The main thrust of the McCain campaign has been to cover up his history of economic malpractice. Senator McCain has largely pulled it off so far, under the guidance of Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove protégé. A Rovian political strategy by definition means all slime, all the time. But the more crucial Rove game plan is to envelop the entire presidential race in a thick fog of truthiness.

As Senator John McCain prepares to accept the Republican presidential nomination, his response to the attacks of Sept. 11 opens a window onto how he might approach the gravest responsibilities of a potential commander in chief.

Were it not for the anthrax attacks, most people would have assumed that the US faced just one enemy, the global terrorist network al-Qaeda, which had a base in Afghanistan and allies in some other countries.