The Unconsidered Alternative

Ensign Ed is investing a great deal of keystrokes into chronicling what he calls the New York Times' "smear campaign" against RINO presidential candidate John Sith McCain, whom they themselves naturally endorsed as the left-most "Republican" in the GOP field.  Since then, says the former blogmaster and BTR flag officer, the "Grey Hag" has "painted McCain as a skirt-chasing, lobbyist-influenced, cancer-ridden hothead, all based on absolutely no evidence at all."

Now I wouldn't say that the "lobbyist-influenced" and "hothead" parts of that are completely without substantiation.  They are, in fact, long established traits of the Dark Lord that make his pretending to be a calm, born-again virtue-mongering "reformer" all that much more infuriatingly hypocritical.

What I would say is that there is a recognizeable pattern to this "reporting," which Ed plows right through without recognizing it for what it may actually be:

After whiffing badly on several McCain hit pieces, the editorial board gets into the game today with a disingenuous attack on McCain’s supposed reluctance to disclose health and financial information....

Sources close to the situation say that they explained to the Times that McCain’s campaign would release the medical records later this month, that they needed to coordinate with some very busy physicians which takes time, and that the explanation came in time for the Times to include that in the editorial....

The editorial demands that McCain release his wife’s financial records. Mrs. McCain’s finances have already been disclosed as required through Senate disclosure documents, as well as presidential campaign filings. Those records detail the sources of all income Mrs. McCain receives, as well as the range of her income, although not the exact amount. Since Mrs. McCain’s income is separated from Senator McCain through a pre-nuptial agreement, it hardly matters anyway, but the information is already public, despite what the editorial implies. Apparently the Times has been too lazy to actually do research.

Ed calls this a "smear campaign".  But I have to wonder.  We all know that the New York Times isn't the sharpest knife in the journalistic drawer.  They pissed away any claim to institutional credibility they ever had years ago.  But can even they be this mindlessly incompetent?  Given the hopelessness of the GOP in this election cycle, why would the flagship of the Enemy Media "black fleet" be frantically hurling anything it could get its hands on at Darth Queeg in such scattershot fashion?  It's not as if he's a general election threat to either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Hussein Obama, who'll individually or collectively stomp him into ballot box chunky salsa without breaking an electoral sweat.  And even if he was a serious November contender, Sailor wouldn't be any true ideological threat to the Times' political agenda.

Which leads me to my alternative hypothesis: the NYT isn't "smearing" Senator McCain; they're vetting him.

Think about it.  If this stuff was supposed to be damaging to Maverick, wouldn't they be saving it up for the fall?  Why rolodex through it now, months before it can possibly have any decisive impact on the election outcome?  Remember the Texas Air National Guard smear?  Remember QaQaagate?  I don't recall the EM rolling them out with the April showers and May flowers of 2004.  They were, instead, stockpiled for the October homestretch when President Bush would be most vulnerable.

Maybe this series of ostensible Times whiffs are just the appetizers paving the way for the "gotcha" main course, though it still seems an overly curious method of foundation-laying.  But this has the look of what a campaign does early-on to get any closet skeletons cleaned out so that the PR decks will be cleared for the general campaign.  And to me, it looks like the "Grey Lady" is being awfully facilitating in greasing the "Straight Talk Express"'s skids.

Perhaps some bet-hedging for their favorite "Republican", just in case?