Team Obama's campaign stategy is to portray war hero, veteran naval officer, veteran United States Senator and 2008 Republican presidential candidate John Sidney McCain as President George W. Bush and a McCain presidential term as a third Bush term.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews, the Obama shill who told the world that he felt a thrill go up his leg when he heard rookie United States Senator and 2008 Democrat presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. speak, is working hard, albeit ineffectually, to brainwash his audience into equating Bush and McCain. (But NBC won't let Matthews and fellow Obama zealot Keith Olbermann anchor its election coverage anymore, a tacit acknowledgement that they are unfit to be news anchors.)

Frankly, equating Bush and McCain is insane.

Matthews is insisting that since Bush and McCain are both Republicans and McCain is the Republican presidential nominee, then McCain automatically is responsible for what Bush did and did not do.

Unsurprisingly, Matthews never has claimed that Obama should be equated with the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, each of whom competed for the Democrat presidential nomination.

If McCain is responsible for Bush, why shouldn't Obama be responsible for Jackson and Sharpton?

After all, Obama is following their example in trying to become America's first black president.

Of course, it is unfair to saddle Obama with the baggage of Jackson and Sharpton.

Obama is responsible for what he did and did not do and what he said and did not say, not what Jackson and/or Sharpton did and did not do and said and did not say.

Likewise, McCain is responsible for himself, not Bush.

Obama is responsible for selecting veteran United States Senator Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. instead of veteran United States Senator and former First Lady (of both the United States and Arkansas) Hillary Rodham Clinton as his running mate.

McCain is responsible for selecting rookie Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate.

And big media is responsible for scurrilous and suggestive attacks on Governor Palin.

ABC news anchor Charles Gibson's interview of Palin was an embarrassment—for ABC, not Palin.

Fox's Brit Hume and Bill O'Reilly both know Gibson and each insisted that Gibson did not intend to be condescending.

That kind of character testimony is hard to dismiss.

Likewise, the evidence of one's eyes and ears is hard to ignore: Gibson opened by asking Palin whether she could look directly into the camera and say that she is ready to be President, misquoted and mischaracterized a prayer Palin had uttered in a church, asked a yes/no question about the complex Bush doctrine and appeared to be looking down his nose at Palin so as to suggest that she was unfit to be a vice presidential candidate.

Hume offered an explanation: the ABC crew that shot the interview and the ABC researchers were to blame.

Maybe so.

Only God and Gibson know for sure.

Experience is very important, of course.

Voters should know all about the experience of the candidates AND that the importance of experience should not vary with a person's party affiliation or sex.

Team Obama's sudden elevation of the importance of experience for vice presidential candidates (and implicit claim that Obama's substitute for experience--"the fierce urgency of now"--is unavailable to Republicans, or Republican women, or Republican women Governors, or perhaps just the Republican woman Governor of Alaska) is almost as amusing as Tina Fey's Sarah Palin imitation.

Fact: Palin has executive experience and Obama does not have any.

In 1984, when the Democrats nominated former Congressperson Geraldine Ferraro for vice president, Republicans rightly questioned her fitness based upon her lack of experience. She was a lawyer and a former prosecutor, but she had no executive experience and her Republican counterpart was then Vice President and later President George H. W. Bush, whose experience even then was awesome and included executive, legislative and military (fighter pilot during World War II, Congressman, Party Chairman, UN Ambassador, Envoy to China, CIA Director, Vice President).

That was fair.

The way Palin has been treated is not.

Example:

Juan Williams of NPR and Fox has expressed concern that Palin does not have enough experience.

Fine. Experience is a legitimate consideration.

But Williams proceeded from questioning the sufficiency of Palin's experience to sexistly suggesting that Palin should be imaged naked. (Thankfully, he did not do that with respect to Obama, Biden or McCain.)

Recalling a famous fairy tale, Williams equated lack of experience with a king having no clothes and then invoked the image of "the Alaska beauty queen" without clothes.

Is that sexist?

Or is that just crude?

Fact: Palin IS making it possible for McCain to beat Obama and is an existential threat to the Far Left: a formidable, friendly, confident young wife and mother who effectively promotes traditional American values.

So the lies and disparagement, both sexist and otherwise, will keep on coming...and, like the Energizer Bunny (but not a Playboy Bunny), Palin will keep on going!

Michael J. Gaynor is an independent columnist