Beyond the Dome

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.