Consider President Bush's recess appointment of Sam Fox, who contributed $50,000 to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, to be the U.S. ambassador to Belgium. It's Republicans gone wild.

Earlier this year, when the Bush administration discovered that it didn't have the votes in the Senate to confirm Fox, it withdrew the nomination and waited until Congress broke for Easter recess. Then this week, the president named Fox ambassador, circumventing the Senate.

Barring some bump in the road, Fox now will serve through the end of this Congress, which will coincide with the remainder of Bush's presidency.

Now, we're not political virgins. We understand that big financial contributions are often the price of an ambassadorship. Look at Joe Kennedy. It has been that way since the nation was founded.

Nor is President Bush the first to use recess appointments. All presidents since Washington have done so.

But we draw the line at the slimy Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose dubious attacks during the 2004 presidential race on Sen. John Kerry's record in the Vietnam War were an outrage. That smear campaign, and Fox's role in funding it, is why the Senate, now controlled by the Democrats, would not confirm his nomination.

Fox says that refusal was just politics. He says he was asked to give money to the Swift boaters, and he did, but that he was only vaguely aware of their message, and he didn't have a hand in developing it.

We don't believe that the activities of the Swift boaters were just politics as usual. They were despicable, even by political standards.

But our standards evolved before Karl Rove and Florida 2000 and before Swift Boats entered the public consciousness in 2004.

John Kerry might have lost the 2004 presidential election without the Swift Boat controversy. He was a weak candidate who never could articulate a cogent position on the Iraq War, despite the fact that the U.S. effort there was collapsing around Bush's ears.

Yet, for many voters, the election turned on Vietnam rather than Iraq. That is the real travesty. For that you can thank Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and, to some degree, Sam Fox.