WASHINGTON: Brace yourselves. Ugly campaign tactics are just warming up here. Sen. John McCain has been pushing hard — he recently said that Sen. Barack Obama “would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign,” tarred him as “Dr. No” on energy policy and run advertisements calling him responsible for high gas prices.

The result is that McCain is being viewed by many as an aggressive, negative candidate who hammers Obama repeatedly on policy differences, experience and trustworthiness.

“In every presidential campaign, candidates of both parties will say something over the line. Sen. John McCain has already hit a low mark,” wrote the conservative US News & World Report this week. “The senior senator from Arizona said his Democratic rival would ‘rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.’ What’s next, an open charge of treason?”

A New York Times lead editorial this week concurs.

On July 3, news reports said McCain, worried that he might lose the election before it truly started, opened his doors to disciples of Karl Rove from the 2004 campaign and the Bush White House. Less than a month later, the results are on full display. The candidate who started out talking about high-minded, civil debate has wholeheartedly adopted Mr. Rove’s low-minded and uncivil playbook.

“In recent weeks, McCain has been waving the flag of fear (Obama wants to “lose” in Iraq), and issuing attacks that are sophomoric (suggesting that Obama is a socialist) and false (Obama turned his back on wounded soldiers),” said the NYT.

McCain is clearly trying to create doubts about his younger opponent, but some Republicans worry that by going negative so early, and initiating so many of the attacks himself rather than leaving them to others, McCain risks coming across as angry or partisan in a way that could turn off some independents who have been attracted by his calls for respectful campaigning.

Examples of McCain’s evolving strategy can be found in the tone and the content of the paid advertising his campaign has been rolling out. Several of his recent television spots have attacked Obama directly, but have been replayed over and over on news programs rather than appearing in commercial time.

Reporters say the McCain campaign’s ads — the most recent one criticized Obama for canceling a visit with American troops in Germany — are getting viewed on local television across the country.

The result, reporters say, is “a public relations coup that allowed him to show his toughest campaign advertisement of the year — one widely panned as misleading — to millions of people, largely free, through television news media hungry for political news with arresting visual imagery.”

Oddly, McCain’s attacks have put the press in the position of having to defend Obama.

Wednesday’s Washington Post noted: “For four days, Sen. John McCain and his allies have accused Sen. Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital (in Germany) because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true.

The paper speculates that Obama’s recent trip overseas must have been the trigger that has infuriated McCain.

“All three evening news anchors packed their travel bags and tagged along with the Illinois senator, and so, it seems, did most of the media: on one campaign stop, McCain stepped out of his ‘Straight Talk’ plane to find a single reporter on the ground to greet him.”

His statements about Obama in recent weeks draw parallels to the same sort of dirty attacks engineered for the Bush campaigns by Karl Rove, which might be expected as Rove now works for McCain.

Who knows? McCain may yet again change tactics, as the real campaign is only just beginning. Vice presidential candidates haven’t been announced yet, the conventions aren’t underway and the Obama/McCain debates are in the future.

Obama’s already faced Rove’s attack strategies in facing Hillary Clinton, and he beat them. He’s not the type of politician that will be easily destroyed by swiftboating, and the more McCain makes comments like the one he made last week, the more Obama will win the argument by looking more presidential, more unifying.

The other problem dogging McCain is his age. More than a quarter of a century separates John McCain and Barack Obama.

When McCain was taken prisoner in the Vietnam War, his Democratic opponent was just six years old.

McCain will be 72 next January — and if he is elected, he would be the oldest man ever to become US president. And that worries some voters — almost as much as his smear campaign against Obama.