Today the Washington Post prints one of the most vicious columns I’ve ever read in a mainstream newspaper, as Tina Brown hisses and claws at the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth like an enraged ferret: Old Warriors Giving Their Last, Worst Shot.

The worst thing about the Swift boat moment has been the steady march of aggrieved sexagenarians across our TV screens, banging the hollow drums of their pasts. They were heroes once and young, but look what politics has wrought: Gabby, flabby John O’Neill, the author of “Unfit for Command”; shifty George Elliott; Van Odell with his sorrowful Wyatt Earp mustache; now-you-see-him-now-you-don’t Bush campaign worker Ken Cordier. As the vets talk and talk on the cable shows, the inevitable black-and-white blowup in the background of the young Kerry’s big, melancholy chin and soulful eyes gives reproachful testimony to better selves buried in the watery past of Vietnam.

It’s Karl Rove 101. Just as he is now said by campaign aides to be gleeful about bringing the Republican convention to the hostile territory of New York City, Rove is surely enjoying the Swift boat roadshow. The Bushies can deny the linkage all they want, but can’t you detect Rove’s demonic chuckle as the seven malcontents, backed by lightly laundered Texas cash, come trundling through the talk shows?