The former maverick, the current hypocrite

Greg Sargent is pleased to note that one part of the MSM (the NYTimes) is finally calling McCain on his hypocrisy.

Okay, it looks like one big news org is finally getting a little bit tough with John McCain. The New York Times has just posted a piece pointing out that many of the advisers he's hired -- from his ad men to his senior aides -- are people McCain's aggressively faulted in the past for launching political attacks that he said at the time were over the line. More after the jump.

The Times points out that McCain has hired:

* Mark McKinnon, Russell Schriefer and Stuart Stevens as his ad men -- but McCain complained in 2000 that the ads those men helped make for Bush distorted his record.

* The ad-making firm of Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm -- which worked on his 2000 campaign, but which also made the ads for the Swift Boat Vets against John Kerry in 2004, which McCain called "dishonest and dishonorable."

* Terry Nelson, a GOP operative who played a key role in launching the infamous "bimbo" ad against former Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford. Another of McCain's advisers has faulted that ad.

One highlight of the piece: The Times observes that these hires come as McCain "transitions from being a onetime maverick to a candidate seeking to gather his party around him and create an air of inevitability about his prospects for winning nomination."

"Onetime maverick" -- exactly right. As in, not a maverick this time around. If only the other news orgs would follow the Times' lead...