et tu, johnny?

Here’s a new twist in the world of Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary” John McCain has learned how to use the word “Disingenuousness.”

In a mocking letter to Barack Obama, the Arizona “straight shooter” accused the freshman senator from Illinois of “self-interested partisan posturing” on the issue of ethics reform.

Excuse me? John McCain accusing someone else of “self-interested partisan posturing” after abandoning his own principles – let alone his stance on campaign ethics – to campaign alongside George W. Bush is laughable. And we can ignore the fact that McCain made a huge show out of banning torture of prisoners while negotiating a deal with the White House that does absolutely nothing to curb prisoner abuses. McCain can now campaign as a champion of human rights while the White House goes merrily on its way, rendering prisoners to any country they want so long as the thumbscrews are lubed up.

McCain was the victim of Karl Rove’s dirtiest campaign tactics. Rove made political hay out of McCain’s adopted child – push polling in the South claiming that the Arizona senator was the father of an illegitimate black child – and claiming that McCain had actually cracked under Vietnamese torture tactics while a prisoner in the Hanoi Hilton. And even if he didn’t, he was at least crazy after all that torture.

And now McCain going to lecture Barack Obama.

Let’s not even go to the place where we talk about the mocking tone McCain used with the lone African American member of the senate. We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt – something McCain is incapable of doing.

According to an online story published on the Chicago Sun-Times website, McCain wrote:

"I would like to apologize to you for assuming that your private assurances to me regarding your desire to cooperate in our efforts to negotiate bipartisan lobbying reform legislation were sincere. . . .

"I'm embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss . . .

"I understand how important the opportunity to lead your party's effort to exploit this issue must seem to a freshman Senator, and I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness."

Let’s put this letter in its proper context.

Barack Obama is probably THE most popular member of the U.S. Senate. He’s been riding a crest of popularity since giving a stirring keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. And Obama has taken on lead responsibility in his party’s attempts to enact actual reforms on the way lobbyists interact with members of Congress.

That’s too lofty a pulpit, and he must be taken down a peg. And not just any senator can be dispatched for that task. Well, actually, no Republican can be dispatched to accomplish that job, and the best they can offer is John McCain with a weak-assed Right hook.

McCain has been posturing for a run in 2008, hence his public courting of Bush and Rove – hoping to, if nothing else, get them to sheath their swords and not undercut him again they way they did in 2000.

In a way, this is good news. If this is the best the Republicans have on the issue of Lobby Reform, then their boat is seriously hemorrhaging water.

And to his credit, Obama did not respond in kind.

"I confess that I have no idea" what prompted the letter, Obama wrote Monday. "But let me assure you that I am not interested in typical partisan rhetoric or posturing. The fact that you have now questioned my sincerity and my desire to put aside politics for the public interest is regrettable but does not in any way diminish my deep respect for you nor my willingness to find a bipartisan solution to this problem."

Face it. Obama is the real deal and the Emperor still has no clothes.

More soon.