Perhaps even more controversial than the allegations levied against John McCain by the New York Times yesterday? The struggle at the Times, as reported by The New Republic, over whether to publish it at all.

While negative piece raises some fair points regarding McCain’s integrity, there’s no small amount of trumped-up innuendo either.

It’s hard for us to imagine the Times running a similar piece on Barack Obama, if such material existed. And that’s also a fair point.

The most explosive charge - McCain’s relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman - stems from anonymous sources who “think” it was romantic.

At a press conference in Ohio, McCain pointedly denied the whole story. Which is pretty easy to do when there’s no evidence of wrongdoing.

As Barack Obama supporters, you’d think any revelation hurting John McCain’s reputation - a big selling point to independent, even Democratic voters - would come as great news to us.

It might, if it were legitimate news. This is more of a gray area at best, a case of John McCain being “swiftboated” at worst.

Were John and Cindy McCain railroaded by the New York Times?

The New Republic’s story-behind-the-story, which really must be read along with the New York Times‘ article, raises some critical new questions as well as allegations of its own - ones against the venerable paper:

• John McCain had been trying to quash this story since December, even getting heavyweight attorney and PR guru Bob Bennett (he of the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal) involved.
• The Times feuded internally over the McCain-Vicki Iseman piece, pitting the reporters, who believed they nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn’t.
• The piece may not have even been ready to roll, with even liberal Time magazine staying it would not publish such an article.
• The Times may have published its story before it was ready so The New Republic’s story on the Times wouldn’t scoop the Times - and the Times would rather slander McCain than look bad itself.

Bill Keller says that the Times will “publish stories when they are ready. ‘Ready’ means the facts have been nailed down to our satisfaction, the subjects have all been given a full and fair chance to respond, and the reporting has been written up with all the proper context and caveats.”

It looks like critics have some caveats of their own.