HANSON

Posted at 8:55 a.m. ET

Victor Davis Hanson, who actually knows history, sets the record straight on some charges against the McCain campaign.  It is remarkable to see how many well-compensated pundits get basic facts wrong, don't do research, and make their assumptions based on what other equally inept pundits say.  Hanson provides a good disinfectant:

This is becoming a very strange campaign.

On CNN last evening both David Gergen and Ed Rollins echoed the current mantra that the "old" noble McCain is gone-and a "new" nastier one has emerged, largely because of his attacks on Ayers, perhaps his planned future ads on Wright, and a few unhinged people shouting at his campaign stops...

...A couple of thoughts: the George Bush, Sr. / Willie Horton campaign was far tougher; so were the Bush 2000/2004 efforts. If anything, McCain's campaign is subdued in comparison to what we've seen on both sides in past years. Indeed, McCain as a vicious campaigner is a complete fabrication, but, again, a brilliant subterfuge on the part of Team Obama that, in fact, has run, via appendages, the far more vicious race.

Thank you, sir, for giving us actual history.

Obama and his surrogates have repeatedly engaged in racial politics (as Bill Clinton lamented when in fury he denounced the "race card"). When there was never evidence that McCain was using race as a wedge issue, it was clear Obama most surely was--preemptively, on at least two occasions--warning Americans he would soon be the victim of opposition racial stereotyping.

And...

So far, McCain supporters have not broken into Biden's email, or accused Biden of being a Nazi, or accused anyone of not bearing one of their own children, or photo-shopped grotesque pictures of Obama on the Internet (as in the Atlantic magazine case). I don't think deranged McCain supporters in Hollywood or television almost daily are quoted as damning Obama in unusually crude terms. Nor are white racist ministers calling McCain a 'messiah' or McCain operatives fraudulently swarming voter registration centers.

Someone finally said it.

Obama, as I have said ad nauseam, has brilliantly prepped the battlefield to such a degree that a Farrakhan endorsement or surrogates calling Palin a quasi-Nazi or a bimbo, or smearing McCain as near senile is irrelevant; yet one screamer in a crowd of tens of thousands is proof of McCain's and Palin's racism and hatred.

Again, most conservatives know this paradox, but for some being outraged, as the conservative voice of reason, at McCain's supposed low road ensures a CNN spot, or some future rehabilitation during the expected Obama regnum of the next eight years. I think should I write a column suddenly taking the "high road", praising Obama's wit, taste in books, and metrosexuality, I would be dubbed principled rather than cynical, 'even-handed' rather than self-serving, and a maverick rather than toadish.

You can see why Hanson is so respected as a sober, informed writer.

And as far as ethics go, in fact, a cursory review of the past Obama campaigns would reveal a ruthlessness never seen in any of McCain's efforts. Obama's record is far more left than McCain's is far right. Obama the healer has proven to be the most partisan in the Senate, McCain one of the most bipartisan.

But let's not let facts stand in our way.  The Obama nation will lead us to a better world.

Won't it?

October 13, 2008.