Here's mud in your eye

McCain has treaded down that path as well, of course. McCain's TV ad that compared Bush to Clinton certainly pulled no punches. Wary of the fate that befell fellow insurgent Sen. Bill Bradley when he didn't respond to the shit storm Vice President Al Gore flushed upon him, McCain swore he would respond to Bush's attacks immediately and strongly. Additionally, McCain had always refrained from having anything but praise for Bush's National Guard service, and was infuriated that Bush had the temerity to attack him on the issue, as he did through surrogate Thomas Burch.

So the ad went up. Then, after even his friends told him that it went over the line, he took it down. According McCain, when he started hearing stories of just how ugly the campaign against him was becoming, he backed off completely. "We're running nothing but a positive campaign," McCain says now. "Our ads are going to be positive, our message is positive. And I promise you, that's not only for the rest of South Carolina but for the rest of this campaign."

McCain, ever the crafty, postmodern pol, has tried to turn his newfound refusal to go negative into a negative attack on Bush in itself. There are a number of reasons for this, beginning with the fact that the mud wrestling has hurt him more than it has hurt Bush and is likely to depress voter turnout, which will also help Bush -- not to mention the fact that he doesn't have the third-party groups in his corner.

But this is a huge gamble. As everyone in politics can tell you, negative campaigning works. The proof's in the polling: Since Bush first went on the attack -- standing next to a former Green Beret who erroneously slammed McCain for ignoring the plight of veterans -- his poll numbers have risen while McCain's have begun to sink. A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll of likely primary voters, taken Friday through Sunday, had Bush with 49 percent, McCain with 42 percent and debate commentator Alan Keyes with 5 percent.

The poll showed that respondents held McCain and Bush equally responsible for the negative tone of the campaign. Tuesday night's debate probably didn't help any; both McCain and Bush were whiny and equally negative. Being negative was a bad move by McCain -- who had been advised to rise above that.

"This campaign took an ugly turn after New Hampshire," McCain said to a packed tent outside a Columbia synagogue Tuesday afternoon. "And by the way, I've been tried by experts, so I don't feel sorry for myself. I don't have any sympathy for me. But I was attacked, we were attacked, we responded and I saw that this campaign was starting to spiral down like a lot of other campaigns we have all observed." So he decided he wasn't going to play anymore.

But even as McCain spoke these words to the Jewish audience, McCain staffers anticipated that someone would start informing the state's sizable population of anti-Semites about McCain's visit. A paranoid thought, sure, but Bush does travel the state with former Gov. Campbell, who knows firsthand the benefits of Jew baiting.

All of this leaves a bad taste in Graham's mouth. "It's never been done at this level," he says. "If it works this time then we've set a course for our political future in the state ... because the next group of politicians will believe that this is what you have to do: push polling, distortions of record. This will be a bad thing in South Carolina if we legitimize this, because it will be our future."

During the CNN debate on Tuesday night, Bush took issue with McCain's assertion that he was the victim of most of the negativity. Brandishing a leaflet that he claimed was negative toward Bush, Bush accused McCain of hypocrisy. McCain disavowed knowing anything about it. He should have taken a look at the sheet because it wasn't a piece of negative literature, it was just a fairly innocuous, issue-based compare-and-contrast between the two candidates on the Social Security Trust Fund.

McCain's mistake? He took Bush at his word. And it seems reasonable now, with Bush at the very least not trying to stop the mud being hurled at McCain, to reexamine some of the front-runner's promises in the early stages of his campaign.

Wasn't he the one deriding "mud throwing and name calling" in a TV ad last fall? "Americans are sick of that kind of campaigning," Bush said, promising to run a "hopeful and optimistic and very positive" race.

Before that, in July in Indianapolis, Bush pledged to "carry a message of hope and renewal to every community in this country."

"We can, in our imperfect way, rise now and again to the example of St. Francis -- where there is hatred, sowing love; where there is darkness, shedding light; where there is despair, bringing hope."

That seems like a long time ago now.

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