I think Dowd is wrong here.  Obama is smart not to crawl into the trenches and start throwing mud -- that's his appeal!  Americans are rightly SICK of this!

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March 3, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

Where’s His Right Hook?

By MAUREEN DOWD

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/03/opinion/03dowd.html

WASHINGTON

As I sit across from Barack Obama in his Senate office, I feel like Ingrid Bergman in “The Bells of St. Mary’s,” when she plays a nun who teaches a schoolboy who’s being bullied how to box.

I’m just not certain, having watched the fresh-faced senator shy away from fighting with the feral Hillary over her Hollywood turf, that he understands that a campaign is inherently a conflict.

The Democrats lost the last two excruciatingly close elections because Al Gore and John Kerry did not fight fiercely and cleverly enough.