Sept. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Barack Obama campaigns as if only Thomas Jefferson could match his devotion to free speech and open government.

He co-sponsored a 2006 law that put more government information, such as earmarks, online and now wants to expand it. He says he would ``shine the light'' on things like how much lobbyists spend to swing which federal contract for what clients and tax breaks for special interest groups. As president, he would post online bills that reach his desk for five days before signing.

And yet, when trying to squelch debate about the more troubling aspects of his candidacy, any Jeffersonian instincts evaporate.

When WGN-AM Radio in Chicago scheduled a two-hour interview last week with David Freddoso, who wrote ``The Case Against Barack Obama,'' the campaign sent out an alarm to supporters, sparking an avalanche of angry phone calls to the station.

The case against Freddoso, according to the Obama Wire Alert, was that he's a ``card-carrying member of the right-wing smear machine.'' And by hosting him, WGN was giving a wider audience for Freddoso's ``baseless lies.''

Lies? In a political campaign?! And baseless lies at that!

Within the growing anti-Obama literary school, Freddoso isn't the most extreme. But he clearly misstates facts. For example, he claims that Obama favors infanticide. False.

As for a smear machine, that isn't paranoia talking. The contraption is revved up and churning out product.

Angry Callers

But the proper response in a democratic society isn't to scream at those who give an author a podium, to call the man names or jam a radio station's phone lines with angry callers.

If you value free speech, the proper response is to say yes, thanks, when the radio host invites your campaign to send someone to debate the enemy on the air.

Obama's campaign declined.

So it did a month earlier, too, when the same WGN-AM radio host, Milt Rosenberg, gave time to yet another anti-Obama writer, Stanley Kurtz. There is no shortage of these people, it would seem.

Then, as now, the campaign refused to join the critic on the air, preferring to sic supporters onto the station's complaint line instead. The second time that happened, the host found an Obama supporter to balance out the show, albeit one not connected to the campaign.

You can understand the campaign's inclination not to give such writers more cred by showing up to debate them.

And yet, shouldn't the campaign rebut these allegations in the venue where they turn up?

Shutting Up Critics

Instead, it tries to shut them up.

While writing rebuttal after rebuttal online, the campaign and its supporters have been threatening television stations and networks with boycotts of sponsors and legal action for airing a commercial produced by this year's reincarnation of the 2004 Swift Boat Veterans for ``Truth.'' (The quotation marks are mine, not theirs.)

Backed by the same Texas billionaire, Harold Simmons, who helped pay for the Swift Boat campaign and is maxing out on contributions to the McCain-Palin campaign, the American Issues Project has produced and is buying air time for a commercial that ties Obama to a 1960s radical who admits to helping bomb the U.S. Capitol in 1971, William Ayers.

Senator John Kerry, the Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee, couldn't imagine his Vietnam War service and the medal he won for it could be successfully attacked as he campaigned against a president who used his father's connections to avoid combat altogether.

Swift Boat Claims

So the Swift Boat claims ricocheted around cable networks and radio talk shows for weeks before they got a rise out of the Kerry campaign. By the time fact-checkers debunked the claims, the damage had been done.

This year, too, it's clear that no lie can be presumptively dismissed as too untrue to be believed.

And yet, candidates who want to side with truth and free speech simply can't go around urging their supporters to badger those who write unpleasant, even untrue, things about them.

The Obama campaign bullied CNN and Fox TV out of airing the Ayers commercials. But they are being shown in targeted, swing areas in Ohio and Michigan.

Obama shouldn't be blamed for what Ayers did when the candidate was 8 years old, as Obama says. By the time the two met, Ayers was a University of Illinois professor in Chicago, deeply involved in education reform, a topic of interest to Obama.

And, certainly, voters should care less about the past than we should about how the next president plans to fix America's shamefully broken education system, the economy, international relations and, you know the rest.

But by trying to shut down his enemies instead of answering them head-on, Obama feeds the suspicions they create and smudges his claim as a full-throated proponent of free speech.

(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg news columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Ann Woolner in Atlanta at awoolner@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 26, 2008 00:01 EDT