The New York Times yesterday served notice once again that it will grasp at even the slimmest of straws in its transparent effort to derail John McCain’s bid for the White House.

In an article titled “Two McCain Moments, Rarely Mentioned,” reporter Elisabeth Bumiller floated the notion that McCain’s Republican loyalties leave something to be desired, implying that McCain is well, you know, maybe just a little bit untrustworthy, unpredictable–perhaps even unstable.

Bumiller’s piece revolved around what she called “two extraordinary moments in [McCain’s] political past that are at odds with the candidate of the present,” the two being “[h]is discussions in 2001 with Democrats about leaving the Republican Party, and his conversations in 2004 with Senator John Kerry about becoming Mr. Kerry’s running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket.”

But as Bumiller herself acknowledged, “There are wildly divergent versions of both episodes, depending on whether Democrats or Mr. McCain and his advisers are telling the story. The Democrats, including Mr. Kerry, say that not only did Mr. McCain express interest but that it was his camp that initially reached out to them. Mr. McCain and his aides counter that in both cases the Democrats were the suitors and Mr. McCain the unwilling bride.”

Now, when you’ve got “widely divergent” accounts of a story, it would seem tendentious at best -particularly in the news pages of an ostensibly serious media organ — to try to explicate from that story any meaningful insight into the character or politics of the story’s protagonist. But Elisabeth Bumiller had her agenda, and she was off to the races:

Either way, the episodes shed light on a bitter period on Mr. McCain’s life. . . . They also offer a glimpse into his psychological makeup and the difficulties in putting a label on his political ideology over many years in the Senate.

Got that? “Either way.” In other words, she has a case to make, and no matter where the truth lies – “either way” – she’ll make it.

Later in the piece, after recounting former Democratic congressman Thomas J. Downey’s claim that longtime McCain aide John Weaver approached him shortly after George W. Bush took office with the possibility–expressed in rather vague terms even in Downey’s telling – that McCain might be willing to defect to the Democrats, Bumiller acknowledged that Weaver’s recollection was at odds with Downey’s.

According to Weaver, Downey was the one who broached the subject and his–Weaver’s–response was primarily one of bemusement.

So just who did initiate the conversation, and how seriously did Weaver take it? On such details do stories hang, especially a story that promises to plumb the inner recesses of a potential president’s psyche–his “psychological makeup,” as Bumiller herself put it. But our trusty reporter can’t be bothered with such trivia: “Whatever transpired, Mr. Downey raced home and immediately called” former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle.

“Whatever transpired”?! If Bumiller doesn’t know “whatever transpired” between Downey and Weaver, then what was the point of her piece? After all, “whatever transpired” is so much more important to the story than what Downey did or whom he contacted immediately afterward.

Still later in the article, after offering contradictory accounts of who approached whom in the matter of a possible 2004 Kerry-McCain ticket, Bumiller wrote, “But however Mr. McCain reacted, he ultimately decided [according to McCain adviser Mark Salter] . . . that the idea would never work.”

“However Mr. McCain reacted.” Yes, the reader wanted to scream–how, exactly, did he react? Alas, we learned nothing about McCain’s actual reaction to the idea of running on a cross-party ticket–just more of the same He Said, He Said back and forth.

McCain may very well have given thought to–even seriously flirted with–the idea of switching parties in 2001 or running with Kerry in 2004. But readers were no closer to knowing the truth after finishing Bumiller’s fishing expedition of an article than they were before starting it.