Obama Won't Chastise His Followers...Himself

Another radio talk show host gets into a verbal brouhaha in the campaign:

WASHINGTON -- Democrat Barack Obama's presidential campaign on Saturday repudiated a liberal talk show host's description of Sen. John McCain as a warmonger, a comment made to an audience that Obama later addressed.

Ed Schultz, host of a nationally syndicated radio program that is based in Fargo, N.D., was warming up the crowd Friday at a $100-a-person fundraiser for the North Dakota Democratic party in Grand Forks when he tagged the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting as a "warmonger," Schultz acknowledged in a telephone interview Saturday.

He said he has used the term many times on the air to refer to McCain because of his support for the war in Iraq.

"He voted for this war. He's a perpetrator of the war. He's an advocate of the war," Schultz said. "In my personal definition, that's a warmonger."

Obama was not in the room when Schultz spoke. The candidate spoke after a series of introductions by the state's three Democrats in Congress.

Obama thanked Schultz and called him "the voice of progressive radio."

But on Saturday, Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement: "John McCain is not a warmonger and should not be described as such. He's a supporter of a war that Senator Obama believes should have never been authorized and never been waged."

The roles were reversed in February, when McCain quickly condemned the anti-Obama remarks of conservative talk radio host Bill Cunningham when he spoke at a McCain campaign rally. Cunningham referred repeatedly to Obama using his full name _ Barack Hussein Obama _ and called him a "hack, Chicago-style" politician.

There's an important difference in these two stories. When the conservative talk show host said things that McCain found offense, McCain himself chastised the host and apologized to Barack Obama. When a lefty talking head committed a similar offense against McCain, the "Obama campaign" responded, not Barack Obama himself.

I disagreed with McCain's denouncement of Cunningham, but at least when he thought something was wrong he dealt with it himself. Obama seems unable to do that, instead relying on an unnamed source to make his quasi-apologies. That says something about the men.