Hello?

At a fundraiser in Florida in June, Senator Obama said: “We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. … They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

Two more times after that (or was it three?), he delivered a variation of that, substituting "black" at the end with saying that he doesn't look like the other presidents we have on currency.

All of those times, Obama was explicitly accusing the McCain campaign of planning to fear-monger his race.

McCain & Co. cried foul.

Senator Obama replied:

“Let me be clear — in no way do I think that John McCain’s campaign was being racist.”

Whoa. That is, technically, true, but only in terms of tenses. He had clearly said that the McCain Campaign was going to exploit his race as a negative, not that it had been, or already was.

Hello again Bill Clinton.

Then Obama said that his references to the presidents on the currency compared to himself were that he was a newbie in Washington politics, and they were not.

Could you tell that by looking at them?

He said "I don't look like the other presidents on the dollar bills."

Furthermore, five-dollar-bill Abraham Lincoln, like Obama, was an Illinois outsider with less experience in Washington: He served only one term in the House of Reprentatives before he became president (with a hiatus practicing law in Illinois in-between), so one would think that Obama would have the presence of mind to make a positive comparison, not a negative contrast, unless he had other things on his mind.

Like race.

Also, the fact that he substituted his reference to the presidents on the currency with the earlier and explicit "And did I mention he’s black?” in the variations of the original gripe in Florida should leave no doubt that he was, in fact, referring to race, and accused the McCain campaign of planning to exploit that accordingly.

It's true, however, that "in no way," grammatically speaking, did he accuse the McCain campaign of having already done that.

Like a good lawyer, Obama then decided to turn the tables:

"In no way do I think John McCain's campaign was racist. I think they are cynical."

Why was McCain being "cynical"? For thinking that Obama was referring to race when he was really referring to his inexperience in Washington?

But he was referring to race.

"Their team is good at creating distractions and engaging in negative attacks," Obama added.

Wait a second; that's a projection: He started the negative attack by accusing McCain of planning to fearmonger his race, and then created a distraction from the devious substance of his "explanation" that he wasn't talking about race by going on another negative attack and accusing McCain of engaging in distractions and negative attacks after McCain defended himself from the first negative attack!