With friends like these…

Sen. Obama has had to deal with a number of controversies after people in his camp said or did something offensive to some. And he set up an anti-smear website dedicated to squashing rumors about him and his family.

Now, along comes this New Yorker magazine cover story with a cartoon depiction of Barack and Michelle Obama that’s just over the top.

The illustration, appearing on this week’s issue, is titled “The Politics of Fear” and shows Obama in the Oval Office in sandals, robe and turban giving a “fist bump” to his wife, Michelle, who is outfitted in combat boots and an assault rifle. A painting of Osama bin Laden hangs above the fireplace in which an American flag is burning..

“The New Yorker may think, as one of their staff explained to us, that their cover is a satirical lampoon of the caricature Sen. Obama’s right-wing critics have tried to create,” said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton. “But most readers will see it as tasteless and offensive. And we agree.”

In a rare instance of solidarity, so did both Democrats and Republicans, including Sen. John McCain.

What were they thinking?! New Yorker editor David Remnick said the drawing…

“combines a number of images that have been propagated, not by everyone on the right but by some, about Obama’s supposed ‘lack of patriotism’ or his being ‘soft on terrorism’ or the idiotic notion that somehow Michelle Obama is the second coming of the Weathermen or most violent Black Panthers.”

And they illustrated that by doing something idiotic.

One thing remains constant in these elections, and that’s the dignity of the office of the presidency of the United States. When anyone in partisan politics denigrates the president, the office, or candidates who are seeking election to it…it says more about the source of the insult than its target.