It’s time to call bullshit on the idea that Obama’s folks came up with this as a smear. It was quoting Hillary herself:

http://www.sikhcouncilusa.org/article.aspx?article=evtdinner
Washington May 18th – “I am delighted to be the Senator from Punjab as well as from New York” said Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and the former first lady of the United States of America.

I still fail to see how any of the three links Rich posted about Robert Gibbs indicate a “record of over-the-top racial or xenophobic smears”.

Smears? Yes. But even the 2003 attack ad against Dean (with bin Laden) wasn’t racist in tone. It was a smear against a governor who had as much foreign policy experience as the 43rd President did before he took office (for better or worse).

In all this, I agree the tone of this particular not-for-attribution attack is outside Sen. Obama’s stated goals for his campaign. If there is a “major fuck-up” here, that’s it. But the substance and subject matter are ripe for discussion without having to quote from Sen. Clinton’s ally’s nebulous charges of ‘racism’.