David Brooks: "Lipstick stuff" was "stupidity on stilts"

The kindergarten ad is outrageous. That is warmed-over -- that is a left over from Alan Keyes' campaign in 2004... which was embarrassing at the time.  

It is a charge that Obama voted for, which he did, a bill in the Illinois state legislature that would -- for age-appropriate sex education for youngsters taught to be -- to warn them about adult sexual predators, and what they could do to avoid and to discourage and to resist those...

Now, here's Shields on the "lipstick on a pig" idiocy:

... it was a total -- just made up by the whole cloth that he -- because he used an expression which John McCain had used, that everybody has used at different times, apparently trying to be folksy -- you got a folksy audience, you want to be folksy -- you know, that that was somehow a slam or a slur on Sarah Palin.

In sum, according to Marc Shields, the McCain campaign has been "dishonest and dishonorable," certainly "not the kind of campaign that one expected from John McCain" (actually, as soon as the Rove people signed on, it was pretty obvious it would be this way).

Now, here's David Brooks on the "sex ed" and "lipstick" ads:

... the McCain campaign has been more egregious than the Obama campaign.

...I would not have run the sex-ed ad. The lipstick stuff was just stupidity on stilts.

In the end, by the way, both Shields and Brooks agree: Obama is still favored to win the election, no matter how many lies McCain spews or how dishonorable (and dishonest) he's willing to be.

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