Sleasiest Campaign in the Last 35 Years?

Josh Marshal, at Talking Points Memo, ask whether McCain is running one the most sleazy campaigns since Richard Nixon - maybe even worse.

But here's the key point, one that is getting too little attention. President Bush's father didn't run the Willie Horton ad. And this President Bush, however much they may have been funded by his supporters and run with Karl Rove's tacit approval, didn't run the Swift Boat ads. These were run by independent groups. Just how 'independent' we think they really are is a decent question. But even the sleaziest campaigns usually draw the line at the kind of sleaze they are wiling to run themselves under their own name.

John McCain assures us he is the only person that can bring the country together....that can work with both National Parties. I don't believe it. McCain has run far too dirty a campaign to ever be a uniter. McCain has tried almost every dirty trick in the book to discredit Obama, from implying he is unAmerican, a terrorist and a muslim.

Steve Benen adds the following:

The attacks from McCain have been more haphazard. Obama's a rookie. That didn't work? OK, he's a "celebrity." That didn't work? How about, he's a partisan Democrat who won't stand up to his party. Nothing? All right, he's insufficiently supportive of the troops. Or he's a pervert who wants to bring sex-ed to kindergarteners. Or a terrorist-sympathizer. Or he's a socialist. All the while, the subtext of McCain/Palin rhetoric vacillated between Obama's race, patriotism, and/or being "foreign," but it's never come together in a coherent way.