with us today. Joe where are you? Where is Joe? Is Joe here with us today?"Joe wasn't there.
That moment might well be the hollowest echo of a wretchedly mismanaged campaign.
