"Good people"

What a maverick.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 — Senator John McCain said Sunday that several aides brought on to his presidential campaign were “good people,” despite his own past criticisms of their work for others in the past.

Appearing on “This Week” on ABC, Mr. McCain was asked about a front-page article in The New York Times on Sunday noting that Mr. McCain’s political team includes advisers who tried to skewer him in the 2000 primary against George W. Bush. And Mr. McCain has brought on members of the team that produced the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth advertisement in 2004 questioning the Vietnam War service record of Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, which Mr. McCain had criticized.

“These are good people who were doing as they were instructed,” Mr. McCain said Sunday. “They are people who shape the message, don’t dictate it.”

Asked whether, as The Times reported, the hirings suggested that Mr. McCain would be “running a different kind of campaign this time around,” he said: “Am I going to respond to a negative attack if there is one? Obviously, I would do so, but I hope we would do so in an honorable fashion. We will run an honorable campaign.”

Straight talk, no doubt.