Obama Making Fun Of McCain's Age

Throughout his political career, Sen. Barack Obama has run dirty campaigns against his opponents. When he first ran for the state senate in Illinois, he got his primary opponent disqualified so he could run unopposed. In Chicago politics, the general election is a formality. When he ran for the U.S. Senate, he forced open sealed divorce records of his Democratic primary opponent and his Republican general election opponent. Revelations therein wrecked both opponents' campaigns, paving the way for an easy victory for Obama. Yet to be nominated by the Democratic Party, Obama is already subtly raising questions about Sen. John McCain's age. As the Redstate blog notes, Obama told a reporter this week that Sen. McCain is "losing his bearings", a less than subtle attack on his age as he criticized McCain for what he termed "smear politics." The McCain campaign was quick to respond. Senior advisor Mark Salter said:

First, let us be clear about the nature of Senator Obama's attack today: He used the words 'losing his bearings' intentionally, a not particularly clever way of raising John McCain's age as an issue. This is typical of the Obama style of campaigning.

We have all become familiar with Senator Obama's new brand of politics. First, you demand civility from your opponent, then you attack him, distort his record and send out surrogates to question his integrity. It is called hypocrisy, and it is the oldest kind of politics there is.

Redstate blog points out that Obama has often gotten away with making sexist references about Sen. Hillary Clinton. Quoting from ABC's Jake Tapper, Redstate offers these examples:

Jake Tapper first noted this when Obama said that Hillary was "taking out the claws." At the same time he noted that Obama would use "[l]anguage such as 'when she's feeling down' 'periodically' she 'launches attacks.'" Tapper noted that a number of female reporters and bloggers picked up on this. Later Obama complained that Hillary was "throwing the China" at him. Again, Tapper heard the dog whistle. Tapper noted that this "feeds into the 'harridan' caricature of Clinton."

You can bet if a Republican opponent used those words to describe a female candidate like Clinton, the media would be all over them demanding an apology. Democrats and womens' groups blasted Former Gov. Mitt Romney, for example, when he criticized his female opponent for behaving in a way that he said was "unbecoming."

Now, I'm not going to pretend to be surprised or pretend these sorts of exchanges don't happen in political campaigns all the time. It's just that Obama has been presented with this aura of being above the politics of personal destruction when he in fact has a track record of hitting his opponents below the belt as much as the next politician. He should be the last to complain when people keep raising questions about his past judgment, which they most certainly will in this campaign.