New York Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller doesn't bother to clue in her readers, but she reports on her own conversation with John McCain yesterday in her article on the subject. She writes about it weirdly as if she were a disinterested observer:

Senator John McCain fielded a question at a public forum on Friday morning in Atlanta that he said he had never been asked before. Because Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, had approached him about being his running mate for the White House in 2004, would Mr. McCain now return the favor?

Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, who has long been distrusted by conservatives as a Democratic sympathizer, quickly said no he would not — and just as quickly said he had never considered sharing the ticket with Mr. Kerry, a friend.

“He is, as he describes himself, a liberal Democrat,” Mr. McCain said of Mr. Kerry, adding that he meant no offense by the term. “I am a conservative Republican. So when I was approached, when we had that conversation back in 2004, that’s why I never even considered such a thing.”

Later, when Mr. McCain was asked by a reporter from The New York Times about the conversation and why he said in an interview with The Times in May 2004 that he had not even had a casual conversation with Mr. Kerry on the topic, Mr. McCain displayed some of the temper that he is known for but that he has largely kept under control in this campaign.

“Everybody knows I had a conversation,” he testily told the reporter in a news conference on his plane as it headed here from Atlanta. “Everybody knows that, that I had a conversation. There’s no living American in Washington, there’s no one, and you know it, too. You know it. You know it. So I don’t even know why you asked.”

When asked to address when the conversation with Mr. Kerry occurred, Mr. McCain once again replied sharply. “No, no,” he said, “because the issue is closed, as far as I’m concerned. Everybody knows it. Everybody knows it in America.”

Here Bumiller justifies her story and her line of inquiry:

The issue has become a highly sensitive one to Mr. McCain, who is actively courting conservatives.

I wasn't aware of that. If true, I guess that would explain Bumiller's interest in the story at this late date.

Via Patrick Hynes.

PAUL adds: Like much else with the McCain campaign, the rumors regarding a Kerry-McCain alliance are, potentially, a double-edged sword. My guess is that conservatives won't end up caring very much about these rumors when confronted by the prospect of a Clinton or Obama presidency. But moderates and independents may regard it as a plus that, in 2004, the Democratic nominee wanted McCain on his ticket.

JOHN adds: I deny the truth of Bumiller's statement that "The issue has become a highly sensitive one to Mr. McCain...." To my knowledge, it is water long over the dam; I haven't heard a single conservative mention it during the current campaign. I think Bumiller was trying to stir up division among Republicans, and pretended that there is a current "sensitive issue" to justify her effort.

UPDATE: On a related note, Roger Kimball asks: "Why is John McCain's non affair front-page news while the appearance of Obama's name on the hard drive of a dead Colombia warlord isn't?"

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