On Tuesday, Time columnist Joe Klein labeled as "shockingly unpresidential" John McCain's accusation that Barack Obama "would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign." But in announcing "I can't remember a more scurrilous statement by a major party candidate," Klein spoke a day too soon. As it turns out, McCain would top himself within 24 hours, charging that Obama would not stand up to genocide - an outrage leveled as the Democrat visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Israel.
To be sure, McCain's desperation over the events on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan shifting the debate in Obama's favor was on display repeatedly Tuesday. In Rochester, New Hampshire, McCain essentially branded Obama's call for a strategic refocus against Al Qaeda along the Afghan border – one backed in Baghdad and at the Pentagon - the equivalent of treachery:

"This is a clear choice that the American people have. I had the courage and the judgment to say I would rather lose a political campaign than lose a war. It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign."

Tuesday night, McCain repeated his slander in an interview with CBS News' Katie Couric. (It was during that same conversation McCain experienced his rude awakening about the timeline of the surge in Iraq.)

"I would much rather lose a campaign than lose a war. Sen. Obama has indicated that by his failure to acknowledge the success of the surge, that he would rather lose a war than lose a campaign."

But for sheer chutzpah, the McCain campaign broke new ground the following day. After Barack Obama reiterated the cry of "never again" after his visit to the Holocaust Memorial, Team McCain put out a press release charging that Obama in July 2007 was only too happy to turn a blind eye to the prospect of genocide in Iraq.
Conveniently excluding Obama's July 20, 2007 statements that "Nobody is proposing we leave precipitously" and that "there are still going to be U.S. forces in the region that could intercede, with an international force, on an emergency basis," the McCain campaign cited only:

"Well, look, if that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now - where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife - which we haven't done."

As McCain aide Michael Goldfarb pathetically claimed just after Obama laid a wreath at Yad Vashem, "Today he says 'never again.' A year ago stopping genocide wasn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces in Iraq. Doesn't that strike you as inconsistent?"
Earlier this year, John McCain pledged to run a "respectful campaign." Of course, with McCain's grotesque assertions about Obama's supposed Hamas ties and that Obama's word "cannot be trusted," that promise went out the window long ago.
As did John McCain's political courage, if he ever had any. Battered by his botched recollection of the Sunni awakening and perhaps shamed by the disgusting performance of his campaign team over the past 24 hours, John McCain canceled a press availability session scheduled for earlier today.