I think the NY Times has just published the definitive take-down of the Swift Boat Veterans for Lies with Friendly Fire: The Birth of an Anti-Kerry Ad. You'd have to be nuts to want to fly the tattered flag of their credibility from your campaign anymore, and I expect Bush will continue to try to maintain deniability and distance himself from the smear…especially since the article ties it to his advisors.

Mr. Kerry called them "a front for the Bush campaign" - a charge the campaign denied.
A series of interviews and a review of documents show a web of connections to the Bush family, high-profile Texas political figures and President Bush's chief political aide, Karl Rove.

I commend the Times for doing what journalists are supposed to do, questioning the truth of claims made by politicians instead of just echoing quotes and counter-quotes. But I also think that David Neiwert has the uncomfortable truth: they also have to start taking the next step, and deal with the issues that matter.

The Swift Boat Veterans flap -- like the "Kerry affair with an intern" rumor -- is clearly just a smear about nothing. It's a meaningless he said/she said tempest, and it reveals nothing meaningful about the two men running for president this year (except, perhaps, the eagerness of one of them to stoop to condoning gutter-level smears because he has nothing else to offer).

Someday, you might start thinking instead about discussing issues that are meaningful to the nation's citizens in fundamental and substantive ways:

-- What is the right course for securing the nation against terrorism, while protecting the civil liberties that define us?
-- How are we going to effectively extricate ourselves from the ongoing mess we created in Iraq, and bring our soldiers home and out of harm's way?
-- What can we do about the 2 million or so jobs that have been lost in the past four years -- as well as the continuing malaise in job creation?
-- What can we do about the ballooning federal budget deficit, for which our children and grandchildren will be paying?
-- How can we develop an effective energy policy that confronts and begins to reverse our longtime dependence not merely on oil, but on the giant congolmerates and Middle Eastern suzerains who control it -- because gasoline prices are reaching outrageous levels, because the spectre of stagflation continues to hover, and most of all, because oil continues to entangle us in military adventures that cost us both treasure and lives?
-- What can we do about better preserving our environment, and especially confronting global warming, now that we know it's not just a theory, and we know that its effects may be truly dire and truly destructive?

That's what I want now, and I want the media to get in the habit so that they continue to push and question on issues of substance when John Kerry gets into office. While I think dismantling the Swift Boat Veterans for Slime campaign is a good thing, it's also a matter of dismantling cheap sleaze, which is relatively easy to do. Let's all hope they'll work their way up to the harder stuff soon.