This should come as no surprise.

The candidate who is running as the candidate of change and who decalred he wants a more ethical campaign and Administration isn't above using some below the belt tactics. 

His media spinmeister-David Axelrod was tagged by the  New Yokr Times as being the likely source behind leaks to the Chicago media regarding scandalous information about Obama's lead political opponent during his 2004 Senate run at a particulary opportune time during the Democratic primary for Senate.

Axelrod is known for operating in this gray area, part idealist, part hired muscle. It is difficult to discuss Axelrod in certain circles in Chicago without the matter of the Blair Hull divorce papers coming up.

As the 2004 Senate primary neared, it was clear that it was a contest between two people: the millionaire liberal, Hull, who was leading in the polls, and Obama, who had built an impressive grass-roots campaign. About a month before the vote, The Chicago Tribune revealed, near the bottom of a long profile of Hull, that during a divorce proceeding, Hull’s second wife filed for an order of protection.

In the following few days, the matter erupted into a full-fledged scandal that ended up destroying the Hull campaign and handing Obama an easy primary victory. The Tribune reporter who wrote the original piece later acknowledged in print that the Obama camp had “worked aggressively behind the scenes” to push the story.

But there are those in Chicago who believe that Axelrod had an even more significant role — that he leaked the initial story. They note that before signing on with Obama, Axelrod interviewed with Hull. They also point out that Obama’s TV ad campaign started at almost the same time. Axelrod swears up and down that “we had nothing to do with it” and that the campaign’s television ad schedule was long planned.

“An aura grows up around you, and people assume everything emanates from you,” he told me.