Barack: Don't Join McCain & Rove in the Pigpen

"When you hate your enemies as much as they hate you, in the end, you wind up destroying yourself." --excerpt from Richard Nixon's farewell speech on his last day as President of the United States.

I've read today that the Obama campaign has set up some sort of "site" to respond to the ad hominem attacks that the McCain campaign has been reduced to. Those attacks include but are not limited to the Britney/Paris and "Moses" advertisements.

Obama resisted engaging in a mud wrestling bout with the Clintons during the primary season. He triumphed over them.

Barack Obama is not a pig. Hillary demonstrated that she is during the primaries.

John McCain's campaign organization has accepted the reality that if the campaign were to be run as an issue-oriented one, their candidate had no ammunition, a logical conclusion.

So, for the first time in the Nation's history, a candidate for its highest office has been forced (by the objective foreign and domestic policy failures of his party) to embrace a political strategy that (1) humiliates two apolitical figures of pop culture--Britney and Paris and (2) attempts to equate a man with a Harvard Law School education, a seat as a Senator from Illinois, a triumph in the Democratic Party primary process process against one of the most formidable opponents imaginable--Hillary Rodman Clinton--to two MTV-era celebrities.

It's a strategy that is simultaneously contemptuous of the American public's intelligence and the overall concept of democracy.

By setting up this "site" referred to above, Obama's campaign adds a certain legitimacy to the McRove approach to politics, it valorizes vomit as an acceptable form of political discourse. Is there a way to refute the charges implicit in the Britney/Paris ad? Should that ad require refutation at all? Does refuting it have the paradoxical effect of adding credibility to it? I think it does.

If anything, I think the campaign, and perhaps the Candidate himself, should respond with humor:

"I really don't know what to say about it (the ad;) other than it demeans the electoral process, it demeans two people who have no political allegiances either way that I am aware of, and it demonstrates that John McCain and his organization are running on empty regarding the real issues affecting the American public. As a [politician/public figure], I apologize to these two innocent American citizens who have been callously subjected to mockery by my opponent. But, in the end, he mocks not Brittney Spears nor Paris Hilton with his vile advertisement..he mocks himself. And, quite frankly, I pity him for that"

Senator Obama: Please don't roll in the mud with Rove. Please don't give their garbage wider circulation by responding in a serious manner to it. Resist the (lunatic and dumb) partisans on your side who urge you to hate your opponent as much as he hates you. BE DIFFERENT---YOU ALREADY ARE, JUST BY THE COLOR OF YOUR SKIN...AND HEED NIXON'S WORDS AS HE DELIVERED HIS OWN EULOGY.

Good luck, and don't let your advisers and supporters transform you into one of "them