Lately, John McCain’s campaign has been pointing to Barack Obama’s work on last year’s immigration bill as proof that he doesn’t really work toward bipartisan consensus.

Specifically, they’re calling him out on an amendment he offered that, in their view, threatened the delicate compromise that was holding the bill’s bipartisan coalition together.

It’s a bit of a risky move for the McCain campaign, since McCain has since disavowed the bill and promised to make border security his first priority. But given that Obama is trying to present himself as a consensus-builder, it’s worth looking at what happened.

In June 2007, Obama tried to amend the bill to end a new, merit-based system of awarding green cards after five years. In a floor speech, Obama said the policy would have ended the current system of awarding visas largely to reunite families and created “a class-based immigration system, where some people are welcome only as guest workers but never as full participants in our democracy.”

Obama’s proposal echoed the concerns of a coalition of immigration lawyers and labor groups, which said in a letter to senators that the merit-based system “disproportionately favors persons with higher education, experience in specialty occupations, and those with a mastery of the English language while diminishing the importance of family ties in the United States.”

But his proposal angered one of the bill’s supporters, McCain ally Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who lashed out at Obama in a floor speech circulated this weekend by the McCain campaign. “It means everybody over here who has walked the plank and told our base you are wrong, you are going to destroy this deal,” Graham said. “So when you are out on the campaign trail, my friend, telling about why can’t we come together, this is why.”

Obama rejected the charge. “It simply says we should examine after five years whether the program is working,” he said. “The notion that somehow that guts the bill or destroys the bill is simply disingenuous, and it is engaging in the sort of histrionics that is entirely inappropriate for this debate.”

The truth, as usual, lies somewhere in the middle. Obama’s amendment, at the time, was considered one of several that could have unraveled the immigration coalition. Indeed, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., one of the bill’s sponsors, voted against it.

But Obama’s amendment failed, 42-55, so the unraveling didn’t happen because of his measure. Instead, the real unraveling happened later that month, when the bill failed twice to win even a majority of senators, much less the 60 votes needed to cut off debate.

In other words, the bill died pretty easily without Obama’s help.

John McCain’s campaign is really trying hard to kill the notion that Barack Obama has worked across the aisle in the Senate. Today, his campaign sent out a memo that raises the bar even higher.

The standard now, according to the McCain campaign, is whether Obama has ever “bucked the party line to lead on an issue of national importance.”

“He has never been a part of a bipartisan group that came together to solve a controversial issue. He has never put his career on the line for a cause greater than himself,” Steve Schmidt, a senior adviser to the McCain campaign, said in the memo.

It’s a clever way to define the test in a way that ensures that Obama can’t pass it, and McCain can. It was McCain, after all, who got the campaign finance overhaul legislation signed into law in 2002, against heavy opposition from President Bush and his own leadership. It was McCain who co-chaired the “Gang of 14,” the Senate centrists who prevented a showdown over judicial filibusters in 2005. And it was McCain who forced Bush to sign the 2005 torture ban into law, which he clearly didn’t want to do.

With Obama, it’s much harder to find examples where he both “bucked the party line” and led on “an issue of national importance.” So in the coming months, you can expect the Obama campaign to lean heavily on his role in the passage of the 2007 ethics overhaul. That was the centerpiece of the campaign’s response to the McCain memo today, and it’s the only example that really gets beyond the relatively non-controversial work he has done in the rest of his brief Senate career.

Obama was one of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s hand-picked leaders of the ethics effort (the other was Russ Feingold of Wisconsin), so you could argue he wasn’t really bucking the party leadership. But government watchdog groups say Obama and Feingold did put pressure on Reid by putting together a package of proposals to make the bill more ambitious than it would have been otherwise.

And Obama did sponsor one provision, requiring lobbyists to disclose the “bundling” of contributions they collect for campaigns, that got him into a scrap with Charles E. Schumer of New York, the vice chairman of the Senate Democratic Conference and chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Schumer — who later supported Hillary Rodham Clinton against Obama in the primaries — is no wallflower, so that episode could count as bucking the party leadership.

Still, it will be hard for Obama to match McCain if the contest is defined as who has been the bigger rebel against the party line. As I argued in a January piece on Obama and Clinton’s Senate records, neither one has taken as many risks in their Senate career as McCain has.

But since those risks also include plenty of votes to continue the Iraq war, it’s probably not a good idea for McCain to rely too much on his Senate record to win the election for him.

Barack Obama may say he can heal the nation’s partisan divisions, but a nasty one happened tonight on the Senate floor and he was too busy chatting to even notice it.

Obama dropped by the Senate tonight to vote for a bill to block a 10 percent cut in Medicare physician payment rates, followed by a vote for an emergency war spending bill that includes an expansion of educational benefits for veterans.

The war spending bill passed, but the Medicare bill fell just short of the 60 votes it needed to end debate, triggering a tongue-lashing from Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

“We are seeing another partisan game being played in front of the American people,” Reid said, waving a pencil as Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky looked on stiffly.

And the two began to bicker over which party was to blame for the fact that the payment cuts would probably take place and Medicare patients would find it harder to find doctors who would take them.

So what was Obama doing this whole time? Kicking back in a seat in the Senate chamber, chatting with his Illinois colleague, Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin — and, at one point, Hillary Rodham Clinton. As if healing the party was all that mattered.

Reid: “Is it any wonder that Mississippi sent us a Democratic House member? They did that because they see what’s going on over here.”

Obama and Clinton: “Blah blah blah.”

McConnell: “What in the world does that have to do with the subject matter before us?”

Obama and Durbin: “Blah blah blah.”

Reid: “You’re worried about a veto from the president? Gee whiz, who would be afraid of him? He’s got a 29 percent approval rating!”

Obama and Durbin: “Blah blah blah.”

So the Medicare cuts will take effect next week, and senior citizens might have a harder time finding doctors. But at least Obama and Clinton seemed to be getting along okay.

One step at a time.

CQ photo / Scott J. Ferrell

After postponing the meeting last week because of House votes, Barack Obama finally got to meet with members of the Democratic women’s caucus this afternoon. And no more than 15 minutes after he arrived, the House called another series of votes.

No matter. Everyone just talked fast.

So far, at least, there are no reports of any serious venting at the meeting at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, even among the members who supported Hillary Rodham Clinton. For the most part, they just talked about campaign nuts and bolts, such as what to do to win their districts, which issues to stress, where to visit, etc.

“It was all positive, where do we go from here,” said Rep. Lynn Woolsey of California, who had supported Clinton in the primaries.

Obama gave a short speech at the beginning, participants said, and then offered to listen to whatever they had to say.

“He just said, ‘Look, most of you know where I’m at, I appreciate everything you’re doing, I know some of you were on the other side, I’m a Hillary fan too,’ ” said Rep. Melissa Bean of Illinois, an Obama supporter.

For the most part, the women who attended just offered constructive advice, Bean said — and urged him to remind voters, at every possible opportunity, of John McCain’s support for restrictions on abortion.

“People just said, ‘Look, here’s what we’re doing in our state, and here’s where you need to go, and by the way, don’t forget to remind people that McCain is anti-choice,” Bean said. “He said, ‘Yeah, I think we’ll be getting that message out there.’ “

Woolsey said she simply warned Obama that her liberal district, just north of San Francisco, will want to “make sure that he doesn’t waver” on their priorities now that he has secured the nomination. Obama is already taking heat from the left for saying he’ll support the compromise on a rewrite of electronic surveillance rules, which the Senate probably will vote on after the Fourth of July recess.

“He was a very good listener,” said Rep. Nancy Boyda of Kansas — a centrist Democrat who stayed uncommitted throughout the primaries and had kept her distance from Obama until today. She said she went to the meeting because “he’s the nominee of our party and I’d never had a chance to meet him.”

Most of the members agreed that, while Obama may still have fences to mend with some women in the Democratic caucus, most have moved on from the primary battles because they realize the bigger priority is the future of the Supreme Court, particularly if a President McCain gets to nominate more conservative justices.

“Were there some hard feelings? Sure. Was there some venting at one point? Yes,” said Bean. “But that was so two weeks ago.”

Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas learned a lesson today that other John McCain surrogates might be wise to learn: Before you say Barack Obama never worked across the aisle, make sure he never worked with, for example, you.

On a McCain campaign conference call with reporters this morning, Brownback — who was briefly one of McCain’s rivals for the Republican nomination — said Obama was all talk and no action when it came to working across the aisle.

“John McCain’s a maverick. He’s fought for a bipartisan fashion,” Brownback said. “I think that the biggest thing I’ve seen from Barack Obama is a willingness, aggressiveness, to talk bipartisan and yet to vote the hard left — most liberal member of the United States Senate.”

So Obama’s rapid-response team quickly fired off an e-mail listing the projects on which he worked with Brownback. They include a Brownback bill that authorized sanctions against people who were involved with the genocide in Darfur, a version of which became law in 2006. They also teamed up on an Obama bill that required the administration to provide humanitarian relief and other aid to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Brownback also co-sponsored Obama’s bill to impose sanctions against Iran. And the two were involved — though not the principal players — in the 2006 immigration overhaul effort that McCain worked on with Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

“Their work stands as an important reminder that even in this era of increased partisan rancor, Democrats and Republicans can work together to tackle the critical challenges that all Americans agree must be met,” the Obama campaign e-mail said.

Some of Obama’s work on those issues was less intense than the campaign made it sound. He was one of 38 co-sponsors of Brownback’s Darfur legislation, and he signed on relatively late, three months after Brownback introduced it (though the two did write a Washington Post op-ed on it together). And the Iran sanctions bill was originally written by Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts.

Still, other Republican surrogates have now been put on notice: If they’ve ever worked with Obama on anything, his people are keeping a file on it.

Here’s an unusual strategy for a Republican senator facing re-election: Gordon H. Smith of Oregon is running a TV ad in Oregon that brags about his bipartisan work — with Barack Obama.

“Who says Gordon Smith helped lead the fight for better gas mileage and a cleaner environment? Barack Obama,” the ad says. “He joined with Gordon and broke through a 20-year deadlock to pass new laws which increased gas mileage for automobiles.”

The ad highlights an Obama press release from 2006 about a bill he, Republican Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, Democratic Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, Smith, and several others introduced to reduce gasoline consumption by requiring the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration to increase fuel economy standards by a “target” of one mile per gallon each year.

In case anyone missed the message, Smith hammers it at the end of the ad: “I’m Gordon Smith, and I approve working together across party lines — and this ad.”

It’s an odd re-election strategy for a senator who, just a few weeks ago, was telling me all about how it was John McCain who had the real record of bipartisan accomplishment in the Senate, while Obama had barely done anything.

“No one has shown less partisanship and more independence from his party than Sen. McCain. That’s just a fact,” Smith said in my piece about independent voters.

Still, it’s not so surprising after a quick look at the most recent polls on the presidential race, including the double-digit lead Obama held over McCain in a Los Angeles Times-Bloomberg poll released today.

CQPolitics rates Smith’s re-election race as Leans Republican, meaning he has an edge but will have to fight to keep his seat against a challenge from state House Speaker Jeff Merkley.

And unfortunately for Smith, Obama isn’t returning the love.

“Barack Obama has a long record of bipartisan accomplishment and we appreciate that it is respected by his Democratic and Republican colleagues in the Senate,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement last night. “But in this race, Oregonians should know that Barack Obama supports Jeff Merkley for Senate. Merkley will help Obama bring about the fundamental change we need in Washington.”

My story on Hillary Rodham Clinton's return to the Senate is up now. What it doesn't totally capture, though, is the pure stagecraft of the event. It's not like she could have just sneaked back into the place, so Clinton's people made the most of the occasion.

This morning, her press office sent word that she'd come to the weekly Senate Democratic luncheon in a room just off the Senate chamber, sometime between 12:45 and 1 p.m. The best place to get pictures, we were told, was just outside the Capitol near a first-floor entrance frequently used by the senators.

So all the camera crews, and a few dozen reporters, showed up at the designated time and waited for her SUV to drive up. A crowd of about 50 tourists got wind of her arrival too (imagine that), and stood on the Capitol steps, waiting patiently for the show to begin.

A press gallery staff member eased the camera crews back, clearing a space so Clinton could walk up the steps to shake hands with the tourists. "Move back seven steps, please! You'll still get the shot!" Clinton would not be speaking to the press, her aides said, but she'd talk to them after the luncheon was over.

At about 1:10, Clinton arrived to cheers from the crowd. She walked out into the driveway, smiled and waved to the crowd, and made her way through the crowd of tourists as she walked up the steps.

"Hi back there!" Clinton said to one tourist who couldn't reach her to shake hands.

"We missed you!" said one woman closer in. "Thank you! Good to see you!" Clinton said, still smiling and shaking hands.

Then she walked the rest of the way up the steps into the Senate Democratic luncheon, where her old friends - Sens.. Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, and, of course, Charles E. Schumer of New York - were waiting to greet her.

Oh yes - and Vice President Dick Cheney showed up too, arriving in his motorcade about 20 minutes before Clinton showed up. He emerged from his SUV, walked out in the darkness of the covered entrance, and disappeared into the Capitol. The tourists didn't care.

Poor John McCain just can't catch a break with his lengthy Senate record. Now Barack Obama's campaign is hammering him for voting against stricter fuel efficiency standards for cars - even though one of those votes happened because he thought the measure was too weak.

On a conference call with reporters this morning, Jason Furman, Obama's director of economic policy, said McCain's speech on energy policy this morning overlooked his record of voting for stricter corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE standards, in 2002, 2003 and 2005. Obama's rapid-response team later cited these same three votes in an e-mail titled, "Rhetoric vs. Reality: McCain & Fuel Efficiency."

The 2003 and 2005 votes check out. McCain did, in fact, vote against amendments by Democratic Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois - now the Senate majority whip - because he thought they went so far in requiring better gas mileage that they would have hurt the economy.

The 2002 vote, however, was against a version that was meant to undercut the amendment McCain was sponsoring with Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts - against heavy opposition from the auto industry and business groups.

In the debate on that year's energy bill, Kerry and McCain wanted to increase the mileage standards to 36 miles per gallon by 2015. Instead, the Senate approved a version by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and Republican Sen. Christopher S. Bond of Missouri that only would have required the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to increase the standards by some amount within two years.

It didn't say how much, and it would have allowed the agency to consider economic cost as a factor when it decided what standards to set. At the time, McCain and Kerry said it was highly unlikely that the agency, with a small budget and staff, would come up with an aggressive standard. The vote cited by Obama's campaign was McCain's vote against the overall energy bill, which had the Levin version of the mileage standards in it.

It's a classic example of how the context of a senator's vote can get lost in the heat of a campaign. McCain seems to have taken a nuanced position on mileage standards, preferring something stricter than Levin's version but less strict than Durbin's. But as Kerry found out as the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee - and McCain is finding out now - senators who run for president don't get rewarded for nuances.

Barack Obama threw in an important qualifier on Friday when he endorsed the compromise on electronic surveillance. He says he'd like to knock out the part about shielding the telecommunications companies from lawsuits over their participation in the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program.

As a practical matter, though, the pledge is essentially meaningless. Obama would only get his chance if a) Senate Democrats get an agreement with Republicans to allow a vote on stripping out the immunity language, and b) if it takes place at a time when Obama can fly back from the campaign trail to vote on it.

At this moment, neither one is a certainty. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants to set up a vote on getting rid of the immunity, but doesn't have an agreement yet. And if he gets one, it will be because of c): the vote won't even come close to succeeding.

This could come back to haunt him someday, but Barack Obama says he has no problem with the House's efforts to get a federal judge to force two former White House officials to comply with subpoenas to testify about the Bush administration's firings of nine U.S. attorneys.

As a quick refresher, former White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers declined to testify about the firings before the House Judiciary Committee last year even after they were issued subpoenas. They cited executive privilege, and President Bush took the position that his current and former aides can never be compelled to testify before Congress.

In February, the House voted to hold Bolten and Miers in contempt of Congress, but Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey refused to submit the contempt citation to a grand jury. So the House filed a lawsuit in federal court to force Bolten and Miers to comply with the subpoenas.

It's one of the many power struggles Bush has waged against Congress' attempts to conduct oversight of his administration, and either Obama or John McCain will be closely watched to see if they have anything close to the expansive views of executive privilege that Bush has had. So here's what Obama said about the dispute this afternoon at a press conference in Jacksonville, Fla.:

"I think that nobody is above the law. If there are specific assertions of executive privilege, then, you know, those can be examined. But I think this notion, this blanket notion that you can't subpoena White House aides, where there's evidence of genuine wrongdoing, I think is completely misguided.

"You know, as I recall, Richard Nixon mounted similar arguments. That's not how we operate. We're a nation of laws and not men and women. So, you know -- and my -- that's a precedent I don't mind living with as president of the United States."

If he does become president and Congress returns to Republican control, of course, that is exactly the kind of precedent Obama will have to live with. But Bush's constant power struggles with Congress have guaranteed that Obama and McCain will be asked these questions -- exactly the kinds of questions Bush was rarely, if ever, asked eight years ago.

Two weeks after suspending her campaign for the presidency, Hillary Rodham Clinton is set to return to the Senate next week, guaranteeing a frenzy of media attention to her every move as she adjusts to something like the routine of an average senator.

It won't be routine for a while, of course. But she'll be back on the Hill next week, according to a Senate Democratic aide, putting to rest reports that she wouldn't return until after the July 4 recess. That impression was shared, until today, by some in the leadership.

The details haven't been announced, but Clinton's return, coming after two weeks in which she has stayed virtually out of sight, is sure to be a high-profile one. She'll be trailed by media mobs and camera crews, and she'll pressed to talk about her own future in the Senate, as well as answer all the obvious questions about what kind of role she'll have in Barack Obama's campaign.

The Obama campaign announced this morning that Obama and Clinton will campaign together at an event on June 27, a week from today, heightening the intrigue.

So far, there are no signs that the Senate Democratic leadership plans to offer Clinton any kind of special role to help ease her return to Senate life. Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois - one of Obama's closest allies - dismissed the suggestion just two weeks ago, insisting that there are plenty of rewards in just being a senator, contrary to what outsiders might think.

And in fact, the closest recent parallel to Clinton's situation - the return of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry - ended up with the Massachusetts senator going back pretty much to the life he had before. After a brief period of being chased by press crews, Kerry is now pretty much left alone. He has returned to a role as a knowledgeable member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee - and as an Obama surrogate, taking part in press conference calls almost every day.

Still, it will be months before Clinton really returns to life as just another member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, even if that's all she wants. She's got tremendous power to wield in the rest of the presidential campaign, which will take at least some time away from her Senate duties. And even after it's over, Obama promised at a fundraiser Wednesday night that Clinton will have a role in passing his health care overhaul plan if he wins the presidency.

That may or may not be something she wants to do. But as they say, one step at a time.

So the veterans' educational benefits package John McCain opposed, but most of his Senate colleagues didn't, appears to be on its way to President Bush's desk as part of the final emergency spending bill for Iraq. And Bush is ready to sign the bill, sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., into law.

That's a bit of a quandary. What's a presidential candidate to do? Better claim credit for whatever you can.

In a statement this afternoon, McCain made the most of a "transferability" provision added to the final package that would allow service members to pass on the educational benefits to their family members. From the statement:

I am very pleased that the important education benefits that will be provided to our veterans and servicemembers will include the option for those currently serving to transfer educational benefits to their families and in that manner encourage retention. That has always been my primary concern with respect to the Webb bill, and it is essential that we continue to act decisively to encourage military service and ensure the well being of our All Volunteer Force.

With the addition of the transferability provisions sought by Senators Graham, Burr, myself and others to give servicemembers the right to transfer earned G.I. Bill benefits to spouses and children, we will have achieved in offering vastly improved educational benefit while also offering incentives for continued service by the most capable, experienced NCO's and officers.

McCain's statement makes it sound like the transferability provision was the language written by him and his allies, Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Richard Burr of North Carolina. It wasn't. It was just an extension of a pilot program already in place since 2002 that didn't get much use from the Department of Defense.

In fact, Webb's co-sponsor, Republican Sen. John Warner of Virginia - a longtime friend of McCain's from their service together on the Armed Services Committee felt it was necessary to point out that such a program was already on the books. He was particularly incensed by a White House press release this afternoon that suggested Bush had asked for the transferability language and "Congress answered his call."

"The concept of transferability has been around for a long time," Warner said in a Senate floor speech late this afternoon. "It has been around for a long time and received no support from the Bush administration in 2002 when it went on the law books. It was not utilized by the department."

Moreover, transferability wasn't the only concern McCain had raised about the Webb version of the veterans' bill. He complained that it was an expensive new program that would have made it harder for the armed forces to retain service members.

Still, McCain has been around the Senate long enough to know this: When you're on the losing end of a 75-22 vote - the margin of the Senate's approval of the original Webb bill last month - you take what you can get.

One of the consequences of Barack Obama's announcement this morning that he'll opt out of the public financing system is that he's alienated the allies who worked with him, and praised his work, on last year's lobbying and ethics overhaul.

Obama was one of two Democratic senators who took the lead on the legislation, and it was the most significant accomplishment of his short Senate career. Reid paired him up with Russ Feingold of Wisconsin - the Democrat who co-authored the 2002 campaign finance overhaul with John McCain - to take the lead in pushing the ethics legislation through the Senate.

So what did Feingold think of Obama's decision not to participate in the public-financing system in the general election against McCain? Not much.

"This is not a good decision," Feingold said in a statement today. "While the current public financing system for the presidential primaries is broken, the system for the general election is not. The entire system must be updated."

The reactions were similar from the government watchdog groups that worked closely with Obama and Feingold on the ethics overhaul. Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer declared himself "very disappointed" with the decision. Public Citizen president Joan Claybrook said she was "deeply disappointed." You get the idea.

In a video distributed to his supporters, Obama justified his decision by declaring that "the public financing of presidential elections as it exists today is broken, and we face opponents who've become masters at gaming this broken system. John McCain's campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs. And we've already seen that he's not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations."

But the watchdog groups weren't buying it. Obama "knew the circumstances surrounding the presidential general election when he made his public pledge to use the system," said Wertheimer. Claybrook, for her part, shared Feingold's view that it's the primaries where the public financing system needs work, not the general election. Obama's campaign, she said, should have been a model of his dedication to campaign finance and ethics overhauls.

Another complication is the fact that Obama is a co-sponsor of a Feingold bill that would overhaul the public financing system, notably by allowing more matching funds in primaries and letting primary candidates spend more if their opponents opt out of public financing. So it would create some awkward moments for a President Obama if Feingold continues to push that bill next year, as he's likely to do.

"Senator Obama is committed to reforming the current system, and I look forward to working on this and a wide range of other reform issues with him when he becomes President," said Feingold. "But this decision was a mistake."

If Barack Obama was bothered by the spectacle of a former presidential rival pushing for the impeachment of President Bush on the House floor last week, his campaign didn't try to stop it.

Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich says the Obama campaign didn't call him to try to wave him off of the effort last week, when he forced the reading of an impeachment resolution on the House floor. The resolution was referred to the Judiciary Committee, but Kucinich has vowed to try again.

Democratic leaders have tried to keep impeachment off of their agenda, arguing that their party should look forward, not backward. (Translation: they don't want to look like they're spending all their time trying to punish Bush.)

Obama's campaign isn't as far along as John McCain's in coordinating their message and policy agenda with Hill leaders. But that effort will probably ramp up soon, as Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, signaled with his visit to a Senate Democratic luncheon yesterday.

Still, Kucinich had this warning for the Obama campaign today, in case they get any ideas about trying to keep his future impeachment initiatives off the House floor: "I would just suggest that on this matter, it would not be appropriate for them to call me."

If U.S. authorities ever capture Osama bin Laden, should he have the right to appeal his detention?

That was the scenario John McCain's campaign surrogates tried to sketch this morning as they jumped on Barack Obama for noting, in an interview with ABC News yesterday, that the plotters of the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993 were tried and convicted within the standard legal system.

To the McCain campaign, that comment suggested the future Democratic nominee would take a pure law enforcement approach to fighting terrorism -- a stance at odds with the "war on terrorism" construct that Republicans believe most Americans still prefer. It also gave the campaign an opportunity to slam last week's Supreme Court ruling that detainees at Guantánamo Bay must be given habeas corpus rights -- the right to appeal their detention in federal court.

"I think someone should frankly ask Senator Obama if he believes that if Osama Bin Laden were captured and taken to Guantánamo whether he should have Habeas rights," McCain national security adviser Randy Scheunemann said on a conference call with reporters this morning.

The answer, according to Obama surrogate and 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, is yes.

"The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that they have those rights," Kerry said on an Obama campaign conference call this afternoon. "If John McCain were president, he would have to give them those rights."

Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism adviser to Presidents Clinton and Bush, agreed. "Terrorists have been held and prosecuted successfully throughout the world, including the United States," he said. "It can be done, and has been done in the past."

This debate will no doubt continue to play out over the course of the campaign, giving voters ample opportunity to weigh in on one side or the other. But it would be a far different sort of political dilemma if a President McCain or a President Obama ever actually has to decide how to treat a captive bin Laden. Then again, as Clarke observed, "he would go down fighting, from everything we know."

Just after we went to press with my cover story in today's CQ Weekly, about how John McCain and Barack Obama will compete for independent voters, McCain had a "virtual town hall" meeting on Saturday that was billed as a pitch to the independents. It sounded like a perfect example of the outreach efforts, just a little bit past my deadline.

Instead, the town hall meeting, and a rapid-response conference call organized by the Obama campaign, turned out to be examples of how some events for "independent" voters sound about the same as the campaign's pitches to everyone else.

When the McCain campaign announced its event, the advisory called it "a virtual town hall with Democrats and Independents this Saturday to discuss McCain's record of putting country before political party." The telephone callers were mostly Democratic primary voters from Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania who were selected through the campaign's "Citizens for McCain" effort, headed by Independent senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, according to spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan.

Both Barack Obama and John McCain talked about the future of Social Security in town hall meetings today. Aren't you curious about the level of discourse about how to keep this critical, fundamental feature of our nation's social safety net going when the baby boomers retire?

Let's reframe the question: Do you really want to know?

This morning, Obama opened a town hall in Columbus, Ohio, by reminding the audience that McCain still favors private savings accounts for Social Security, the idea that went down like the Hindenburg when Bush proposed it in 2005.

"Privatizing Social Security was a bad idea when George Bush proposed it; it's a bad idea today," Obama said. "I mean, imagine if your Social Security right now was tied up with the Dow Jones. How would you feel when you woke up in the morning and you heard that the Dow had gone down 400 points? You wouldn't feel real confident about the stability of your nest egg."

McCain, naturally, jumped on the use of the word "privatizing" at his own town hall meeting in Pemberton, New Jersey. "My friends, I do not and will not privatize Social Security," McCain said. "It is a government program, and it's necessary, but it's broken, and we've got to tell the American people that we've got to fix it. And we've got to sit down together the way that Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill did back in 1983 and fix Social Security."

He couldn't deny that he had any interest in private savings accounts, though, since he does. "I would like for younger workers, younger workers only, to have an opportunity to take a few of their tax dollars, a few of theirs, and maybe put it into an account with their name on it," McCain said. "That's their money; that's their money."

Both Barack Obama and John McCain have promised to take a less expansive view of executive power than President Bush has.

But now, McCain's position in a debate two years ago over enemy combatants may be coming back to haunt him. The Supreme Court today declared as unconstitutional today a provision of a 2006 law that denied enemy combatants the right to challenge their detentions in federal court.

That's significant because McCain was heavily involved in the drafting of the legislation, the Military Commissions Act, in September 2006. It's just that he was focused on a different fight.

McCain and two strong supporters of his presidential bid, Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John W. Warner of Virginia, fought hard to force the Bush administration to limit interrogation practices in a way that would comply with the Geneva conventions. That was a struggle in itself, and the McCain group succeeded only after days of intense negotiations with an administration that didn't want to give ground at all.

So when critics started raising constitutional concerns about the language that would deny habeas corpus rights to the detainees at Guantánamo Bay, McCain simply shrugged them off, as if they didn't appreciate all the work he and Graham and Warner had put in on the Geneva conventions.

And when Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania offered an amendment to delete the language and give the detainees the right to file appeals in federal courts, McCain was one of 50 Republicans who voted against it.

"We have done the very best we can. I believe we have come up with a good product," McCain said his floor speech.

Today, the Supreme Court disagreed. The section of the Military Commissions Act that limited the detainees' appeal rights, according to the court, "operates as an unconstitutional suspension of the writ" of habeas corpus.

Obama did speak out against the denial of appeal rights at the time, and he voted for the Specter amendment. Other than the floor speech and his votes, he wasn't really involved. But today, when the Supreme Court validated his stand, it didn't take him long to saddle McCain with the ruling.

"The Court's decision is a rejection of the Bush Administration's attempt to create a legal black hole at Guantanamo - yet another failed policy supported by John McCain," Obama said in a statement. "This is an important step toward reestablishing our credibility as a nation committed to the rule of law, and rejecting a false choice between fighting terrorism and respecting habeas corpus."

As for McCain, he made it clear in Boston today that he wasn't happy with the decision. "It obviously concerns me. These are unlawful combatants. They are not American citizens," McCain said. "But it is a decision the Supreme Court has made. Now, we need to move forward."

Congress may not be making much of a difference on the Iraq war or gas prices, but its leaders have found one thing they can do: They've become the early alert system every time John McCain or Barack Obama sticks his foot in his mouth.

Both have done so over the last two days. This morning, it was McCain, on the Today show, saying it was "not too important" when U.S. troops can return from Iraq. The important part, he said, was whether Americans are taking casualties in Iraq - citing, once again, the examples of the long-term presence in South Korea, Japan and Germany - and when they can "come home with honor and victory."

Naturally, Obama's surrogates in the Senate and House piled on.

"Unbelievably out of touch," Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the 2004 Democratic nominee, said on an Obama campaign conference call with reporters this morning. McCain, Kerry said, "doesn't seem to know a lot about foreign policy and Iraq itself." (Good thing that Kerry-McCain ticket didn't happen, huh?)

In e-mailed statements, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called McCain's comment "a crystal clear indicator that he just doesn't get the grave national-security consequences of staying the course," while House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois said McCain showed "a fundamental misunderstanding about the situation in Iraq, our strained military, and American troops and their families."

Fortunately, McCain had a couple of surrogates of his own to come to his defense in a conference call this afternoon: Independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, one of McCain's most loyal supporters on foreign policy, and Republican Sen. John Thune of South Dakota. "It's very obvious what John McCain is saying," said Lieberman, who said the controversy was manufactured to distract from the fact that Obama has been "consistently wrong" on Iraq. Thune called the whole episode a "head fake."

Obama, meanwhile, had some answering to do for a comment he made about gas prices on CNBC yesterday. In discussing how Americans continue to consume energy as if it will never run out, Obama said he "would have preferred a gradual adjustment" in gas prices rather than the sudden spike the country is dealing with now.

That's probably not the message Democrats in Congress would like to run on right now.

"If Obama really thinks consumers ought to shoulder higher energy costs while we make the transition to alternative fuels, he should answer a simple question: how high should gas prices go? $5? $6? $10 a gallon?" House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio said in a statement.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky went local in his response on the floor this morning: "I know that Kentucky families don't need a 'gradual adjustment' to their pocketbooks. They need a solution for their pain at the pump."

If lawmakers are spending this much time reading transcripts and parsing words, it's a wonder they can find the time to not pass bills.

For anyone who is still keeping track, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid came off the fence and endorsed Barack Obama this morning.

He'd promised not to get in the middle of the nomination battle until either Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton, both members of his caucus, got out of the race. Clinton's going to do that tomorrow, so today was probably close enough.

"Over the past 16 months, tens of millions of Americans from all walks of life have been inspired to support Barack Obama's historic campaign for President, and with good reason: he is a once-in-a-generation leader who connects with the hopes and dreams of the American people and will deliver the long-overdue change that our country desperately needs," Reid said in his statement. (Would he really have called Clinton a "once-in-a-generation" leader if she had won the nomination?)

One final note about Clinton's farewell speech: She has scheduled it for noon tomorrow at the National Building Museum, a favorite destination for Washington-area parents because of its kid-friendly facilities such as the Building Zone, a place where the kiddies can build things with enormous Legos.

Tomorrow, they'll just have to build those Lego towers somewhere else. According to the Web site, the museum will be "closed for a special event."

John McCain faced a real dilemma during this week's debate on the climate change bill. It's one of the biggest issues where he breaks with the Republican party line, so showing up to vote for it would have highlighted that disagreement. And if he had voted against it, Democrats would have called him a flip-flopper.

So here's how he solved the problem: He stayed away, and put out a statement that straddled the fence.

Last night, McCain said he would have voted to end debate on the climate change bill this morning, if only his schedule had allowed him to be on Capitol Hill today. (He's campaigning in Florida.) It was a curious choice of priorities, since McCain called climate change "the most important environmental challenge facing not only our nation, but the entire world."

It's not like McCain's vote would have made a difference, since the bill fell 12 votes short of the 60 votes you need to end debate in the Senate. Four Democrats held out against ending the debate, but most of the "no" votes came from Republicans.

But McCain also said that he would have voted against the final bill if senators didn't add provisions to encourage the use of nuclear power, which he called "an emission free source of electricity" that "simply must be part of the comprehensive solution to addressing climate change."

By saying he would have opposed the bill without nuclear power, McCain gave Barack Obama an opening -- sort of -- to claim that McCain would have opposed the popular bill entirely. "This is a failure of our politics and a failure of leadership - a President who for years denied the problem, and a Republican nominee, John McCain, who claims leadership on the issue but opposes this bipartisan bill," Obama said in a statement after the vote today.

And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada blasted McCain for not bothering to come to Washington to move the bill forward. "Senator McCain says global warming is one of his top issues, but when he has the chance to do something about it, he doesn't even show up to work," Reid said.

In fairness, though, Obama didn't show up either. He's back home in Chicago, his aides say, taking some personal time and catching his breath.

Just wait until Barack Obama's speechwriters get ahold of this one. As of last week, John McCain has voted in support of President Bush's policies 100 percent of the time this year!

Of course, that's based on only six votes.

That's the result of CQ's latest tally of the future nominees' voting records in the Senate this year, which includes all of the votes that have taken place through the end of last week. It covers all the times they have sided with Bush -- the measure Obama prefers to use -- and all the times they have broken with the party line, the measure McCain prefers.

Obama has made an issue of McCain's support of Bush, for obvious reasons (Bush is a bit radioactive with the public right now). In his speech Tuesday night, Obama noted that McCain voted with Bush 95 percent of the time last year.

But McCain missed more than half of the votes last year, and the ones where he sided with Bush don't always mean what they seem to mean -- since many of them were on immigration, an issue where most Democrats actually agreed with Bush and McCain.

This year is no different. McCain has only made 26 percent of the votes this year, and Obama has only made 44 percent. So their scores aren't based on a huge number of roll calls. (Through last week, the Senate had taken 140 votes, and only 28 of them were based on issues where Bush took a public position.)

And even with so few votes, McCain sided with Bush this year for a mix of reasons, so it's hard to say he was always in lockstep with Bush on issues Democrats opposed.

Here's one of the day's weirdest twists in the presidential race: John McCain criticized Barack Obama today for voting with President Bush on a bill McCain opposed.

Not exactly a help to the McCain-is-Bush's-third-term narrative Obama is trying to set up.

The bill in question was the energy legislation Bush signed into law in 2005, and Obama was one of 25 Democrats who voted for it. (The final version got 74 votes in the Senate.) But McCain voted against it, and called out Obama in his speech last night for voting for "the same policies that created the problem."

Earlier today, at a press conference in Baton Rouge, McCain stuck to his story -- even as reporters pointed out that it was the bill Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney wanted.

"The energy bill was a failure. We are paying a price for 16 years of failure to address this nation's energy requirements and needs. And now it is a burden being borne by Americans, particularly those on fixed income, is incredibly harsh," McCain said at the press conference.

"And so, all I can say is that I disagreed with that energy bill. Senator Obama has criticized the energy policy, yet he voted for the bill that gave a whole bunch of tax breaks to special interests," McCain said. "That's one of the reasons why I pointed it out."

At the time, Obama said he voted for the bill because it would double the use of ethanol -- a major regional concern for an Illinois senator -- and create a tax credit for the construction of E85 ethanol fueling stations.

Now that the race for the Democratic nomination is over, eight uncommitted Senate superdelegates issued a statement this afternoon that says -- well, that the race is over.

The statement from Tom Harkin of Iowa, Ken Salazar of Colorado, Barbara Boxer of California, Tom Carper of Delaware, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Benjamin Cardin of Maryland, Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey and Ron Wyden of Oregon says "the Democratic nominee for President has now been chosen" and that it's time to get behind Barack Obama.

"Our focus now is on victory in November and on giving Barack Obama every ounce of our support, every bit of our energy, and our total commitment to do everything in our power to win the Presidency," the statement said.

Of course, one could argue that the superdelegates would have had more relevance if they had taken a stand, say, yesterday. But Harkin, one of the ringleaders of the gang, gave a clue as to his own personal motives for waiting so long: He's not comfortable with the power that the superdelegates had to finish off the race.

"I do not believe in superdelegates. I want to do away with superdelegates. I think they are elitist," Harkin told reporters this morning after the group met to plan the statement they wanted to make. "But we are what we are."

Obama arrives at the Capitol this morning. (CQ Photo by Scott Ferrell)

The new Democratic nominee-in-waiting, Barack Obama, stopped by the Senate a little while ago to vote for the final budget resolution and accept congratulations from his colleagues. But one of the longest chats he had was with Joseph I. Lieberman -- the one member of the Democratic caucus who is campaigning for Obama's opponent, Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain.

Shortly before the vote, Lieberman, now an Independent senator who caucuses with the Democrats, joined a McCain conference call with reporters to offer some mild criticisms of Obama's speech to AIPAC this morning. Among other things, Lieberman said Obama had blamed U.S. foreign policy too much for the threat Iran poses to Israel.

"If Israel is in danger today, it's not because of American foreign policy," Lieberman said. "It's not because of what we're doing in Iraq. It's because Iran is a fanatical, expansionist state and has a leader that keeps threatening to extinguish the state of Israel."

So when Obama and Lieberman slipped away during the vote for a private chat, there was little mystery about what they were talking about.

Their greeting on the Senate floor was friendly, but many Democrats aren't pleased that Lieberman is going beyond simple disagreements with Obama -- notably on the Iraq war and how to deal with Iran -- and actively participating in McCain events criticizing Obama.

"Of course it's a concern when someone within your caucus is supporting the other party's candidate for president," said Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, one of Obama's closest allies. "I'm not going to try to sugarcoat that. But Joe Lieberman's an honorable man. I think he will be with us on the Democratic side more than not, and I hope that we can work with him to strike a balance in terms of his role in the McCain campaign."

Still, Durbin couldn't resist issuing prodding Lieberman to watch himself. "This is a pretty small club, 100 people, and we bump into one another every day on different issues. You try, even though you disagree, not to burn bridges. And I just hope it never reaches that point."

Now, the general election contest between Barack Obama and John McCain begins. And, believe it or not, one of the first things they're arguing about is their voting records in the Senate.

In his remarks prepared for tonight -- his first speech as the future Democratic nominee -- Obama tries, as you might expect, to tie McCain to President Bush as closely as possible. And one of the ways he does that is to note that McCain voted in support of Bush's policies 95 percent of the time in 2007 -- a statistic that comes from CQ's annual vote studies.

"It's not change when John McCain decided to stand with George Bush ninety-five percent of the time, as he did in the Senate last year," Obama says in his speech.

That line brought an instant response from McCain spokesman Brian Rogers, who e-mailed reporters CQ's vote studies for McCain's entire congressional career (25 years) and Obama's entire Senate career (three years). The McCain campaign's message: Look at the candidates' independence from their parties, not their records of supporting Bush.

"A far better measure of bipartisan leadership is clearly a senator's party unity rating. By that measure, it's clear that Senator Obama has been a consistent partisan, voting with his party over 95 percent of the time, while John McCain has a demonstrated independent record, voting with his party between 70 and 90 percent of the time in recent years," Rogers said.

That's true, as far it goes. But here are a few other notes to put their records in perspective:

• McCain did, in fact, vote with Bush 95 percent of the time last year. But that was his highest score of Bush's eight years (the lowest was in 2005, when he voted with Bush only 77 percent of the time).

• Last year was a special case with McCain, since he only made 44 percent of the votes. And most of the votes he cast were on a couple of very different issues where he sided with Bush: Iraq, an issue where McCain and Obama are at odds, and immigration, an issue where they're not.

• Obama does usually vote with his party -- 97 percent of the time in 2005 and 2007, and 96 percent of the time in 2006. But those figures mask a few significant votes he has cast against his party, such as a 2007 vote in which he sided with Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina -- and against the Democratic leadership -- in voting for a DeMint amendment to require greater disclosure of earmarks.

And Obama does leave room for McCain's departures from his party in the Senate. He just says there's little sign of the maverick in his presidential campaign. "While John McCain can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party in the past," Obama says in his speech, "such independence has not been the hallmark of his presidential campaign."

Let the general election begin.

So while he hangs out in St. Paul tonight, waiting to give the big speech tonight after the polls close, Barack Obama announced he has introduced a new bill -- with John McCain as a cosponsor.

Nope, that can't be right.

But there it is -- the Strengthening Transparency and Accountability in Federal Spending Act of 2008, a follow-up to the 2006 law Obama co-authored with Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, which created the USASpending.gov database -- often referred to as a "Google for government spending."

Obama and Coburn introduced a bill late today to make more information available through the database, such as copies of federal contracts and data on competitive bidding, and make it easier to search.

And sure enough, there are two co-sponsors: McCain and Democratic Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware.

If you know the Senate, it's not actually as surprising as it sounds. Senators co-sponsor bills with their rivals all the time, as long as the subject isn't too far removed from mom and apple pie. (That's why Obama has co-sponsored Hillary Rodham Clinton's bills, and vice versa.)

And openness in government, which both Obama and McCain have tried to promote, isn't exactly the kind of subject that will get either one in trouble.

So when Obama and McCain bash each other on your TV screens tonight, just remember: At least they agree on making "Google for government spending" even better.

The rush of superdelegates toward Barack Obama is nothing if not well-choreographed. It had seemed to stall out early this afternoon, but in the last hour or so, it has picked up so much speed that Obama is now well within range of locking down the nomination tonight.

You don't even have to believe the Associated Press, which reported that its own tally had Obama winning the nomination earlier this afternoon. Its count included private commitments, which even the Obama campaign isn't counting in its own estimates.

As of around 5:30, the campaign said Obama was 12 delegates short of the nomination -- well within range of the approximately 15 delegates he's expected to win in the Montana and South Dakota primaries tonight. The latest count includes Rep. Maxine Waters of California, a former supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton who just announced she's switching sides.

It also counts a group of 10 pledged delegates, all supporters of former Sen. John Edwards, who announced shortly after 5:00 that they were switching to Obama.

Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, one of Obama's closest allies, just told me that there's not likely to be any large group of Senate superdelegates who will endorse Obama tonight (though the Montana senators are a possibility). Instead, she predicted that more non-congressional superdelegates will endorse Obama between now and 10 p.m., making such a mass move by Senate superdelegates unnecessary.

After that, McCaskill said, "I think what you'll see is a rapid coming together of everyone over the next two to three days."

Barack Obama's latest high-profile superdelegate thinks it will all be over, effectively, by about 6:00 tonight.

In a conference call with reporters this afternoon, House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn of South Carolina said he expects enough superdelegates to declare their support for Obama by that hour for the Illinois senator to lock up the nomination with the pledged delegates he's expected to get out of Montana and South Dakota tonight.

Clyburn says he's basing that assessment on the superdelegates he has talked to, mostly from South Carolina, and the endorsements that have continued to roll in throughout the day.

For example, Clyburn said House Budget Committee chairman John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina has told him he'll endorse Obama by about 1 p.m. A few minutes before the Clyburn call began, Obama won the support of Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick of Michigan, the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

During the call, Michigan superdelegates Debbie Dingell and Rick Wiener endorsed Obama. (Dingell is a bit of a surprise, since her husband, House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman John D. Dingell, endorsed Hillary Rodham Clinton.)

And Clyburn says he has talked to enough other South Carolina superdelegates that he believes "the threshold will be reached by the time Senator Obama speaks in Minnesota tonight."

As for the conflicting accounts of what, exactly, Hillary Rodham Clinton will say tonight -- and whether she'll somehow acknowledge Obama has the delegates without actually suspending her campaign -- Clyburn says there's no reason for her to concede the race. The reports that her campaign has asked staff members to turn in their receipts, he said, tells you everything you need to know.

"It's a technical thing when you concede the race," Clyburn said. "It's another thing when you stop campaigning."

The first superdelegate endorsements of the day for Barack Obama are coming in, in what could be the start of a wave over the next couple of days.

The biggest name of the day so far is House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, who officially threw his support to Obama in a statement shortly after 8 this morning. ("Officially" because he's been dropping pro-Obama hints for quite some time.)

But other, non-congressional superdelegates are trickling in too, including Michigan superdelegate Joyce Lalonde and Missouri state Rep. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, both announced this morning.

The next thing to watch for is the possible endorsements of at least some of the 16 uncommitted Senate superdelegates and the 51 House superdelegates after the polls close tonight in Montana and South Dakota. But as Alan K. Ota reports this morning, many of them may want to wait to see if Obama can get the delegates he needs to claim the nomination from non-congressional superdelegates first.

And in any case, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California won't be among them. Even though they're urging other superdelegates to commit quickly after the primaries end tonight, their aides say they'll stay out themselves -- Pelosi because she's going to chair the Democratic convention in Denver, and Reid because Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are members of his caucus.

Other leaders, however, are worth watching. In particular, aides to House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, who worked for President Bill Clinton but is also Obama's home-state colleague, made no such no-endorsement pledge yesterday.

As for Clyburn, his statement cited Obama's appeal to young and independent voters, and argued that Obama "will be able to dramatically change the electoral map for Democrats which will in turn expand our majorities here in Congress, and help elect more Democrats at the state and local levels."

He even played the age card. ""A recent Zogby poll has Senator Obama leading Senator McCain in every age demographic except for those over 65," said Clyburn, who is 67. "That speaks volumes about which candidate represents our nation's future, and which represents our past."

Over the next couple of days, there could be a lot of members of Congress who suddenly decide that Obama's the one who can help them keep their seats.

What can you say about a presidential race where the two likely nominees -- both senators -- are attacking each other over a vote where they were the only senators who didn't show up?

At a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee this morning, John McCain criticized Barack Obama for opposing a resolution last year, sponsored by Republican Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona and Independent Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, that said Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps should be designated a terrorist organization.

"Over three quarters of the Senate supported this obvious step, but not Senator Obama. He opposed this resolution because its support for countering Iranian influence in Iraq was, he said, a 'wrong message not only to the world, but also to the region,'" McCain said this morning. "Holding Iran's influence in check, and holding a terrorist organization accountable, sends exactly the right message -- to Iran, to the region and to the world."

Obama's rapid-response team fired back, saying Obama had no problem with labeling the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps a terrorist organization. Instead, he says he objected to another section of the Kyl-Lieberman resolution that said the structure of the U.S. military presence in Iraq would have "critical long-term consequences" for the future of the Middle East, including Iran's influence. Obama said he didn't want any linkage between sanctions against Iran and keeping troops in Iraq.

But it's all a bit of a hypothetical debate -- because McCain and Obama were the only two senators who didn't show up for the vote on the resolution in September. It was adopted 76-22, which means the other 98 senators all took an official position that day.

Instead, McCain had to fudge his involvement this morning, saying he was "pleased to join Senators Lieberman and Kyl in backing an amendment" aimed at Iran. Obama's team had to quote his press releases to explain his position.

At least when Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton argued over the resolution in their debates last fall, she had actually cast a vote on the issue. She voted for the resolution after Kyl and Lieberman took out language that would have declared it United State policy to "combat, contain, and roll back" Iran's destabilizing activities in Iraq.