Promises of taking the high-road sink in mud

The political hunting season for presidential candidates has arrived early, and already it features a new level of mudslinging and cage-match attacks.

A new GOP website, www.meetbarackobama.com, has a daily "Audacity Watch" on Democratic candidate Barack Obama -- including a takeoff on a Facebook page (www.barackbook.com) that features Obama "friends" such as Tony Rezko, the Chicago fundraiser who was convicted of fraud, and William Ayers, a founder of the 1960s violent radical group the Weathermen.

The Democrats last week launched the Exxon/McCain '08 campaign, complete with website, bumper stickers and slogans ("Oil Companies First"). They also created the Next Cheney (www.democrats.org/page/content/thenextcheney), a site that details the weaknesses of potential GOP vice presidential candidates and, oh, while you're here, how about a contribution to the Democratic Party?

There is a barrage of new attacks from both sides and a roster of new tell-all political books, such as "Obama Nation" by Jerome Corsi, whose "Unfit for Command" led to the swift-boating of John Kerry four years ago. Despite dozens of factual challenges, "Obama Nation" has managed to ride up the best-seller list.

Republican attacks sting

With about two weeks until the national conventions -- and about 90 days until the general election -- the barrage of back-and-forth has kicked off debate and hand-wringing among Democrats.

With the Illinois senator coming off a tough two weeks, and McCain's team managing to land some crucial punches and get traction in the polls, should Obama -- who sells himself as a breath of fresh air and a breed apart from old school, negative politics -- take out the brass knuckles?

Some Obama backers -- noting that McCain chief strategist Steve Schmidt has finally put his stamp on the campaign -- want their candidate to start punching back harder.

"Steve Schmidt is showing himself to be a brilliant strategist," said a leading, and frustrated, Democratic political consultant last week, who did not want to be identified. "They went right at the Obama celebrity and mocked it. They injected the race card and they put us on the defensive on offshore oil drilling. ... McCain is now setting the agenda in the old-fashioned way, showing that hardball politics almost always win.

"They need to attack McCain," said the consultant, "and make him the issue."

Trip triggered GOP response

The current flap began in late July as Obama ended his media-event European trip, prompting Team McCain and the GOP to launch an aggressive media war to get voters' attention.

There was a double-punch of ads -- one showed Charlton Heston's Moses declaring Obama "The One," the other attacked Obama for being "the biggest celebrity in the world" and managed to work in an image of Paris Hilton.

Then McCain campaign chairman Rick Davis said the Democratic candidate's wry observation that he looks different from most other presidential politicians constituted dealing the race card "from the bottom of the deck."

Next: The distribution of the "Obama Energy Plan" tire gauge symbolized what Republicans called the shallow symbolism of the Democrat's policy -- his call for Americans to save oil by checking their cars' tire pressure.

Mark Petracca, a political science professor at the University of California, Irvine, says McCain's attack mode "isn't so surprising" and has been savvy in technique.

Petracca says such strategies hardly constitute the positive campaign that McCain promised, but "if it didn't work, they wouldn't do it."

But Obama hasn't exactly been sitting still and just taking the incoming fire. Team Obama fought back with tough jabs at McCain -- four more years of George Bush -- in campaign appearances and with his first negative ad of the general election campaign, asking whether McCain was "the original maverick -- or just more of the same" regarding energy problems and high gas prices.

Obama continued that line of attack in the Democrat's weekly radio address Saturday, accusing McCain of shortchanging Americans by favoring an extended war in Iraq at the expense of fixing the nation's underfunded schools and crumbling roads and bridges.

"Senator McCain talks about putting our country first," Obama said, "but he is running for a third term of the very same policies that have set our country back."