The daily double-talk campaign

PARDON ME for being grumpier than usual about this, but I have been suffering from a touch of cognitive dissonance after hearing John McCain declare his affection for Barack Obama's decency and familial credibility at one of his campaign outings for in-season  hobgoblins.  I wanted to see a reformed politician who decided there was nothing to be gained from his campaign to nowhere but the gutter.  I really did.  He seemed to restore political sanity in his response to a nasty woman who could think of nothing  worse to say about Obama than to call him, ya know,  an "Arab" (which in today's context  could have two meanings).  

But now it seems that  if you turn to McCain's  surrogates who speak to the voters every day through Sarah Palin and those TV ads, you have the same wretched character attacks that contradict McCain's detente.  I have a hunch that the dueling messages were carefully orchestrated.   With the national media, including conservative columnists, boiling about McCain's   messages and body language to his rabid audiences, it was time to put him on the Good Ship Lollipop as a benign trouper while his agents executed the dirty work.  Now appearing, for instance, are questions about Michelle Obama's membership in the same law firm (that has 500 lawyers) that employed  William Ayers' wife.  Any evidence that they went out on double dates and called each other to find out what the other was wearing to the office the next day?  

It wasn't that long ago that McCain announced he was suspending his campaign to return to Washington to guide his colleagues to a solution  to the economic wreckage.  For a minute or two it seemed like smart politics.  But it was soon discovered that his attack ads remained on TV and his campaign offices remained open during the "suspension".  It's enough to make one suspicious of his latest  nice-guy gambit. .