Not long before Independence Day, General Wesley Clark, the former presidential candidate and talking head, was on television speaking with Bob Schieffer, the host of Face the Nation, about John McCain. "I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war," Clark said, referring to McCain as "a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in the armed forces." But when the general continued on about what he saw as McCain's lack of both diplomatic experience and executive responsibility in wartime, the normally affable Schieffer rebuked him sternly: "Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences either — nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down!" Clark responded matter-of-factly, "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."

Cable news was quick to pounce, interpreting Clark's comment as blasphemy. CNN called it a story "that's no doubt going to reverberate for days, if not weeks...a respected military leader dissing — some might say Swift Boating — John McCain's military record."

Given such an alley-oop pass, the McCain campaign was quick to go for the slam dunk by unveiling its "Truth Squad," a band of political and ex-military brothers including retired colonel George "Bud" Day, McCain's POW cell mate, who defended their candidate on conference calls to the media. Day, now 83 and a veteran of World War II, Korea, and Vietnam — he is the most decorated military officer since General MacArthur — called Clark's response "one of the more surprising insults in my military history." (Day, a key member of the Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth group behind the 2004 attacks on the Vietnam record of John Kerry, is no stranger to brass-knuckle politics; indeed, he is still agitated by the mere mention of Kerry, calling him "a traitorous piece of trash" who "isn't fit to carry John McCain's jockstrap around.")

Amid all this, when pressed by an ABC reporter to explain how his Vietnam experience prepared him for the presidency, McCain uttered a single word — "Please" — and, according to the reporter, "recoil[ed] back in his seat in distaste at the very question." A few moments later, the candidate explained, "I kind of reacted the way I did because I have a reluctance to talk about my experiences. . . . I am always reluctant to talk about these things."

But a few days later his campaign rolled out a new television ad pairing video of the Summer of Love with images of a flight-suited lieutenant McCain and then POW McCain backed by an elegiac incantation: "Another kind of love...Of country...John McCain...Shot down...Bayoneted...Tortured..."

From a strictly political perspective, the canniness of McCain's "reluctance to talk" coupled with a torrent of imagery emphasizing his POW experience places him in the sweet spot of public perception: If virtually the entire electorate already views him as a war hero who's suffered grievously for his country — something Clark wasn't questioning, and rightly so — what good could possibly come of having to explain it? Getting into the details of his experience in a war that deeply divided the nation would not only dull McCain's patina of heroism — it would leave him open to potentially explosive charges of opportunism, of "playing the POW card."