In a fascinating and impressive piece of reporting, Atlantic Monthly's Joshua Green obtained dozens of internal memos from a dysfunctional Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign. Turns out it was a cauldron of egos advising a candidate who was unable or unwilling to get them all rowing in the same direction.

One 2007 memo, in particular, sticks out as cynical about Americans and potentially damaging toward Clinton rival Democrat Barack Obama's White House hopes. In the memo, according to Green, Clinton's "chief strategist" Mark Penn wrote that presumptive nominee Obama's "roots to basic American values and culture are at best limited" and that he "cannot imagine America electing a president during a time of war who is not at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values."

Penn wrote that America wouldn't be ready for an Obama-like candidate for another two generations.

"All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawai'i are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light," Penn wrote of Obama, the son of a black man and white woman. "Save it for 2050."

Clinton took Penn's advice on how to "give some life to this contrast without turning negative." In the March 19, 2007, memo, Penn said Clinton should "explicitly own 'American' in our programs, the speeches and the values." Penn suggested that "every speech should contain the line you were born in the middle of America to the middle class in the middle of the last century."

Just more than a month later, Clinton told several hundred people in Council Bluffs, Iowa: "I was born into a middle-class family in the middle of the country in the middle of the last century." Time's Joe Klein called it a "lovely line." Clinton repeated it often as the 2008 campaign was taking form. By late spring, major newspapers were writing about Clinton's middle-America makeover.

Obama's defenders have rightfully complained about an Internet-based whisper campaign deriding the Illinois senator's race and patriotism and very Americanism. A quick Internet search will provide ample evidence of this campaign.

But the damage of Penn's memo was because of who he is as much as what it says. He is not a right-wing activist. Don't be surprised if you see this prominent Democratic political adviser quoted in anti-Obama messages from now until November.

The memos were likely leaked by either a Penn hater inside Camp Clinton or by someone still bitter about Clinton's Democratic nomination loss to Obama — or both. The leak was as much of an anti-Obama act as the words were. It's easy to dismiss campaign consultants as paragons of pessimism. After all, the fundamental nature of their work is to probe and exploit and even conjure the illusion of weakness in others. They are motivated to paint the direst pictures of the world if their particular candidate doesn't win. But these leaks took it out of the bizarro world of consultants into the real world, granting an emphatic bipartisan stamp to fundamental doubts of Obama's very Americanism that his enemies have been trying to imprint on the public consciousness.

Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle, one of Obama's top strategists, said the leaked memos run contrary to bona fide attempts to heal divisions between the Clinton and Obama camps.

"I know that there is a genuine effort to unite the party, and I think you are going to see plenty of evidence of that during the convention itself," Daschle told the Regional Reporters Association.

But the timing of the damaging memos — two weeks before the Democratic convention in Denver — raises doubts about whether the unity effort is authentic.

"I am absolutely baffled that anybody would say that Barack doesn't meet every single test of genuine Americanism when you consider his life story," Daschle said. "He has a phenomenal life story, and I think it is one of his great assets. To be raised by your grandparents and to be raised as a minority and to rise up and live out the American dream is the essence of America."

I reminded Daschle that these doubts were not raised by right-wingers or racists but by a prominent Democratic consultant.

"It doesn't matter because it is so unbelievable," Daschle responded. "I tell you, I have seen a lot of Democratic consultant stuff that was half-baked and crazy, and this is as half-baked as it gets. .... You pay for it, that is the sad thing about it."

The question is, how much will Obama pay for this? Leaks about Al Gore's "earth-tone" campaign advice in 2000 contributed mightily to a damaging portrait of a man in search of an identity. Are there any doubts that it contributed to his loss in that disputed election?

Gore's questions were about a wardrobe. Obama's are about Americanism. And now they have a bipartisan stamp, thanks to the latest gift from Camp Clinton.