Obama Advisor: "Dollar Bill" Comment Not About Race

In case you didn't read my original post on the matter, here's a recap. Obama so badly wants his race to be an issue in this race that he has finally stopped waiting for Republicans to do it and has begun doing it himself. Here are the comments and some video of the same:

“They know that you’re not real happy with them and so the only way they figure they’re going to win this election is if they make you scared of me,” Obama continued, repeating an attack from earlier in the day. “What they’re saying is ‘Well, we know we’re not very good but you can’t risk electing Obama. You know, he’s new, he doesn’t look like the other presidents on the currency, he’s a got a funny name.’”

Then this one:

“They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

But now, the Obama campaign says that Barack did not mean anything about race. Huh? According to the statement by Obama's spokesman, Tommy Vietor, Obama "in no ways believes that the McCain campaign is using race as an issue...". So why, then, does Barack insist on injecting race into this campaign? As one Politico reader pointed out, if he wasn't talking about race what was he talking about? Powdered wigs?