The 2008 Democratic primary campaign has been retrospectively mythologized as reaching heights of ugliness that could never be contemplated today. Operatives associated with that race have an interest in consecrating said mythology, so that they might retain an air of war-weary sagacity. And indeed, Hillary Clinton's slurs against Obama — she accused him of kowtowing to an anti-American preacher, making friends with terrorists and being in hock to a Chicago slumlord — probably outdo any of the inter-candidate squabbles this cycle.