Meet the Press. Obama chief strategist David Axelrod, to recently-promoted recently-hired Clinton chief strategist Geoff Garin:
Axelrod: You know, as long as we're on the subject -- and I don't want to dwell on this -- did you not put a negative ad on this weekend in Philadelphia? A 100% negative ad attacking Senator Obama?Oh no he didn't!
Garin: No, I don't believe we did.
Axelrod: Yeah, you did. Go back and check with your people. It's an ad on lobbying. And it's circulating...
Garin: It's not. It ends up, I believe, with...
Axelrod: No, no, it's a 100% negative ad, Geoff. Go back and ask your people. I understand you're new, in the campaign, and I love you, man, you're a good friend of mine, I know you to be a good, positive person, but I think there are some vestiges of the old regime still in play.
[Incidentally, was it just me, or was Russert particularly bad-journalisty this morning?]
Also funny: on Face the Nation, Clinton supporter Ed Rendell mentioned the Tomb-of-the-Unknown-Soldier debacle (Tomb-gate?), to which Obama supporter Bob Casey responded, paraphrasally, "Yes, that was despicable, but the Clinton campaign does it, too." To which Rendell responded, with a straight face, "Well, yeah, but we're not hypocritical about it." So apparently the problem is not the despicability, per se; it's the despicability in combination with the fact that Obama pretends he doesn't like despicability. That hypocrite!
