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Abbreviated Pundit Round-Up
Daily Kos — ... David Broder wants the two presidential candidates to return to the high road and hints that if Obama had agreed to meet McCain in a series of town hall meetings, all of this icky negativity could have been avoided. ...

Doubletake: Mitt the Menace
The Swamp — ... Tankersley: But first, a very important public service announcement from esteemed Washington Post columnist David Broder: Boys, knock this negative campaigning crap off. Now. This has been a recording. ...

Quote of the Day
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire — "I'm very sorry about it." -- Sen. John McCain, in an interview with David Broder, on the negative turn to the presidential campaign.

Required Reading: Ice Cream Cones Were Bigger Then
Weekly Standard Blog — From the Washington Post, “A Way Back to the High Road” by David Broder It’s become a quadrennial tradition more reliable than the Olympics and almost as boring. Every presidential election, the media shed crocodile tears over how negative the campaign process has become. Today, David Broder waddles in to participate, helpfully illuminating the path back to the high road: The first question I asked John McCain and then Barack Obama was: How do you feel about the tone and direction of the campaign so far? No surprise. Both men ...

If Only She Would Do What I Said, Then I Wouldn’t Have to Beat Her
Balloon Juice — ... Fair enough, I suppose. A lot of us are tired of the negative tone of the campaign. But what makes us different from David Broder is that we are able to correctly identify why there is a negative tone. Broder, not-so-much: ...

Quotes of the Day
Political Animal — QUOTES OF THE DAY.... From John McCain, talking to David Broder about the "tone and direction" of the campaign so far: "I'm very sorry about it," McCain said in a Saturday interview at his Arlington headquarters. "I think we could have avoided at least some of this if we had agreed to do the town hall meetings" together, as he had suggested, during the summer months. Barack Obama, responding with a drier wit than Broder is probably used to: "I think the notion that somehow as a consequence of not having joint appearances, Senator McCain felt obliged to suggest that I'd rather ...

Apples and oranges
The Reaction — ... I have to assume beltway pundits like David Broder pay as close attention to the day in, day out, back-and-forth between the candidates as I do. If this is the case then it boggles the mind that Broder, with a straight face, can equate John McCain's gutter-level, character-smearing campaign with Barack Obama's. Yet, he does exactly this in his column today. ...

Why The Campaign is So Negative
Outside The Beltway | OTB — ... David Broder gets both candidates to agree that the campaign has gotten more bitter than they’d like and is intigued by John McCain’s suggestion, “I think we could have avoided at least some of this if we had agreed to do the town hall meetings.” The early ...

Would McCain attack less if there were town-hall debates?
Crooks and Liars — ... What’s odd, though, is seeing Broder try to connect the two, suggesting the lack of the latter has a causal relationship with the lack of the prior. ...

Civility and honesty in a presidential campaign — with or without town-hall events
Political Animal — ... Four days ago, the WaPo’s David Broder argued very awkwardly that “the tone and direction” of the presidential campaign has been needlessly hostile, and attributed it to the lack of debates between John McCain and Barack Obama. “Since the idea of joint town meetings was scrapped, the campaign has featured tough and often negative ads and speeches,” Broder said. Quoting McCain, Broder added that if the two candidates met more often, they would “improve the relationship,” and there would necessarily have a more positive race. ...

McCain rationalizes his campaign style
Political Animal — ... moment of the evening. Questioned about the tone of the campaign, Sen. McCain insisted he was running an issues-based campaign and put the blame on his opponent for refusing to join him in town hall meetings. "First of all this is a tough business," the Arizona senator said. "Second of all, I think the tone of this whole campaign would've been very different if Sen. Obama had accepted my request for us to appear at town hall meetings all over America." David Broder recently made the same argument in one of his columns -- attributing "the tone and direction" of the campaign ...

McCain's bizarre town-hall excuse
Political Animal — MCCAIN'S BIZARRE TOWN-HALL EXCUSE.... Way back in early August, John McCain came up with an excuse to explain why he was engaging in sleazy campaign tactics: "I think we could have avoided at least some of this if we had agreed to do the town hall meetings" he'd proposed. Two months later, in last night's debate, McCain was ...