You promised a clean campaign. You pledged to bring honour and dignity to the campaign trail. You wanted the campaign to be about real issues facing real people.

Is it because you ran a dignified campaign in ’00 and were brutally blind-sided by the thugs running the Bush/Rove/Cheney campaign? Does your party honestly believe this will work after seeing Senator Clinton lose by attacking Senator Obama instead of presenting her program? Had you won your party’s nomination back then it would have been easy to choose you, even with a stiff pre-global warming poster child Al Gore or John Kerry as an opponent… and this praise comes from a lifelong Democrat.

Near the end of the long primary season you called for dialogues and town-hall meeting style debates. You even invited Senator Obama to fly with you on a tour of Iraq just as you both had done as Senators. You stood for campaign reform and bi-partisan approaches to issues. You were a Straight Talking Maverick.

Now, who are you? Why have you not called off the 527 group attack dogs? What do you stand for? Why do your handlers dictate your message instead of you? Even your 96-year old mother thought the Britney Spears ad was “dumb.” What were you thinking with the tyre gauges emblazoned with the words “Obama Energy Policy?” Why would you approve the Internet advert comparing Obama to Moses or the Chosen One?

Why do you attack without showing real plans? Do you really think the American people facing economic catastrophe, unprecedented fear of losing jobs, homes to foreclosure and/or a health catastrophe wiping out their life-savings will think a smirking advert featuring Britney Spears and Paris Hilton will swing the election your way?

At what point do you distance yourself from those acting in your name or order them to stop? Why are you playing such a petty game, tossing spitballs back and forth when you should be talking about the economy, energy and wars that will never end?

Please tell me it more than just green-eyed envy as New York Times Op-Ed columnist Maureen Dowd mentioned in her column today. Please tell me that this more than vanity that you also have been upstaged by Obama. Please tell me you are not wilting under the summer heat and pressure of 24/7/366 campaigning and are just letting the inmates run the asylum.

Because if you can’t tell the public that you have not been totally corrupted by the process and no longer control your own campaign, then please, in the words of MSNBC’s Keith Obermann, just shut the hell up Senator!