Good For Andrew

I'll be back full time on Wednesday or Thursday. But I've just got to link to this post by Andrew Sullivan, which places the SBVF"T" in, as they say, a nutshell:

Every time I checked out the blogosphere or the cable news or the papers, I felt relieved to be absent with leave. The low point was obviously the Swift Boat vets, jumping like bait on the end of Karl Rove's line. For a president who never served in Vietnam to get his cronies to lambaste an opponent who actually put his life in danger was, well, breathtakingly bold. And you really have to hand it to Bush. He knows how to campaign hard, to deploy smears of opponents indirectly, to stoke fears of minorities to rally votes, and every other hardball tactic. I wish I could get all huffy about this, but it's always been Bush's campaign mojo: divide, smear and beam. Kerry should have seen it coming. The only thing that can deflect from it is a more effective smear in the other direction. But the Bush-haters have now so debased that currency Bush is essentially in the clear. Advantage: Rove.

P.S.: I loved Bush's comment yesterday about the smear-ad: "I can understand why Senator Kerry is upset with us. I wasn't so pleased with the ads that were run about me. And my call is get rid of them all, now." "Us"?? I thought Bush had nothing to do with it.

Sigh. I wish I could be as stoic about this as Andrew. Is Glenn Reynolds taking notes? It is possible to be a conservative and an influential blogger and still not transform one's site into an echo-chamber for fraudulent, defamatory, and libelous attacks.