Much has been made lately by the liberal blogs about Karl Rove’s acknowledgment that Senator John McCain’s campaign has been stretching the truth.

What Mr. Rove, the former political strategist for President Bush, actually said was that both Mr. McCain and Senator Barack Obama have “gone one step too far” in their assertions about each other. He gave an example involving Mr. Obama, then was asked about Mr. McCain.

This is the part of his quote that gets repeated:

“McCain has gone, in some of his ads, similarly gone one step too far in sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100-percent truth test,” Mr. Rove said Sunday on “Fox News Sunday.”

For the architect of the two successful Bush presidential campaigns to call out his fellow Republican, that was surprising enough.