Obama Attack Book Author: McCain Doing It Wrong

The Politico talks to National Review's David Freddoso, author of one of two new attack books on Barack Obama:

Freddoso says John McCain's campaign and Republicans at large are making the wrong case against the Illinois senator.

"I don't think you beat Obama by saying that he's Paris Hilton," said Freddoso, a reporter for the conservative magazine National Review, referring to McCain's latest advertising campaign. "The more important thing is really to look at is he who he says he is? Is he really this great reformer?"

Freddoso's book, released today by the conservative publishing house Regnery and provided exclusively to Politico by the publisher, occupies a small island in the often-shrill sea of criticism of Obama. As a range of conservatives suggest that Obama is a closet radical, and as McCain's campaign aims to disqualify him from the White House on the grounds of his international fame, Freddoso makes a case that conservatives should look at the presumptive Democratic nominee's record.

His thesis: "It's not that Obama is a bad person. It's just that he's like all the rest of them. Not a reformer. Not a Messiah. Just like all the rest of them in Washington. And just like all the other liberals too."

Two anti-Obama books are hitting stores. Politico reports that the other author, Jerome Corsi, "covers some of the same territory as the viral emails that have plagued the Democratic candidate, making much of his slender connections to Islam and his teenage drug use." Corsi has already peddled a number of falsehoods from the book.