Joe Wilson

Shameless Clinton surrogate Joe Wilson pens an Obama hit piece on his foreign policy record. To anyone who still labored under the delusion that this empty-suit had an ounce of credibility, this shallow piece, full of out-of-context quotations and logical fallacies, should prove once and for all why Wilson has earned his reputation in Washington as a complete hack.

It's understandable that the progressive blogosphere rallied behind him when it looked like they could score points on Bush, but too many lionized him just because Bush wronged him, without looking at his views or record.

Along with getting rid of Mark Penn, getting rid of Joe Wilson is another great reason to root for an Obama win tomorrow.

Oh, and speaking of Penn, Ezra Klein speaks for me regarding Penn's recent behavior:

In general, I'm very, very hard on Mark Penn. I think his politics are odious, his business dealings reprehensible, and his professional work shoddy beyond measure. And now, watching him desperately try and squirm away from the Clinton campaign while it's still going on, I wonder if I've been too easy on the guy. From The LA Times: "Penn said in an e-mail over the weekend that he had 'no direct authority in the campaign,' describing himself as merely 'an outside message advisor with no campaign staff reporting to me.'" Of course, he wasn't complaining, or writing furious e-mails to correct the record, last April, when the Washington Post reported, "Penn, 53, is [Clinton's] chief strategist. While not her campaign manager in name, Penn controls the main elements of her campaign." Now he's not only abandoning her, but by talking to reporters about campaign dissension mere days before Ohio, he's stepping all over her message. If the e-mail was accidental, that makes him incompetent. If not, it makes him cravenly opportunistic.

It really shocks me how many of Clinton's closest advisers and surrogates I harbor an intense dislike for (Penn, Wilson and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, to name three), and how few of Obama's people generate similar feelings (in fact, only one, his chief Maryland surrogate, Attorney General Doug Gansler) What is it about Obama's campaign that has kept the extremely large left-wing-hackocracy away?