TOLEDO, Ohio — This has been a weekend where both campaigns have urged the other to restrain their surrogates, their crowds and each other to demonstrate restraint where issues of race are concerned.

John McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, demanded that Barack Obama personally apologize to McCain for the comments of a supporter, Rep. John Lewis of Georgia. Lewis, a hero of the Civil Right movement, said on Saturday that some of McCain’s recent rallies reminded him of the worst moments of the late Alabama Democrat George Wallace’s segregationist career.

Obama, when asked about Lewis’s comments today during a door-knocking photo opportunity in Holland, Ohio, said he was too busy “shaking hands” to respond.

Late today, speaking to supporters at his Crystal City, Va., headquarters, McCain said this about the homestretch of the campaign and Wednesday’s final debate with Obama.

“It’s closing up in Virginia, but we’re gonna win in Virginia and we’re going to have to get out our vote and that’s what a lot of it’s going to come down to. Tomorrow Sarah and I are going to be down in the Norfolk area – I believe, if somebody has our schedule – and we’ll be spending time campaigning in Virginia too. We also gotta cross, go across Ohio, Pennsylvania, as you know. And I don’t have to tell you what – not insulting your intelligence – but Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico are also going to be important. So we’re spending a lot of time and after I whip his you know what in this debate we’re going to be going out…

The rest of McCain’s statement trails off as supporters first laugh nervously and then break out in applause.

“Whip.”

Is that the word that best helps McCain make the case that there’s nothing in his past, his rhetoric, or his rallies that carries the faintest whiff of racial insensitivity?

Even as a harmless metaphor — which two senior McCain advisers genuinely insist it was — was that the kind imagery McCain really sought?

After two days of racial grievances aired by McCain’s camp about what Lewis said, it seems more than odd that McCain would use a verb that describes what many powerful whites did to powerless blacks during the worst days of Jim Crow.

The Obama campaign took no public offense.

Several Republicans, when made aware of McCain’s comments, recoiled. Many Democrats found the use of “whip” outrageous. The early read, however, appears to be that it will be seen in most quarters as an unfortunate choice of words.

It most certainly was that. Even McCain advisers admit that (they’re actually far more worried about McCain recklessly raising expectations for his performance against Obama).

On a day when Hillary Clinton hit the trail with gusto in Scranton, Pa., for the Obama-Biden ticket, The Bourbon Room believes it’s at least worth asking if McCain would ever have said he intended to “whip” any part of Hillary.