THIS IS HOW YOU FIGHT THEM

You can't wait around like Kerry did with the Swiftboat liars and you can't brush it off as nonsense, you have to strike back right away and that's what Obama has been doing. I also like how Obama linked Bush and McCain because the country needs to realize that the "maverick" will only continue Bush's rotten foreign policy. The AP also seems to get the standard GOP practice of trying to turn the election on the "character" issue:

The ads not only undermined Kerry's personal image. They helped divert attention from the Iraq war, whose unpopularity was growing, and they shifted the debate on national security to a broader, more personalized framework that benefited Bush.

Analysis: Obama reacts fast to Bush on diplomacy
May 16, 8:09 PM (ET)
By CHARLES BABINGTON


WASHINGTON (AP) - In President Bush's hint that Barack Obama wants to appease terrorists, Democrats heard troubling echoes of 2004, when Republicans portrayed John Kerry as irresolute and weak on national security.

Determined to end the similarities there, Obama and his allies counterattacked Friday with a multi-pronged response that was as fast and fierce as Kerry's response to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads was slow and uncertain.

And while the Democrats' first-day responses focused on Bush's speech this week in Israel, Friday's reactions mainly targeted John McCain, the GOP presidential candidate who seemed largely on the sidelines at first.

Bush's speech Thursday to the Israeli parliament, he said, wasn't about policy.

"It was about politics, about trying to scare the American people," Obama said. "And that's what will not work in this election because the American people can look back at the track record of George Bush, supported by John McCain," and conclude that the nation was misled about the Iraq war's justification, cost, length and benefit to America.