"Despite often-lofty rhetoric that he plans to bring the nation a "new kind of politics," Sen. Barack Obama has surrounded himself with operatives skilled in the old-school art of the political back stab.
Yet when Obama was criticized this week for opposition research memos critical of Sen. Hillary Clinton's ties to India and Indian-Americans, he was quick to blame his staff.
"It was a screw-up on the part of our research team," he told editors and reporters with The Des Moines Register. "It wasn't anything I had seen or my senior staff had seen."
That is starting to sound familiar. It was at least the third time since February the Illinois Democrat has blamed his staff for a glitch.
When Obama assembled his crew early this year, he brought together a team with a long track record for the sort of caustic rhetoric he has pledged to avoid, just as other presidential candidates have done by hiring people similarly talented in the art of opposition research and attack. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) even hired some of the very people that trashed his 2000 presidential bid.
From his campaign headquarters on the 11th floor of a high-rise on Michigan Avenue, Obama's political warriors range from a research director with extensive experience in throwing darts from Democratic National Committee's offices to a communications director who once worked for a group that ran a controversial ad that used an image of Osama bin Laden to attack Howard Dean..."
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