I'm going to try to concentrate on this, and not the McCain Global Alarmism Tour

McCain advisor Mark Slater ripped into Newsweek for their current, extremely biased cover story on those always-positive paragons of virtue, those Messianic masters of post-partisanship, those harbingers of hope^tm and change^tm the Obama campaign. It's slightly long, but worth reading. Here he is responding to the article's claim that McCain's campaign would rely on distortions, negative advertising, and 527 groups:

By accepting the Obama campaign construct as if it were objective, Evan and Richard framed this race exactly as Senator Obama wants it to be framed—every issue that raises doubts about his policy views and judgment is part of a smear campaign intended to distract voters from the real issues at stake in the election, and, thus, illegitimate. And even if Senator McCain might not be inclined to support such advertising, if he can't stop them from occurring then he will have succumbed to the temptation to put ambition before principle. How this notion could appear credible after MoveOn, the AFL-CIO and the DNC launched negative ad campaigns weeks ago, and after leaks from the Obama campaign that they would soon start running negative ads against McCain, is mystifying.

Bravo.

Between this and Salter's previous smack-downs against Obama and the media (but I repeat myself), I'm just about ready to write in Mark Salter's name in November.