The Rhetorical Gift That Keeps On Giving

Continuing the tradition of putting words into the mouths of people who probably don't exist, today, it's Novak on Obama.

The young orator who had seemed so fantastic, beginning with his 2007 Jefferson-Jackson dinner speech in Iowa, disappointed even his own advisers over the past two weeks

Name one?

and old party hands mourned that they were stuck with a flawed candidate.

Name one?

Didn't think so.

There's little substance to Novak's piece, but he does try to perpetuate some McCain mythology.

Democrats abhor bringing up what Obama calls Ayers's "detestable acts 40 years ago," but they will be brought into the public arena even if that is not McCain's style of politics.

But it is McCain's style. And it's not an isolated incident, either. Saying McCain isn't going to roll around in the gutter like this doesn't change the fact that he already is. It just makes the speaker look like Robert Novak ignorant, dishonest, or both.