The idea that Goolsbee was somehow wearing his "professor" hat and not his "campaign advisor" hat when he talked about the campaign's rhetoric is just ludicrous.

It's not credible that Obama's campaign was unaware of the meeting, since Bill Burton has admitted that they knew about the meeting from the moment the original CTV story aired.

Based upon inaccuracies in the original story like calling it the embassy instead of the consulate, they tried to hide behind dodgy denials like "the facts of the story are inaccurate."  Later, you had events like the candidate himself saying "it did not happen," which can only be a true statement if you consider "it" to refer only to the specific meeting alleged in the original story complete with all the background facts.  Very, very dishonest behavior throughout this entire episode.

As for the notion that the whole thing was a set-up by a conservative government, I'd be more sympathetic if there had been a little more honesty throughout the process.  Heck, you still have Obama supporters loudly proclaiming across the blogs that because those various details in the original story were inaccurate, somehow Obama's denials have been 100% unvarnished truth all along.  This behavior is really sad.

My bottom line is that if you let your campaign get hoodwinked by a foreign government, it's kind of on you.  Not to make too much of the episode, but part of the job description is to not give other countries an opportunity to spread egg on your face.