Obama’s soft underbelly

During the 1832 presidential race, a pamphlet supporting John Quincy Adams claimed that his opponent, Andrew Jackson, was a moron who couldn't "spell more than one word in four," notes Paul F. Boller Jr. in his 1984 book "Presidential Campaigns."

During his 1872 re-election bid, U.S. Grant "was attacked as a crook, drunkard, ignoramus, dictator, swindler and 'utterly depraved horse jockey,' " Mr. Boller recounts.

During the 1964 campaign, LBJ operatives aired a political ad which implied that electing Republican candidate Barry Goldwater would lead to a nuclear holocaust.

The faint of heart had best avoid the rough and tumble of politics.

So what was up with the hysterical reaction of Democrats last week to a relatively innocuous speech President Bush delivered Thursday in Israel?

Speaking to the Knesset, Mr. Bush said, "Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along." Mr. Bush went on to say that the "false comfort of appeasement ... has been repeatedly discredited by history."

Who could disagree?

But even though Mr. Bush never even mentioned presidential candidate Barack Obama or anyone else, Democrats responded as if Mr. Bush had called their presumptive nominee a wife-beating rogue with tendencies toward pedophilia.

By Friday, Sen. Obama was complaining about being subjected to uncivil "dishonest, divisive" attacks. He went on to call the president's comments "appalling" -- it was unclear how he and his supporters managed to avoid collapsing to the floor, writhing in emotional trauma.

Sen. Obama eventually composed himself enough to insist that if he becomes president he "will not negotiate with terrorists." Perhaps. But by the time he got around to that pronouncement, his soft underbelly had already been exposed.