There are people who can act holier-than-thou about ghostwriters. Rush Limbaugh is not one of them. His first book, “The Way Things Ought to Be,” was famously written by John Fund of The Wall Street Journal. His second book was ghostwritten by Joseph Farah, who then became editor-in-chief of WorldNetDaily. And to complete the circle, WND has been a main source for Jack Cashill’s numerous articles about the Obama-Ayers book conspiracy.

The Washington Independent’s David Weigel, for instance, is among those who dismiss [Christopher] Andersen’s claim because he credits me as a source… Had he read Andersen’s book, which he does not appear to have, Weigel would have seen that Andersen’s retelling of the story was based not on what I had written but on what Andersen had been told by someone who was on the scene.

Confession: I have read only the Ayers bits of Andersen’s book, and you can find some excerpts of them after the jump. Andersen is a quick turnaround author who makes mistakes, such as referring to Ayers’ wife as “Bernadette Dohrn” — her name is Bernardine. And I’ll reiterate what I last wrote — the evidence Andersen gets from an anonymous source does not back up what Cashill has been saying.

In an interview with Cashill, Andersen claims to have “two sources” for his “Ayers as Obama guru” theory. In the book, he only cites “another Hyde Park neighbor [of Ayers and Obama]” and… Jack Cashill. The neighbor tells Andersen that Obama gave Ayers (in Andersen’s words) “oral histories, along with his partial manuscript and a trunkload of notes,” and says (in the neighbor’s words) that Ayers and Obama were “friends” who “worked on various projects together.”

Cashill puts together the “Ayers as guru” theory for Andersen.

And from there:

That, if true, is interesting and reveals that Obama misrepresented his friendship with Ayers last year. But Cashill’s argument has not been the “informal editing service” argument. It’s been that Ayers wrote “the better part” of “Dreams From My Father,” something not even Andersen suggests. In one of his columns on the subject, Cashill even argues that Ayers either ghost-wrote the epilogue of “The Audacity of Hope,” or helped Obama get into Harvard, or both. First, here’s how Cashill proves the “ghosting.”

Obama talks about our “collective dreams.” Ayers uses the word “collective” the way others use “and” and “the.” The Weather Underground was organized into “collectives.” He refers to “collective well-being,” “collective gloom,” “collective goodwill” and a dozen other Marxist-spawned “collective” sentiments.  Speaking of Marx, Obama uses the concept of “process” in a consciously dialectic sense as does Ayers.

“Both law and politics required compromise,” the man tells him, adding that he himself had thought about going into politics but was unwilling to compromise.  Historically, the real life Ayers has sounded much like Obama’s academic sage. In “Fugitive Days,” for instance, he tells us that he and his comrades were eager to “combat the culture of compromise.”

In any case, the latest evidence:

- Both men misquote Carl Sandburg’s poem “Chicago” and refer to the city as “Hog butcher to the world” instead of “for” the world. Google turns up 60,000 other examples of this slight misquote.

- Six characters in “Dreams” share names with people in Ayers’ books, including “Freddy,” “Tim,” and “the old man.” (Two of the books Cashill cites were published after “Dreams.”)

- Both men talk about “knowledge” and “power.”

And so on. Cashill makes two admission/observations that are key to his analysis and probably deserve quoting. First:

For the record, “baleful” means “threatening harm.”  I had to look it up.

And:

Not familiar with the term “bill of particulars?”  Uncertain myself, I looked that one up too.  It means a list of written statements made by a party to a court proceeding.  Ayers and Obama each refer knowingly to a “bill of particulars.” Doesn’t everyone?

Actually, lots of writers use those terms: I quickly counted five journalists who referred to a “bill of particulars” in writing about Obama. And that’s pretty much all you need to know about Cashill’s quixotic adventure, which I’m sure will persist until January 2013 or 2017 at least.

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From The New York Times:

After several weeks in which the McCain campaign unleashed a series of strong political attacks on Mr. Obama, trying to tie him to a former 1960s radical, among other things, the poll found that more voters see Mr. McCain as waging a negative campaign than Mr. Obama. Six in 10 voters surveyed said that Mr. McCain had spent more time attacking Mr. Obama than explaining what he would do as president; by about the same number, voters said Mr. Obama was spending more of his time explaining than attacking…

Voters who said their opinions of Mr. Obama had changed recently were twice as likely to say they had grown more favorable as to say they had worsened. And voters who said that their views of Mr. McCain had changed were three times more likely to say that they had worsened than to say they had improved.

The top reasons cited by those who said they thought less of Mr. McCain were his recent attacks and his choice of Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate. (The vast majority said their opinions of Mr. Obama of Illinois, the Democratic nominee, and Mr. McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee, had remained unchanged in recent weeks.) But in recent days, Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin have scaled back their attacks on Mr. Obama, although Mr. McCain suggested he might aggressively take on Mr. Obama in Wednesday’s debate.

The poll also found Obama leading McCain nationally by a comfortable 14-percentage point margin, 53 percent to 39 percent. The lead closed to 12-percentage points when third-party candidates were factored in, according to The Times. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Perhaps most shocking was this item, from CBS’ report on the poll:

Among independents who are likely voters – a group that has swung back and forth between McCain and Obama over the course of the campaign – the Democratic ticket now leads by 18 points. McCain led among independents last week.

The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder reported that a McCain campaign official dismissed the poll, saying it “‘falls outside the range’ of where the race is now.”

Perhaps it does, but it must also be raising the eyebrows of the Republican critics of McCain’s campaign management — like conservative columnist Bill Kristol and McCain’s own brother — if not the managers.

On one hand, the McCain campaign can hardly be blamed for choosing to go negative — it’s how underdogs have often turned around elections for generations. But negativity can have the opposite effect of turning off swing voters — who both campaigns are wooing right now.

This year, the presidential nominees had promised a different type of race: honorable and focused on the issues.

When McCain abandoned that pledge out of political expedience, this poll indicates that he may be paying a far higher price than previous candidates.

It also shows he may face a Catch-22 during tonight’s final presidential debate. His conservative base, whose support McCain really doesn’t have to worry about, would like him talk about William Ayers, the Chicago education leader and former member of the Weatherman Underground — though McCain would likely have to go out of his way to broach the subject, which could look desperate. But if he does, he runs the risk of further alienating the moderates whose votes will decide the election.

This debate may be McCain’s final opportunity to shake up this race. One has to wonder if the McCain campaign is re-formulating its debate strategy right now.

On Wednesday, at 1:35pm, DeLong noted the contrast between Sen. John McCain shrinking from mentioning Ayers in the debate — even as his campaign “spent several days making an issue of Obama’s ties to the former Weatherman.” So DeLong issued a basic challenge: “If McCain believes Ayers is a worthy campaign issue, he should probably be willing to raise it to Obama’s face.”

By Wednesday night, of course, Sen. Barack Obama shared the same thought. “We’ve been seeing some pretty over-the-top attacks coming out of the McCain campaign over the last several days,” Obama told ABC, stressing that during the debate, McCain “wasn’t willing to say it to my face.”

By Thursday afternoon, this face-off dare was the Obama campaign’s message priority.

“[McCain] could not bring himself to look Barack Obama in the eye and say the same things to him,” said Sen. Joe Biden. “In my neighborhood, when you’ve got something to say to a guy, you look him in the eye and you say it to him,” he added. Last night, an article about that attack topped all the political stories online, according to Memorandum.

This pushback is adept because it avoids any defensiveness. Instead, it is emphasizing that there is something wrong with McCain’s behavior. By leaning into the potential debate attack, the Obama camp is trying to steal any thunder from a last-ditch offensive. If McCain doesn’t raise it next week, Democrats can argue that he copped out — that even McCain doesn’t think Ayers is a big deal.

If McCain does play the Ayers card at the final debate, the Obama camp can argue that McCain only acted under pressure — erratically switching his strategy under pressure from Obama.