A new low for the Obama camp

It's still early in the 2008 presidential campaign, but Sen. Barack Obama has already chosen to wallow in the mud.

Obama sent one of his surrogates, Wesley Clark, a potential running mate or cabinet member, to attack Sen. John McCain's military record.

You can fault McCain for a lot of things, but you do not question McCain's service to his country, especially since he spent more than five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp.

Investor's Business Daily takes Obama to task over the sleaze campaign he has chosen to run.

From an IBD editorial:

Obama talks about change and hope and masquerades as the anti-politician. But as the Rev. Jeremiah Wright noted after Obama disowned his pastor of two decades, Obama will do and say the things a politician has to do and say to win.

When Barack Obama was romping on the sandy beaches of Hawaii at age 6, John McCain was fighting for his country and carrying on that fight for 5 1/2 years in a North Vietnamese prison that makes Abu Ghraib look like Club Med.

Clark's personal attack echoes the more vicious attacks being unleashed in the liberal blogosphere. They accuse McCain of war crimes for bombing Hanoi, even of making propaganda for the North Vietnamese.

Read the full editorial, "Obama At Twelve O'Clock Low," at the newspaper's Web site.

It's clear what the Obama strategy will be. He will avoid debating McCain and pretend to take the high road, while unleashing the Democratic Party smear machine to attack McCain. It's Chicago-style gutter politics, the kind Obama grew up in.