I need some help with research. Plus I found this old gem of an article:

[beachmom]

I am piecing together everything Kerry did for McCain in 2000. I think this is important, because everyone talks about how McCain condemned the SBVT ads in August 2004, but that was not as big as what Kerry did for McCain in 2000. We will need this, because going into the G.E., Kerry will be a surrogate for our nominee and pound McCain hard on his positions, especially Iraq. Then everyone will say he is ungrateful after what McCain did for him. Well, Kerry has done PLENTY for McCain. So for starters, I found the proof that Kerry didn't merely sign the letter condemning the attacks on McCain, but organized it:


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040802-672573,00.html

Kerry talks all the time about the lessons he learned in Vietnam but rarely about what he did there. The story of how he saved Green Beret Jim Rassmann from the Bay Hap River under fire in 1969 would never have been told if Rassmann hadn't offered to tell it—dramatically, on the eve of the Iowa caucuses. Years ago, three of the Vietnam combat veterans Kerry served with in the Senate—John McCain, Bob Kerrey and Max Cleland—told me something that Kerry had never even hinted at: that Kerry had come to their rescue on occasions when they had been publicly attacked. He organized Op-Ed pieces and television appearances to defend his colleagues; he wrote a letter during the 2000 South Carolina primary, signed by Vietnam combat veterans of both parties, calling on George W. Bush to stop associating with veterans' groups who said McCain had abandoned vets; when Kerrey was accused of participating in a massacre of civilians in Vietnam, Kerry called some mutual friends and had them hang out with Kerrey until the storm passed. "I just love the guy," Kerrey once told me.

The whole article, however, written by Joe Klein (sigh, sigh, sigh) is well worth re-reading. I really liked it.

So here is my research request, and I know it exists because I remember reading it, but I can't find it. Kerry defended McCain against charges that he was too hot tempered and unstable to be POTUS. The thing is many liberals are now repeating that McCain is too hot tempered, and I think I have as well. Here is the problem: the smear comes from Rove:

http://swiftvets.eriposte.com/appendixb.htm#B4

FACT SHEET:
Bush Waged Nasty Smear Campaign Against McCain in 2000

Bush Supporters Called McCain “The Fag Candidate.” In South Carolina, Bush supporters circulated church fliers that labeled McCain “the fag candidate.” Columnist Frank Rich noted that the fliers were distributed “even as Bush subtly reinforced that message by indicating he wouldn’t hire openly gay people for his administration.”

McCain Slurs Included Illegitimate Children, Homosexuality And A Drug-Addict Wife. Among the rumors circulated against McCain in 2000 in South Carolina was that his adopted Bangladeshi daughter was actually black, that McCain was both gay and cheated on his wife, and that his wife Cindy was a drug addict.”

Bush Campaign Used Code Words to Question McCain’s Temper. “A smear campaign of the ugliest sort is now coursing through the contest for the presidency in 2000. Using the code word "temper," a group of Senate Republicans, and at least some outriders of the George W. Bush campaign, are spreading the word that John McCain is unstable. The subtext, also suggested in this whispering campaign, is that he returned from 5 1/2 years as a POW in North Vietnam with a loose screw. And it is bruited about that he shouldn't be entrusted with nuclear weapons.”

Bush Supporters Questioned McCain’s Sanity. “Some of George W. Bush's supporters have questioned Republican presidential candidate John McCain's fitness for the White House, suggesting that his five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam drove him insane at the time.”

Bush Supporters Spread Racist Rumors About McCain’s Daughter. Bush supporters in South Carolina made race-baiting phone calls saying that McCain had a “black child.” The McCains’ daughter, Bridget, was adopted from Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh. In August 2000, columnist Maureen Dowd wrote that the McCains “are still seething about Bush supporters in South Carolina spreading word of their dark-skinned adopted daughter.”

Rove Suggests Former POW McCain Committed Treason and Fathered Child With Black Prostitute. In 2000, McCain operatives in SC accused Rove of spreading rumors against McCain, such as “suggestions that McCain had committed treason while a prisoner of war, and had fathered a child by a black prostitute,” according to the New Yorker.

* After Rove Denied Role In McCain Whisper Campaign, Reporters Concluded He Was Behind It. A December 1999 Dallas Morning News linked Rove to a series of campaign dirty tricks, including his College Republican efforts, allegedly starting a whisper campaign about Ann Richard being too gay-friendly, spreading stories about Jim Hightower’s involvement in a kickback scheme and leaking the educational history of Lena Guerrero. The article also outlined current dirty tricks and whisper campaigns against McCain in South Carolina, including that “McCain may be unstable as a result of being tortured while a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.” (DMN, 12/2/99) After the article was published, Rove blasted Slater in the Manchester, NH airport, “nose to nose” according to one witness, with Rove claiming Slater had “harmed his reputation,” Slater later noted. But according to one witness, “What was interesting then is that everyone on the campaign charter concluded that Rove was responsible for rumors about McCain.”

* Rove Was In Close Touch With McConnell, McCain-Feingold’s Chief Opponent. Senior White House adviser Karl Rove was in close contact with Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) during McConnell’s effort to fight the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Bill in the U.S. Senate. According to Newsweek, though Rove and Bush have publicly kept their distance from McConnell on the issue, “sources tell Newsweek that Rove is, in fact, in close touch with McConnell as GOP experts study the bill for hidden land mines.”

Bush Campaign Accused of Using Push Polls Against McCain. College of Charleston student Suzette Latsko said she received a telephone call from a woman who identified herself as an employee of Voter/Consumer Research, and that the caller misrepresented McCain’s positions and asked if Latsko knew McCain had been reprimanded for interfering with federal regulators in the savings and loan scandal. Voter/Consumer Research is listed as a polling contractor on Bush’s Federal Election Commission filings; the Bush campaign has paid Voter/Consumer Research $93,000 through December 31, 1999. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer denied the call was a push poll, but said it was important that the Republican Party remember McCain’s role in the S&L crisis.

* Bush Campaign Acknowledged Making Phone Calls. Tucker Eskew, Bush’s South Carolina spokesman, acknowledged the Bush campaign made such calls, but claimed they were not “push polls.” Eskew added, “Show me a baseless comment in those questions.”

Bush Used Fringe Veterans Group to Attack McCain as “Manchurian Candidate.” “In the case of Ted Sampley, the same guy who did Bush's dirty work in going after Sen. John McCain in the 2000 Republican primaries is doing the job against Kerry this year. Sampley dared compare McCain, who spent five years as a Vietnam POW, with ‘the Manchurian Candidate.’”

* Sampley Called McCain a “Coward” and a Traitor. “Sampley… accused McCain of being a weak-minded coward who had escaped death by collaborating with the enemy. Sampley claimed that McCain had first been compromised by the Vietnamese, then recruited by the Soviets.”

I know I read that Kerry defended McCain against this attack. If someone has it, I would appreciate it. I assume that Kerry would never, ever, ever use this type of attack against McCain this year. I see liberal bloggers actively promoting it, and it is a story in the WP (although I assume the incidences took place re: Grassley).

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/19/AR2008041902224.html?hpid=topnews

I guess there is a fine line. If he indeed had incidences in the Senate that are true, that is fine. It is quite another to talk in the incendiary language cited above from the Bush 2000 campaign.

[beachmom]

1. Reading through the "temper" article, I am struck by how much

Bob Smith of NH really does not like McCain. Remember, Smith was in that c-span3 program of when Kerry went to Vietnam on official business for the POW/MIA committee. Of course, McCain was on that committee, too. It seems to me that Kerry didn't seem to have problems with McCain the way the others did. Maybe because he was a Democrat? I don't know, but this is pretty contentious stuff:

Early during their days together in the Senate, Smith came to believe that McCain often used his temper as a strategic weapon, that if he "couldn't persuade you, he was going at least to needle you or (sometimes) belittle you or blow up into trying to have you believe you were beneath him, so that you'd be less likely to challenge him. He needed to be the top guy."

Smith admits to not liking McCain, a point he has often made over the years to reporters. "I've witnessed a lot of his temper and outbursts," Smith said. "For me, some of this stuff is relevant. It raises questions about stability. . . . It's more than just temper. It's this need of his to show you that he's above you -- a sneering, condescending attitude. It's hurt his relationships in Congress. . . . I've seen it up-close."

Smith, whose service in the Navy included a tour on the waters in and around Vietnam, said he stood stunned one day when McCain declared around several of their colleagues that Smith wasn't a real Vietnam War veteran. "I was in the combat zone, off the Mekong River, for 10 months," Smith said. "He went on to insult me several times. I wasn't on the land; I guess that was his reasoning. . . . He suggested I was masquerading about my Vietnam service. It was very hurtful. He's gotten to a lot of people ."

[TayTay]

2. The New Yorker Article from 1996

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1996/10/21/1996_10_21_130_TNY_CARDS_000377420

In 1984, thirteen years after that protest at the Capitol, John McCain, by then a United States representative from Arizona, went to Massachusetts to campaign against Kerry, a first-time Senate candidate. At a rally in the North End of Boston, McCain spoke in support of the Republican candidate, a businessman named Ray Shamie. "I hadn't met John Kerry," McCain told me. In Boston, conservative opponents had tagged Kerry as Ho Chi Minh's candidate. McCain, in his appearance for Shamie, talked about the events of April, 1971. "I said he shouldn't have thrown his medals on the steps, and that I heard about it while I was in prison."

John McCain has never changed his mind about Kerry's participation in that antiwar demonstration, but he has changed his mind about the man. Much sets the two apart. Kerry is tall and lean, with carefully coiffed dark hair, a sharp nose and chin, and a mouth that seems small for his face, which perhaps explains why his expression falls into a smile only with reluctance. He could be cast in any movie as the patrician senator. McCain looks more like a senator's friendly appliance repairman. He is stocky, with washed-out white hair and the slightly pasty skin of a man who has been through something. But a smile comes into McCain's face like a boat into its slip. McCain is the son and grandson of admirals, while Kerry's mother was a Boston Brahmin and his father a Foreign Service officer. Kerry, a liberal Democrat, is at ease in the role of Senator Edward Kennedy's junior partner; McCain is proud to hold Barry Goldwater's Senate seat. Kerry came out of Vietnam as a leading critic of the war, McCain as one of its few true heroes.

Nevertheless, their names have become linked, both through their surprising friendship and through their work together on the Select Committee. "Kerry-McCain" is said as if it were one word. It describes legislation they have co-sponsored, and defines an unusual place in the political landscape. This past June, for example, a Kerry-McCain measure provided millions of dollars in compensation for the "lost commandos"—covert agents from South Vietnam whom the C.I.A. had long ago cut loose. "Our relationship is now so easy," McCain told me, "this latest, on the commandos . . . was a two-minute conversation. We didn't have to explore each other's views or anything like that. We both thought alike, and we just did it." Last month, when a CNBC talk show wanted comments on the United States missile attacks against Iraq, Kerry and McCain appeared as a duo. Across the boundaries of ideology, the men have formed a potent bipartisan partnership, grounded in a common, if rarely articulated, experience of the loss, grief, and bitterness that marked the generation of Americans who fought the war in Vietnam and fought against it.

McCain has long since eaten the words he uttered for Ray Shamie in 1984, and it is a good thing for John Kerry that he has. This year, Kerry, up for reëlection, is being challenged by Massachusetts' popular Republican governor, William Weld. After two terms, Kerry has an impressive record nationally and locally, but in Massachusetts politics he is always overshadowed by Ted Kennedy, and now the contrast between his hyper-formality and Weld's self-mocking frivolity—this summer, Weld leaped into the Charles River fully clothed—has him in trouble: he is in a dead heat with Weld in the polls. Kerry's refusal—or inability—to play the role either of the breezy backslapper or of the sincere self-revealer seems to leave Clinton-era voters cold. At a time when the values of the sitcom and the soap opera prevail, Kerry's reserve may mean that his best hope for November is pinned to the President's coattails.

Few things would benefit Weld as much as a repeat of McCain's anti-Kerry visit to Massachusetts in 1984. The Arizona senator, whose Convention role as Dole's nominator signalled his importance, is one of the Party's most sought-after campaigners. McCain is working hard to protect the Republican majority in the Senate, and he regards the liberalism of Democrats like Kerry as a danger to the nation's future. Nevertheless, when I asked McCain if he would be campaigning for Weld, he shook his head, an emphatic no. "I simply would not do such a thing. I couldn't do that. . . . I'm surprised you would ask. . . . Going to campaign against John Kerry is just something I wouldn't consider." McCain's devotion to Kerry is an anomaly in American politics, and it is a measure of Kerry's reticence that few of his home-state constituents know of it, or of the story that lies behind it.

[Inuca]

3. Interesting stuff

from way before "my time", i.e., before I started following politics quasi-obsessively. The last paragraph... who on earth is the real McCain? My perception of him, based mostly on what he has done and said in the last few years, is of somebody (almost as?) blinded by ambitions as the C's, someone who needs adulation (I almost feel sorry for poor Lindsey Graham at times; almost) and who uses people and circumstances to further his own agenda and to caress his own ego. And not much of a moral compass, which of course has nothing to do with his political positions, which are a completely different story. What he said about campaigning against Kerry in 96 was very nice though. OTOH he seems to have underwent a change of heart 8 years later.