More like this, please:

A defiant Barack Obama said Tuesday he would take no lectures from Republicans on which candidate would keep the U.S. safer, a sharp rebuke to John McCain’s aides who said the Democrat had a naive, Sept. 10 mind-set toward terrorism.

“These are the same guys who helped to engineer the distraction of the war in Iraq at a time when we could have pinned down the people who actually committed 9/11,” the presumed nominee told reporters aboard his campaign plane. “This is the same kind of fear-mongering that got us into Iraq … and it’s exactly that failed foreign policy I want to reverse.”

The simple way Obama approaches these issues is a breath of fresh air. Democrats have spent too long on the fainting couch - oooh, the nasty Republicans are going to say something mean about me, and I’m going to look weak, whatever shall I do. Obama stands there, absorbs the punch, and hits back - harder. That’s the way to win elections.