It’s not easy being a friend of Barack Obama these days. When he’s not trying to disown you (see Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Father Michael Pfleger, white grandmother) or claim he doesn’t really know you (Bill Ayres), he blames you for his mistakes.

Fox News:

On Tuesday, for the third time in four days, Obama borrowed a lengthy bubble quote from Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles. He did not acknowledge the origin of the quote the first time he used it and credited the cartoon only after the Post contacted the Obama campaign to ask about the first use.

Asked about the lifting of Toles’ line, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said that the candidate did not initially know the source of the line, which he had gotten from a friend.

“This came to Senator Obama from a friend who didn’t indicate where he had gotten it from, but the questions it raises certainly continue to ring true,” LaBolt told FOXNews.com.

“He did not know it was from a cartoon and when he was informed that it was, he credited the cartoonist.” LaBolt said.

Unnamed friend’s fault (Did he borrow Tom Daschle’s famed “imaginary friend”? Who knows.)

Politico:

Just hours after his campaign issued a first statement Friday ripping the addition of Sarah Palin to the Republican ticket, Barack Obama backed away from that statement — or at least its tone — and said that *his own campaign had misrepresented him. *

Campaign’s fault.

When confronted about a campaign memo during the primary that criticized Clinton’s ties to India, referring to her as “D-Punjab,” Obama called it “a screw-up on the part of our research team” and said “it was stupid and caustic.”

Research team’s fault.

And when the late Tim Russert asked Obama at a Las Vegas debate about his campaign’s efforts to push the storyline that Team Clinton was stoking racial tensions, Obama said “our supporters, our staff, get overzealous. They start saying things that I would not say.”

Supporters fault.

Obama has, in fact, faulted his staff on scheduling, telling a firefighters group during a telephone call that he couldn’t make it in person because his “staff had already scheduled some things and they couldn’t wiggle out of it. They heard from me a little bit because I wasn’t happy I couldn’t be there personally.”

Schedulers fault.

His campaign asserted earlier this year that the manager of his 1996 state Senate campaign — his first bid for public office — filled out a questionnaire in Obama’s name that “accidentally mischaracterized his positions” by taking more liberal stands than he held on gun control, the death penalty and abortion.

Campaign manager’s fault. (Wow, “he wrote something in Obama’s name“, why didn’t Gordon Brown use this as an excuse?)

And in his 2006 best-seller “The Audacity of Hope,” Obama writes that during his 2004 U.S. Senate primary, when his opponents were challenging his commitment to abortion rights, his staff oversimplified his stance by promising on his website that he would fight “right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman’s right to choose.”

Staff’s fault.

And after he raised eyebrows by proclaiming in a July speech to a prominent Jewish group that he supports Jerusalem remaining Israel’s “undivided” capital, Obama suggested his staff was responsible.

“We had some poor phrasing in the speech, and we immediately tried to correct the interpretation that was given,” Obama told Fareed Zakaria on CNN, though Obama had made similar statements about an undivided Jerusalem before.

Staff strike two.

Obama also blamed his staff for underestimating how much money since-convicted businessman Tony Rezko had raised for his earlier campaigns and for a letter from his office urging city and state officials to fund a Rezko project.

Staff strikes out.

So Obama is not responsible for what he writes, says or does. This attribute could come in handy if he’s elected president. “Oh Vladmir, that nuke flying your way, I didn’t send it, my daughter did, she loves to press big red buttons”.