In a front page story in today’s Washington Post, the paper comes as close as they can to saying that John McCain is outright lying about Barack Obama in an attempt to smear him as unpatriotic. The Post story doesn’t mention that NBC’s Andrea Mitchell was there in Afghanistan with Obama, and she is a personal witness to the fact that McCain’s message about Obama is an outright lie. But still, in journalism circles, reporters are loathe to accuse someone of lying (it’s not clear why), so this article is stunning in how close it comes to doing just that about McCain.

The bigger question is why McCain has adopted this strategy of outright lying about Obama, but even more, trying to label Obama as basically un-American. I think there is one main reason. McCain fears that he is losing, badly: He’s desperate. It’s no coincidence that a few months ago, Karl Rove started advising the McCain campaign. Rove specializes in these kind of “patriotism” attacks. But why McCain, who has always claimed to be a different breed of politician, who has always promised to never go negative, to never question his opponent’s patriotism, has now adopted every dirty trick he’s in the past disowned.

And worse for McCain, the media has caught on and they’re reporting the story. What comes next is the process story – not that McCain is lying and going super negative when he said he wouldn’t, but worse, a media analysis as to why McCain is doing all of this. And that analysis can’t be good.

McCain’s strong suit is his “maverick” status. Now he’s become just another dirty, lying (Republican) politician, and the media, his “base” as he calls them, has suddenly abandoned him (for the first time that I can recall). These kind of attacks can work, but only when the media agrees to play along (see: the media’s quiescence to the Swift Boat attacks against Kerry). In this case, the media, starting with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, refused to play along, and insisted, instead, on reporting the facts. That’s when this kind of negative campaigning can go horribly wrong for a candidate, essentially blowing up in their face. And in McCain’s case, it just has.