Tony Blankley writes today about Barack Obama's past campaigns for State Senate in Illinois and for Senator from Illinois. He makes the point that Obama has run some questionable and perhaps shady campaigns and that it is John McCain's duty to inform the American public of Obama's character and his radical affiliations.

Obama's first election was described recently by Martin Fletcher, a foreign correspondent for NBC News, in the British newspaper The Times (not on NBC): "Mr Obama won a seat in the state senate in 1996 by the unorthodox means of having surrogates successfully challenge the hundreds of nomination signatures that candidates submit. His Democratic rivals, including Alice Palmer, the incumbent, were all disqualified." Hmm.

Obama's election to the U.S. Senate was even more curious, as described by Gerard Baker in the Irish Independent: "Two exquisitely timed divorces smoothed the way.

"In the Democratic primary, he was a long shot. But a month before the election, his main opponent, Blair Hull, a wealthy Chicago futures trader, was forced to publish divorce papers that revealed, among other charming details, his wife's claim that he had once threatened to kill her.

"In the general election, lightning struck again. His opponent, the engaging Jack Ryan, had run a campaign as a different sort of Republican. But a few months before the election, his divorce papers revealed that, while he might have been a different sort of Republican, he was from precisely the same stable of Obama political opponents. He had, it turned out, once tried to force his former wife to go with him to sex clubs in Paris."

Was Obama really the innocent beneficiary of these rare events? Anything is possible. But when a fellow deals himself two royal flushes in a row, the other players are entitled to be suspicious. Moreover, when a politician is suspected of hypocrisy, the Washington press corps usually is supercharged in its efforts to prove their suspicions. But despite the fact that these bare outlines of Obama's elections are pregnant with the implications that he has gained every office he has sought so far by underhanded and sordid means -- while posing as a Gary Cooper-like idealist in a corrupt political world -- the American media have let these extraordinary events simply pass without significant comment.

It looks to me that Obama had folks out there working on clearing him a path to each election. You can bet there are more this time. Let's hope Senator McCain comes out swinging tonight. For him not to make light of Obama's radical associations with the likes of Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, as well as ACORN, would flat out be a dereliction of duty.