Adam Nagourney has says the Times is “spinning like a one-legged crab” for John Kerry here, and it’s tough to disagree. Gerald Ford’s statement that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe” was eight words during the course of three debates.

Nagourney’s article is a classic example of the techniques I described in this post on liberal bias in the wording of a news article. Like the article I discussed in that post, this piece is “told from the point of view of the Kerry campaign . . . We see the thoughts of the Kerry advisers as though we can see into their minds.” The article says that “Republicans were quick to seize on the exchange” rather than describing the criticism as some disembodied entity (”there is mounting criticism”), as news articles do when they agree with the criticism.

Finally, we get this at the end:

As is frequently the case in campaign episodes like this, the real damage is a function of whether they reinforce existing voter concerns about a candidate, like when Bill Clinton, at the very time he was being mocked as “Slick Willie,” talked about smoking marijuana and not inhaling. And Republicans were arguing that this was the case. “This reminded people that this is a guy who will say anything to get elected,” Mr. Dowd said.

Perhaps. Democrats were less sure about that. It is not as if Mr. Kerry had argued both sides of the same issue.

Ah. So Kerry can get away with a cheap political stunt, because that’s not his usual schtick — waffling is. That’s the most creative defense I’ve heard yet.

It’s easy to see why this guy is the top political writer for the nation’s most prestigious newspaper.