Recent smear tactics by the McCain campaign are nicely deconstructed in this New Yorker article:
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/10/20/081020taco_talk_hertzberg"Early in the general-election campaign, Obama was accused ... of favoring 'painful tax increases on working American families,' when in fact his tax hike would apply only to family incomes of more than a quarter million dollars a year. Perhaps that could be dismissed as a routine political stretcher. But Obama was also portrayed as a libertine who demanded that kindergartners be exposed to explicit descriptions of sexual intercourse (when in fact he proposed only to teach them to recognize inappropriate advances) and as a sexist boor who called the Republican Vice-Presidential nominee a pig (when in fact he used a common simile that his opponent had a habit of using himself)."
“ 'negative' hardly does justice to the mendacity of the campaign of vilification that bracketed Nashville. 'Barack Obama has said that all we’re doing in Afghanistan is air-raiding villages and killing civilians,' Sarah Palin said the week before. 'Such a reckless, reckless comment and untrue comment, again, hurts our cause.' McCain’s wife, Cindy—who, in May, had said, 'My husband is absolutely opposed to any negative campaigning at all'—told a rally last week, 'The day that Senator Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son while he was serving sent a cold chill through my body.' ”
"Here is what Obama actually said, fourteen months ago: 'We’ve got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we’re not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous pressure over there.' "
And there's more.
Shame on Palin and the McCains. They have no sense of decency.