Is McCain saying, “If Obama would debate me, I wouldn’t lie about him”

Each time McCain airs an attack ad, “liberal” media types like the Washington Post, the Associated Press, Factcheck.org are quick to point out the falsehoods, misleading nature and misrepresentations in the ads.  Lately, McCain has been asked about them.  His response is that first, the ads are correct, and second, Obama won’t debate me.  Here’s an exchange from his interview with NPR:

Have you come back to your advisers at any point and said — for example, the ad that ran with your name on it saying that Barack Obama supported comprehensive sex education for primary school students, something that factcheck.org said was wrong. Have you ever gone to your staff and said, “Take that ad off. It’s not right”?

It’s factually correct. It’s absolutely factually correct, and you can go on my Web site and you can see the exact language of the bill that Senator Obama sponsored. But the point is that if he had agreed to the town hall meetings that I asked him to do all around the country, like Jack Kennedy and Barry Goldwater had once agreed to do, the tenor of this campaign would be dramatically different. (emphasis mine) If we’d have gone around the country, and stood side-by-side before the American people and listened to their hopes and dreams and aspirations, the whole tenor of this campaign would be dramatically different. I’m proud of the campaign we are running, the ads are factually correct. And if someone named factcheck.org or anybody else doesn’t agree with it, I respectfully disagree with their conclusions.

So when McCain talks about a different tenor, what is he trying to tell us.  If all of his attacks are honest, why wouldn’t they fit into a campaign with a more positive tenor?  Maybe that will be the next question he tries to answer.