After the media frenzy over Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Sen. John McCain's campaign refused to criticize Obama for the words of his former pastor. Senior campaign adviser Charlie Black said on MSNBC:

...what Sen. McCain has said repeatedly is that these candidates cannot be held accountable for all the views of people who endorse them or people who befriend them...

...John McCain believes is that Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton should be held accountable for their public policy views...

...He believes that people who endorse you, people who befriend you are entitled to their own views, but you are not held personally accountable. That when somebody endorses you or befriends you, they're embracing your views, the candidates' views, not the other way around.

Good standard. If all candidates and the media held to this standard, we would have a much better campaign -- focused on relevant issues and the candidates' records, less on ridiculous and strained guilt-by-association attacks.

But on ABC's This Week yesterday, McCain scrapped his own standard and launched a full-throttle guilt-by-association attack on Obama for his thin association with William Ayers: member of the Weather Underground 40 years ago, though after turning himself in, now a professor and mayoral adviser.

McCain then got a taste of the consequences of dropping that standard.

ABC's George Stephanopoulos then pressed McCain on his solicitation of an endorsement from Rev. John Hagee who, among other things, has made hateful remarks about Catholics.

McCain had difficultly explaining himself, acknowledging it was "probably" a mistake to solicit the endorsement, but he is still "glad to have his endorsement." And he tried to make a blanket statement to protect himself from any other troubling associations: "I condemn remarks that are, in any way, viewed as anti-anything."

If he insists on lowering the guilt-by-association standard, he will need some more protection.

Today, McCain is in Selma in a high-profile attempt to reach out to African-American voters and show that he rejects the racism that has been prevalent in the Republican Party -- as he did earlier when he apologized for previously opposing a Dr. Martin Luther King holiday.

Yet one of his long-time "senior political consultants" is Richard Quinn, long-time head of the racist Southern Partisan Quarterly Review. That's a far closer tie than what Obama has to Ayers.

According to the blog Anti-Neo-Confederate, Quinn was still listed as the owner of the magazine as recently as 2005.

McCain's employment of Quinn was raised in his 2000 presidential campaign. Quinn was editor-in-chief of Southern Partisan at that point, though he tried to downplay his role. From the NY Times in 2000:

''I am not the working day-to-day editor of Southern Partisan,'' he said. ''My title as editor in chief is purely honorary. Frankly, I do not personally read the articles before they are printed, and I certainly disagree with many of the opinions expressed by others on the pages of the magazine.''

...

A look at some of the articles in Southern Partisan shows why it has become the nation's leading journal of the so-called neo-confederacy movement, publishing scholarly treatises, political interviews and commentary that glorify the Southern traditions underlying the secession movement.

In issue after issue, writers in Southern Partisan vilify Abraham Lincoln and other Union leaders, and venerate the rebel soldiers who fought to secede from the United States. ... The magazine rarely writes about slavery, but when it does, its positions are usually not those of mainstream historians. A review of a book on the slave trade in a 1998 issue, for example, includes this passage: ''Mainstream black leaders perpetuate the myth that vicious white slave traders dragged Africans from their idyllic homeland to serve as chattel for arrogant white Americans. Readers of this magazine know otherwise.'' The review goes on to say that white slave traders were often less brutal than the African warlords who traded their subjects for livestock and herbs.

And from The New Republic in 2000 ("Race Man" by Benjamin Soskis, available on Nexis):

Quinn claims that, while some of these views might be offensive to Northerners, in the South the magazine "is considered mainstream conservative. " When confronted with some of the more outrageous articles in Southern Partisan--articles like "Why I Will Not Denounce Southern Racism or American Imperialism" or a 1991 John Rockeresque rant in which the "Old-Stock" author, visiting New York, wonders "'Where are the Americans?' for I met only Italians, Jews, Puerto Ricans"--Quinn explains that Southern Partisan is an " opinion magazine" that publishes "provocative essays." Moreover, he denies that as editor-in-chief he must agree with--or even be aware of--everything his magazine publishes. Indeed, Quinn tries to distance himself from some of the journal's more notorious articles by claiming he no longer has as much of a day-to-day editorial role as he did in the past--a not-so-exculpatory defense, considering that the magazine seems to have toned down its rhetoric in recent years.

Quinn himself railed against the King holiday, writing it "should have been rejected because its purpose is vitriolic and profane."

In 2000, People For American Way called on McCain to fire Quinn, listing his disparaging of Nelson Mandela as a "terrorist," his promotion of David Duke ("What better way to reject politics as usual than to elect a maverick like David Duke?") and his selling of t-shirts praising Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

McCain wouldn't fire him. He rejected the guilt-by-association charge, defending the man and disavowing the publication. From the Associated Press ("Bush, McCain Dogged on Racial Issues," 2/18/00, available on Nexis):

McCain, meanwhile, refused to fire campaign adviser Richard Quinn as requested by the private group People for the American Way. Quinn edits the magazine Southern Partisan, which has published racially charged articles.

"This is a fine man who worked for Ronald Reagan and Strom Thurmond and other fine people. This is an outfit I almost never agreed with and so this is another case where we have disagreement," McCain said.

McCain said he did not consider Quinn a racist and had never read anything written by him.

And McCain still works with Quinn. The Washington Post this month described Quinn as the "longtime adviser [who] directed the senator to a crucial victory in the Palmetto State." Politico reported (link via Daily Kos' Hesiod) that McCain paid Quinn's firms $184,000. An article reposted on McCain's website describes Quinn as "a senior political consultant to the McCain campaign."

But is it fair to say that paying Quinn for political work means McCain shares his views on race?

We learned from yesterday's Washington Post piece on his temper that one of his blowups was to get Arizona to approve a King holiday.

Score one against guilt-by-association.

But McCain, as usual, wants a double standard.

He can launch guilt-by-association attacks when it suits him, while he can hug or pay anyone he wants, since he condemns all statements that are "anti-anything."

Guilt-by-association is a dumb, meaningless standard. We'll all be better off if we follow McCain's rule, "people who endorse you, people who befriend you are entitled to their own views, but you are not held personally accountable."

But only if all candidates are held to a consistent standard.