Heh

A New Politics:

One that will not involve questions from the voters.

Barack Obama’s campaign made its distaste for free-style debates more or less official yesterday in their letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates. Team Obama only will agree to three debates, which has been the tradition through the last several presidential cycles, and all of them in the standard moderated format. He will not accept McCain’s challenge to meet him in a format where voters can ask the questions...

Team McCain hits back with humor, which they have apparently decided will be the trademark of their campaign.

“We understand it might be beneath a worldwide celebrity of Barack Obama’s magnitude to appear at town hall meetings alongside John McCain and directly answer questions from the American people, but we hope he’ll reconsider.”

We've talked about the disconnect between rhetoric and reality in this campaign before, so this is just another example. Sen. Obama is running on "a new politics," but in fact wants the campaign to run just as previous ones have run. He wants the media to continue to serve as the moderator and filter (no surprise, given that they are strongly allied with him), and to limit debates to the traditional number.

Sen. McCain, whom rhetoric would have as the candidate of Not-Change, not only wants to move to frequent Town Hall debates where the voters can question the candidates directly -- he also has adopted laughter, rather than fear, as his mode. Karl Rove's former employees may be working for him, but it's clear that the tone is being set by the candidate, not the campaign. Indeed, the tonal difference between McCain 2008 and Bush 2000 or 2004 could hardly be greater.

So, which one is the change candidate again? Which one actually changes things? Whether for better (as here and in Iraq) or for worse (as in campaign finance reform), if actual change is what you want, McCain is your man.