Demagogue

Each week seems to bring additional evidence that John McCain's much ballyhooed "straight talk" persona is a complete facade. From Sunday's N.Y. Times:

Senator John McCain, intent on succeeding where his freewheeling presidential campaign of 2000 failed, is assembling a team of political bruisers for 2008. And it includes advisers who once sought to skewer him and whose work he has criticized as stepping over the line in the past.

... In 2004, Mr. McCain said the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth advertisement asserting that Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts had not properly earned his medals from the Vietnam War was “dishonest and dishonorable.”

Nonetheless, [McCain] has hired the firm that made the spots, Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, which worked on his 2000 campaign, to work for him again this year.

So I guess it's not surprising that the so-called Bush insiders feel so comfortable joining McCain's camp.