[Yes, I am getting tired of this. I’ll be done with it soon. I hope.]

Now I’m starting to see headlines like “Bush Says Ad Against Kerry Should Stop.” You might think that the President has finally come out and done what John McCain, John Warner and others have been calling on him to do for some days now, specifically denouncing the ads against Kerry. Surprise!

What he HAS done is to denounce all ads from “527” groups, the supposedly independent advocacy groups of which the Swifties are one. That’s a little like saying, to borrow a metaphor from politico-blogger Josh Marshall, that if I say I’m opposed to politicians who support the death penalty, that I’ve denounced Josef Stalin.

Let’s look at that pesky old transcript:

QUESTION: But why won’t you denounce the charges that your supporters are making against Kerry?

BUSH: I’m denouncing all the stuff being on TV, all the 527s. That’s what I’ve said.

I said this kind of unregulated soft money is wrong for the process. And I asked Senator Kerry to join me in getting rid of all that kind of soft money, not only on TV, but to use for other purposes as well.

I, frankly, thought we’d gotten rid of that when I signed the McCain-Feingold bill. I thought we were going to once and for all get rid of a system where people could just pour tons of money in and not be held to account for the advertising.

This might seem surprising to those who’ve looked at his comments when he signed the bill, when he seemed to be very concerned that advertising would be restricted:

I also have reservations about the constitutionality of the broad ban on issue advertising, which restrains the speech of a wide variety of groups on issues of public import in the months closest to an election. I expect that the courts will resolve these legitimate legal questions as appropriate under the law.

OK, so, not only has he NOT specifically denounced the allegations against Kerry, instead issuing a statement about the “process”, against “527” group advertising of all kinds, but in the process, he’s misleading about what his original position on advertising in McCain-Feingold was. Nice. And somehow this gets reported as though he’s done the honorable thing, and come out against the anti-Kerry allegations.

(And, just in case you didn’t already know, John Kerry has specifically denounced the ad from MoveOn PAC, attacking Bush’s National Guard record, which was released AFTER the first SwiftVets ad. Kerry’s actual, specific denunciation was Aug 17.)