Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic interviewed McCain advisor Mark Salter. The whole thing is must reading, but here is one exchange on the subject of negative campaigning:

JG: Do you think your campaign has been too negative, like a lot of people think?

MS: The other guy is much more negative, by some almost immeasurable factor. His message on McCain has been consistently negative since the North Carolina primary. Barack Obama has not made a public statement in this country which did not include a full-throated attack on McCain. It's just a fact. They have ads saying McCain opposed stem cell research. McCain voted for stem-cell research as he got ready to run for President. He offered, against the consensus advice of his staff, the immigration bill. Obama runs an ad saying, "He's turned his back on you." For three weeks Obama has walked around this country calling McCain a liar, dishonorable, and erratic. Those are character-based attacks that he has been leveling at us for weeks and weeks and not a single reporter has called him on it. It's just insane. McCain won't even use Rev. Wright, out of an abundance of caution. So he raises the next guy, Bill Ayers, and you know what we get? We get called racist. How is that racist? You got me.

The obvious exasperation in Salter's responses jumped out at me because it is identical to what we heard from Clinton advisors like Mark Penn and Howard Wolfson in the Democratic primary.

Day after day Penn, Wolfson, et al would host conference calls complaining about the double standard being applied by the media and trying to cajole, browbeat, beg, shame, and do whatever else they could to get the media to give both candidates the same level of scrutiny.