Last week, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer interviewed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama in the wake of his near-tie in Indiana and landslide win in North Carolina.

One of the topics covered presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain’s recent attacks on Sen. Obama.

Presidential candidate Obama replied that some of Sen. McCain’s recent “smears” indicate that he appears to be “losing his bearings” given that he had earlier pledged to run an issues-based campaign and avoid the gutter slime and sucker punches. Sen. Obama:

“For him to toss out comments like that I think is an example of him losing his bearings as he pursues this nomination. We don’t need name-calling in this debate.”

In other words, Sen. McCain had pledged to run an ethical campaign but Sen. Obama says he’s “losing his bearings” (his ethical compass) as he sells out to cheap-shot partisan smears.

Oddly, the McCain campaign either didn’t understand that or chose to ignore it because instead of defending McCain’s bearings on ethics vis a vis partisanship, they decided to counter that Obama was somehow talking about McCain’s age (if elected, he would be the oldest president sworn in to office).

So which is it? Has the good Sen. McCain lost his bearing because he has left his ethical compass behind  (as Obama says) or because of his age (as McCain’s camp apparently claims)?