Over at the Standard, Michael Goldfarb asks:

I’m not sure what good it does for the McCain camp to demand an apology after each one of these episodes. Anybody who’s paying attention knows the score, and surely it isn’t lost on the public that it is, in fact, McCain who has held himself to a higher standard to this point–repudiating comments by Bill Cunningham and throwing Obama a lifeline in the midst of the Rev. Wright uproar. But it’s pretty clear Obama has no intention of apologizing for anything or anyone, including Rev. Wright, or Tony McPeak, or Shultz, or Rockefeller. So what’s a tough guy like McCain to do? How about stop asking for an apology and start returning fire.

I’m not quite sure what “returning fire” would be in this situation.

(Note that “demanding an apology” is the traditional attempt to A) get an opponent to admit guilt and B) escalate. Once you’ve gotten your opponent to apologize, you can raise your demand that the offender leave the campaign. See Samantha Power’s departure from the Obama campaign, and Hillary’s attempt to play the same card with other Obama surrogates; Team Obama got Bill Shaheen dismissed for his speculation about Obama being a drug dealer. Each day that someone departs, it dominates the news cycle and ensures whatever else a candidate is saying, it is pushed to A3.)

One of the problems for Team McCain is that the MSM has limited interest in showcasing out-of-line attacks by Obama surrogates on McCain. Power’s “monster” comment enraged the Hillary-backers in the MSM. Shaheen’s “drug dealer” comment enraged the Obama-backers in the MSM. But despite the delusions of the netroots, McCain is the first choice of few mainstream journalists, and rarely preferred when he is the more conservative of the two options. The Rockefeller comment does not appear, for example, in the Washington Post’s A section today, I suspect, because no one who selects the stories seethes with outrage over their man being slimed.

As one of my McCain guys observed, right now the key to taking on Obama is to take the glow of divinity away from him (literally, if you’ve read Jonah’s piece in the magazine); establishing that he’s just another liberal politician we’re talking about here. I suspect that highlighting these personal smears and taking the high road is central to the McCain team’s strategy.

I know that McCain going out ripping Obama a new one would make me happy. But I don’t know if it would play to the independents, centrists, soccer moms, Reagan Democrats, and other persuadables (or if those groups are really paying attention right now).