E.J. Dionne writes in the Washinton Post today that Obama is Tiptoeing Through the Mud and that to win he must change his strategy. Like a growing number of others, including myself, he feels that the campaign run by the McCain camp "suggest an unedifying scuffle over a city council seat. ... The media bear a heavy responsibility because 'balance' does not require giving equal time to truth and lies. So does McCain, who is running a disgraceful, dishonorable campaign of distraction and diversion."

Obama bears responsibility for this mess as well because he simply has not been forceful in rebutting the nonsense and making sure that his own ideas on the presidency are forcefully and clearly stated in terms the electorate can understand. He goes on to say,

Here's the problem: Few voters know that Obama would cut the taxes of the vast majority of Americans by far more than McCain would. Few know Obama would guarantee everyone access to health care or that McCain's health plan might endanger coverage many already have. Few know that Obama has a coherent program to create new jobs through public investment in roads, bridges, transit, and green technologies.

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McCain has shown he wants the presidency so badly that he's willing to say anything, true or false, to win power. Obama can win by fighting for what he believes. What he can't do is wait for the media to call McCain out -- although they should -- or expect voters to know he'll fight for them when they are not yet sure that he's willing to stand up for himself.

No more Sen Nice Guy. Obama plans to begin a more aggressive campaign notes an article in the New York TImes today. According to the article, back to back attack ads, one of which falsely accused Obama of supporting sex education for five year olds, caused the nearly unflappable and disciplined Obama to decide he had to be more aggressive.

It is clear that the personal attacks, many of them without merit, were having an effect. The article notes that "Mr. McCain’s increasingly aggressive campaign has sought to put Mr. Obama on the defensive in each news cycle, using any development at hand, like Mr. Obama’s colloquial comment this week about putting “lipstick on a pig,” to keep attention away from Democratic messages about the economy and the similarities between Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush." Aides point out that they had planned how to counter a McCain strategy of pointing to his experience and that he had abandoned it for a strategy focused on change. They note that is a contest they can win,

Krugman's editorial, Blizzard of Lies, comments on the number of false and misleading claims made by the McCain campaign about Mr. Obama. They have lied both about their own record -- Gov Palin's in particular -- and the record and experience of Sen Obama. As I have noted several times in the last week, this has been shameless.

Krugman has come to the same conclusion that I have. "I can’t think of any precedent, at least in America, for the blizzard of lies since the Republican convention. The Bush campaign’s lies in 2000 were artful — you needed some grasp of arithmetic to realize that you were being conned. This year, however, the McCain campaign keeps making assertions that anyone with an Internet connection can disprove in a minute, and repeating these assertions over and over again." I agree that they are both incompetent (or they would know they would get caught) and dishones. I have lost all respect for McCain as a result.

Gene Robinson, in the Washington Post, writes a similar editorial in today's Washington Post that concludes with:

And there will be at least four key moments when the McCain-Palin campaign will be unable to avoid the issues. Obama and McCain will hold three debates; Palin and Joe Biden will hold one. The television audience for these encounters is expected to be enormous, perhaps the biggest ever. Americans will be presented with a straightforward question. Do they want a Republican in the White House for four more years, continuing to take the country in the same direction? Or not?

Why do they think he can get away with this? Well, Krugman posits, as do others, that they are taking advantage of the press's tradition of neutrality in reporting. The press rarely says that a candidate lied. They say the opposing campaign said it isn't true. It then becomes in the minds of many people a "he said, she said" event rather than what it is, a bold face lie.

Krugman points out the same thing that worries me. It says all too much about about how McCain and Palin would govern. We have had enough mendacity and incompetence in the last nearly eight years and it has despoiled the American political climate almost irreparably. He asserts, and I agree, that McCain/Palin would be worse than Bush/Chaney.

David Brooks, who is one of the more conservative New York Times editorial writers, has some sharp words for the Republican party, which he often supports. Using ideas taken from the social and biological sciences, he posits that humans are "autonomous creatures deeply interconnected with one another." He finds the approach to issues by the Republican ignores what he sees as this essential core of humanity.

Brooks goes on to say that people are concerned about what is happening in their lives from economic distress to a broken health care system that may not be there for them to a lack of focus on academics and family values. "And yet locked in the old framework, the Republican Party’s knee-jerk response to many problems is: 'Throw a voucher at it.' Schools are bad. Throw a voucher. Health care system’s a mess. Replace it with federally funded individual choice. Economic anxiety? Lower some tax rate. ... That language of community, institutions and social fabric has been lost, and now we hear only distant echoes — when social conservatives talk about family bonds or when John McCain talks at a forum about national service."

He believes that the Republicans must change along the lines that the British conservatives already have -- towards a balance between focus on the individual and focus on the society as a whole. If you want to read what the current Republican approach leads to, read about the Interior Department's Inspector General found.

FactCheck takes a close look at three instances where the McCain campaign has twisted the fact to make it look like Obama has personally belittled Palin.

• They claim Obama campaign accused Palin of meekly following orders whereas what an aide did say was that she made false claims about Obama's legislative record because perhaps that is what she was told.
• The Republicans claim that the Obama campaign dismissed her as merely good looking whereas Biden actually was complimenting her when he said she was far better looking than he was to point out an obvious difference between them.
• They claim Obama was disrespectful towards Palin and accused her of lying. What he did say was that Palin's claims on her opposition to the "bridge to nowhere" are dubious, which is supported by the record.

The Annenberg Center has a weekly video summary, Just the Facts. that for those who want to watch more than read may enjoy.