Obama is Playing Good Cop/Bad Cop with McCain's Military Service

As Jim Geraghty points out, we're now up to eight different Obama surrogates who have questioned John McCain's military record. Meanwhile, Obama himself makes speeches saying that people shouldn't questions McCain's military record. McCain's team is fighting back:

"Mr. Beers' remarks are part of a pattern of Obama supporters attacking John McCain's military service, and a reminder of why it's what Sen. Obama, his supporters and his campaign actually do that matters most," McCain spokesman Brian Rogers tells ABC News. "Sen. Obama speaking out against these attacks isn't really relevant — either his supporters aren't hearing him or they don't believe his words."

Geraghty adds this:

It's really nice that Obama said today that "no one should ever devalue that service, especially for the sake of a political campaign." It's also meaningless if everyone else in the Democratic party ignores him. Barack Obama doesn't have total control of the actions and words of every surrogate, but after the eighth instance, without any major consequence beyond a spokesman saying that Obama "rejects" the surrogate's statement, it starts to look like a deliberate and cynical good cop/bad cop routine. Let's see the candidate himself calling out his supporters by name. Let's see some heads rolling — was Samantha Power's declaration that Hillary was a "monster" really that much worse? (Team McCain ditched Cunningham over using Obama's middle name.)

I keep hoping that someday McCain will wake up and realize the other side isn't going to play by his rules of civility. He needs to fight back and fight back hard.