The Note: Lobby Scrub

June 10, 2008 -- Sen. Barack Obama wants this election to be about George Bush, the economy, and the Iraq war (maybe in that order).

Sen. John McCain wants this election to be about Barack Obama, the Iraq war, and taxes (with a dose of Michelle Obama and Jimmy Carter tossed in).

And everybody wants it to be about Washington insiders -- just not theirs. (May the cleanest man win?)

Pardon us for not being shocked and appalled that people are running for president the way people run for president -- surrounded by the influential men and women who make Washington tick.

But this tussle over lobbyist ties and insider connections does matter to Obama and McCain -- maybe even equally -- in this critical period where their political identities are being shaped. (And this is what they get for the higher standards they've set for their opponents.)

For both candidates, cleanliness is next to electability -- and if one or the other can own this reformer's mantle as different-kind-of-politician, he will (much like whoever "owns" the economy and national security) be a long way toward reaching the middle-of-the-road voters they both covet.

So we have a few distractions along the road to ridiculous sums of campaign cash: "Advisers to the White House hopefuls are also working feverishly to square their carefully crafted images as campaign finance reformers with the need to gather tens of millions of dollars," Matthew Mosk and Michael Shear write in The Washington Post.

This is a chance for McCain, R-Ariz., to grab the upper hand -- building on his reformer's profile with a (probably) to-be-shattered Obama pledge, and a fresh Obama (potential) liability to exploit.

It's always a good idea to vet the vetter: "John McCain criticized his Democratic rival Monday for seeking campaign advice from a Washington power-broker who, Republican officials say, may have improperly received preferential treatment from a controversial mortgage lender," Maeve Reston and E. Scott Reckard write in the Los Angeles Times.

It just helps keep the story in the news that the power-broker in question, James Johnson, is leading Obama vice-presidential explorations.

"It suggests a bit of a contradiction talking about how his campaign is not going to be involved with people like that. Clearly, he is very much associated with that," McCain told Fox News.

The Washington Post's Shailagh Murray: "Here's the trouble with running a squeaky clean campaign: there's very little margin for ethical error."

"Despite Johnson's legendary fastidiousness, his high-profile campaign role has suddenly exposed him to questions about his financial dealings," Politico's Lisa Lerer reports. "The questions range from his relationship with the embattled CEO of mortgage lender Countrywide Financial to his more recent oversight roles on various corporate compensation committees that approved hefty executive pay packages."

(Notice how deftly and methodically Republicans have driven this storyline, muddying Obama's clean window of opportunity. Next up -- watch for the GOP to sully Johnson's fellow VP vetter, Eric Holder, for his role in the Marc Rich pardon.)

This would make it pretty hard to accept public financing: "Leading Democratic fundraisers predict that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) will raise hundreds of millions of dollars over the next few months if he opts out of public financing and begins raising money for the general election," The Hill's Alexander Bolton reports. "Specifically, they say Obama could raise $100 million in June [!!] and could attract 2.5 million to 3 million new donors to his campaign."

But how long before all of this just becomes a pox on both houses? "John McCain, who wrote the law banning corporate donations to the political parties, and Barack Obama, who refuses lobbyist money, will be nominated for president at conventions largely funded by industries whose Washington clout they've railed against on the campaign trail," Bloomberg News' Jonathan Salant writes.

Obama, D-Ill., doesn't mind talking ties to Washington insiders, either -- and an advocacy group is helping his cause against McCain on that front, with a new ad out this week -- but Obama is trying to swing the Big Issue pendulum to a McCain soft spot: the economy.

Should smart Democrats be rooting for $5-a-gallon gas? "Just as Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama break from the starting gate in their race for the White House, zooming oil prices and unemployment rates are highlighting the economy as the nation's No. 1 campaign issue," ABC's Jake Tapper reports.

With some help from the Hill -- a Senate vote Tuesday on oil companies' windfall profits -- Obama is "attacking Senator John McCain's economic policies and moving to focus on the ailing economy as the central theme of the general election campaign," per The New York Times' John M. Broder. "He spoke of hard-pressed workers in Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin struggling to pay their bills and buy gasoline. And he laid the blame squarely at the feet of President Bush and his allies, including Senator McCain."

"After a long nomination race in which he and Sen. Clinton had few major-policy differences, Sen. Obama served notice that he and Sen. McCain have big and fundamental divisions," Jackie Calmes writes in The Wall Street Journal.

Said Obama: "The centerpiece of his economic plan amounts to a full-throated endorsement of George Bush's policies."

This is defense as offense: "Obama's new emphasis follows weeks of focus by McCain on national security and foreign policy, areas where the GOP thinks Obama is vulnerable," the Chicago Tribune's John McCormick writes.

Obama "kicked off his first day of head-to-head combat by lashing four-term Republican Sen. John McCain as a rerun of the Bush presidency -- out of touch on the economy and lacking solutions for skyrocketing gasoline prices, spiraling job losses and a wave of home foreclosures," Joseph Curl writes in the Washington Times.

Lessons learned? "Forgoing a softer introduction to the broader electorate, Obama and his advisers have decided to go right at McCain, calculating that the candidates' major distinctions on issues such as tax relief, the war in Iraq, and diplomacy play to their favor," Scott Helman writes in The Boston Globe. "The forceful tack is a departure from 2004, when Senator John F. Kerry, as he transitioned from the Democratic primary race to the fall campaign, sought to burnish his commander-in-chief credentials and downplay criticism of the president."