Three strikes and Milbank is out

Byron York of National Review Online puts Dana Milbank’s Washington Post story on the Bush campaign’s “negativity” out of its agony. York demonstrates that Milbank is wrong about at least three of his major points: John Kerry did (as we have noted here) question whether the war on terrorism is really a war; Kerry has engaged in far more negative activity against Bush than Milbank says; and Kerry does want to replace the Patriot Act. York also notes that Milbank, like Kathleen Hall Jamieson, his primary source in his attack piece against the Bush campaign, has previously taken the common-sense position that negative advertising is a good thing, and has attacked journalists who assume the role of the “negativity police.” In a 2000 piece, Milbank argued that the press should let the candidates fight it out. But that was before his current man, Kerry, got roughed up.