I'm balking because I don't like this sort of stuff in general and because there are some potentially bad practical consequences.
First, Obama's success has had a lot to do with building a reputation as exceptionally honest, positive, and non-frivolous for a politician. Even if his attacks aren't nearly to the scale of McCain's, some people are going to say "looks like he's just another politician" and tune out.
Besides the short-term damage that would do to Obama's campaign, it would make things harder for a long-term agenda of reform.
A central tenet of Obama's theory of change is that you need an engaged, active electorate in order to break through the influence of special interests (read: industry groups with a lot of money), who would rather keep the status quo.
It's not just enough for a majority of people to favor reform; you need them to really care about it and feel that the political process will reward their efforts, so that elected officials are more worried about pressure from the voters than pressure from big donors. When cynicism takes over, the failure of politics becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: people are apathetic because they figure the game is rigged, and lobbyists are able to rig the game because people are too apathetic to push back.
I think it's a pretty canny take on the situation, even if I'm not 100% sold on it and I'd like to see him stick with it.
Even if he's framing this as part of a big issue, it does feel like a bit of a departure from that strategy and he should be very careful about how they play this.
