From The Washington Post
By Harold Ford Jr.

Although our nation’s economic house is on fire, John McCain isn’t unveiling proposals to put out the fiscal flames. Instead, he is pursuing the presidency by taking the low road, as he and his surrogates attack Barack Obama in harsh, personal terms. It’s hard to believe this is the same man who in 2004 said of the Swift-boat attacks against John Kerry: “I deplore this kind of politics. I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable.”

In fact, after McCain lost the Republican nomination to George Bush in 2000, he declared that there was a “special place in hell” for the Bush operatives who had run a smear campaign against him. By adopting the same approach against Obama, McCain diminishes his reputation and raises questions about his commitment to fairness and decency.

I know that John McCain is a man of courage and character. His ability to overcome the torture he endured at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors is a tribute to his strength and to the human spirit. But as Americans yearn for a president to lead us courageously into an uncertain future, McCain appears to be abandoning his creed of putting country first.

While I am disappointed in McCain’s about-face, I am not surprised. When I ran for the Senate in 2006, my opponent, Bob Corker, also found himself trailing in the October polls. His campaign and the Republican National Committee launched a series of false and vicious character attack ads, including the infamous “call me” ad, in which a scantily clad white woman looked at the camera and said, “Harold, call me.”

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