Something Clarkies learned very well in the 2004 campaign was how political smears travel faster than truth. That experience has served me well as an Obama supporter. Doing it a thousand times for General Clark means knowing the routine, how it all plays out. Take a breath. Wait for it to play out. More often than not, the truth of the matter emerges from the cloud of dirt thrown up by these stupid exercises in character assassination.

A Democratic presidential candidate goes to Israel. He places a note of prayer in the Wailing Wall like any tourist does. Because he is famous, somebody, a foolish young man, a student in our story, slips off with the prayer and gives it to the press.

The rabbi and the student are both regretful.

The rabbi overseeing the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinowitz, sent a letter on Tuesday to US Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, in which he expressed his sorrow over the removal of the note written by Obama from the wall and its subsequent publication in local media.

In addition, the Yeshiva student who removed Obama’s note from the Wall also apologized and asked for Obama’s forgiveness. He said the note had been returned to its place with Rabinowitz’s help.

But the Israeli press has already done its dirty work.

Maariv’s response: “Obama’s note was published in Maariv and other international publications following his authorization to make the content of the note public. Obama submitted a copy of the note to media outlets when he left his hotel in Jerusalem.

The right wing nutso press is the same everywhere:

What initially seemed to be a journalistic scoop of dubious moral propriety now seems to be a case of an Israeli paper being played by the Barack Obama campaign. Maariv, the second most popular newspaper in Israel, was roundly criticized for publishing the note Obama left in the Kotel. But now a Maariv spokesperson says that publication of the note was pre-approved for international publication by the Obama campaign, leading to the conclusion that the “private” prayer was intentionally leaked for public consumption.

The news travels around the world.

And then, finally, the dust settles.

Yesterday, I posted an item about an accusation from Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv that the Obama campaign had leaked a copy of his Western Wall note to the foreign press (rather than Ma'ariv having bought it from some yeshiva kid who stole it out of the wall). After some additional reporting last night, I noted that the story sounded a bit fishy--not only has Ma'ariv not offered any tangible evidence to supprot this claim, but they also have only made the claim via a spokesman to various Israeli papers rather than printing the accusation in their own paper.

I just got off the phone with a Ma'ariv spokesman who says that the accusation is "completely false," and that he has no idea who these papers were quoting from Ma'ariv. "No official spokesman for Ma'ariv told this to any of the papers." I've got some calls in to these papers to find out where they got the quote. (I'll update here when I hear back.) He told me definitively that "the Obama campaign did not give us a copy of the letter or approve it for printing."

The moral of our story: The media will make schmucks out of us whenever we let them.