Nope, not even him.

I've grumbled a bit about the misappropriation of the term "swiftboating," arguing that it's not just any attack, but a particular kind of lie about a candidate's military record. Like this...

“Today, a shadowy political organization calling itself ‘Vietnam Veterans Against McCain’ launched a vicious attack on John McCain in an attempt to impugn his character in the closing days of the South Carolina Republican Primary,” Orson Swindle, who was a fellow prisoner of war in Vietnam with Mr. McCain, said in a statement put out by the campaign. “The group claims that John McCain turned his back on his fellow POWs in order to save his own skin.”

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Mr. Swindle, a former assistant commerce secretary, said in the statement. “I know because I was there. The truth is, the North Vietnamese offered John McCain early release, and he refused.”

I'm a Vietnam vet myself, and as a proudly partisan Democrat, I'm against John McCain. I think he's wrong about, well, about damn near everything. I also believe that his tenure as a POW, a time when he forsook the advantages he might have gained as the son of a prominent naval officer, can only be characterized as heroic. While he hasn't always displayed the political courage you might hope that experience would inspire, his courage in captivity is well documented and unreservedly admirable.

Enough.