John McCain's vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, is out on the stump saying the Sen. Barack Obama has been "palling around" with terrorists.

Some people might refer to that as both guilty by association and stretching the truth.

Will lead the Obama camp to point out McCain's friendship with the 1960s radical David Ifshin.

In 1970, Daid Ifshin was president of the National Student Association. That year he actually traveled to Hanoi and urged American troops to rebel against the Vietnam War. Radio Hanoi broadcast his remarks. He even made the cover of Life magazine, standing behind Jane Fonda. People called him a traitor. They said that he may have cost American lives.

And yet, McCain was the guy's pal.

A clever advertising man could point out that when Ifshin died of cancer a few years back, McCain attended the funeral and spoke of how Ifshin "always felt passionate about his country." Adding, ''I learned a lot about courage from David."

What it DOESN'T tell you is that Ifshin changed, becoming much more respectable in later life. (Sort of like Ayers.) And that he and McCain reconciled about Vietnam.

McCain said that their relationship proved how futile it was to look back in anger.

Unless, it turns out, you have an opportunity to use such an association, no matter how tenuous, against a political opponent.

http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/EJMontini/35156

This from "The Economist"
May 11, 1996
IN 1970, at the height of the Vietnam war, David Ifshin, then a 21-year-old American student leader, went to Hanoi and spoke of America's "war crimes" against the Vietnamese. In a broadcast he urged American soldiers to turn against their commanders. His words were taped and played every day to the North's American prisoners. Mr Ifshin's support was an extraordinary coup for the North.