] President Bush yesterday repeated his condemnation of
] unregulated money that he said was "pouring" into the
] political process. But he stopped short of denouncing the
] ad by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which is being aired
] in three battleground states and is funded largely by
] Republicans.

Many media outlets, including MSNBC and the (British) Independent got this wrong. Bush did not specifically condemn that Swift Vet Ad. Once again, he *did* blast 527 group spending. Bush never had any problem with such spending back when Republicans benefited from it (think 2000 in the Florida Recount).

[ Yeah, it's really Bush's only move. If there was any class left in this battle, he'd say it like "I like to fight my own battles, and I don't appreciate the way this group is attacking my opponent." He could even tie in an anti-527 message to that. Except I'm pretty sure I recall that he specifically opposed measures of the M-F bill which limited these groups. I'd have to research to verify.

Regardless, even conceding that he genuintely doesn't like 527's, he does appreciate the message, obviously, because it's the standard tactic of avoiding any kind of actual issues discussion while keeping silly crap above the fold. The only response kerry has to this kind of stuff is to a) point out that his refusal to directly denounce this crap is in contradiction of his prior statements of respect and honor for Kerry's service, b) point out that Mr. Bush was never wounded, superficially or otherwise, because he didn't *go* anywhere and c) drill home some points on other issues.

I think the more time he spends bringing out vets that support his side of the story and whining to FEC just makes it worse and lets it dominate the news. The media eats up anything it can jam into a he-said/she-said framework because then they can keep writing more of the same as the endless stream of rebuttals and counters come from each side. The non-journalists that dominate this process seldom bother to research either the he-said or the she-said to get some objective truth into the story, so the cycle keeps rolling. It's good business, but bad reporting. The Post is better at this than others, but i imagine it's discounted by a lot of people for it's "liberal bias".

I still can't believe the legs this story has. -k]

Kerry Team Lines Up Vietnam Witnesses (washingtonpost.com)