If words had knife edges, what George Will does this morning to John McCain would be unlawful under the Helskinki Accords. Will is justly furious at McCain's attack on Chris Cox and his suggestion that Andrew Cuomo take over the SEC. Please do read the whole column linked above; it is one of the best-written pieces I have seen in years. Nothing I could write here and no excerpt that I could give could do justice to Will's creative invective. That said, almost as a sidelight, it is worth noting that Will fleshes out a reference I made in a blog post last week to a personal grudge that McCain's economic brains (for what they are worth), otherwise known as Douglas Holtz-Eakin, holds against Cox. I quote from Will:
"Perhaps an old antagonism is involved in McCain's fact-free slander. His most conspicuous economic adviser is Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who previously headed the Congressional Budget Office. There he was an impediment to conservatives, including then-Congressman Cox, who as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee persistently tried and generally failed to enlist CBO support for 'dynamic scoring' that would estimate the economic growth effects of proposed tax cuts."
But as I say, that is the least of Will's arguments. Read the whole thing. It's brilliant.