McCain: Swift Boat Vets Bad Yet Good

Sooo good, with their dirty, dirty tricks. As I reported yesterday, John McCain maintains his scathing denunciation of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, yet he employs one of them on his newly formed "Truth Squad," formed to respond to comments by Wesley Clark.

Now, USA Today is reporting that McCain's embrace of the Swift Boat Vets extends well beyond that:

Republican John McCain, who four years ago condemned independent ads challenging Democrat John Kerry's military record, has accepted nearly $70,000 for his presidential campaign from the top donors of the group behind the attack ads and their relatives, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said in an e-mail that McCain accepted the money because the donors are "interested in supporting (his) agenda of reform, prosperity and peace."

Wow, when is he going to unveil that agenda? It sounds good!

John McCain's embrace of this group might be his biggest act of political whoredom to date, and his most idiotic. Even Republicans have to be shaking their heads at this latest, Bill Buckner-esque blunder. Instead of letting the media start the fireworks, he tried to set off his own display, and it blew up in his face.

When I reported on Bud Day yesterday, I included my entire email thread with the McCain campaign, because the responses I got were obtuse enough to leave a smidgen of wiggle room as to whether they had known about Bud Day's connection to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. There is no doubt that they know about it now, and yet Day remains a charter Truth Squad member.

Think about that for a minute. First of all, he's forming a "Truth Squad" to rebut things that the "Truth Squad" doesn't even say are untrue. None of what Clark said was factually innaccurate.

So, you start up a completely unnecessary "Truth Squad," and you select, as a member, someone who belongs to a group that launch the most famous dirty smear attacks in history. A group that got famous attacking your close, personal friend. A group that you have vehemently denounced. A group that you know you have taken $70,000 from.

Instead of sitting back and letting the media do his work for him, which they had already started to do, McCain fired a torpedo at several of his biggest assets. McCain earned a lot of goodwill when he defended John Kerry in 2004. This severely erodes that, plus it takes another bite out of his already chewed-up "Straight Talk" narrative, and it shows his own willingness to politicize service in Vietnam.

Worst of all for McCain, the Swift Boat angle is likely to eclipse Clark's story, thereby nullifying any gain he could have expected from that.

He also handed Barack Obama a gift, letting him come to McCain's defense during his speech yesterday, further burnishing Obama's post-partisan narrative, and buttressing his argument about patriotism.

John McCain should take a lesson from Hippocrates, and "First, do no harm." Instead, he has tattooed himself with the Hypocritic Oath: "First, do your worst."