New York Times executive editor Bill Keller:

Asked about how he responds to the McCain campaign’s attempts to discredit New York Times reporting, executive editor Bill Keller replied: “My first tendency when they do that is to find the toughest McCain story we’ve got and put it on the front page, just to show them that they can’t get away with it.”

Right. Otherwise, all those tough McCain stories would have just collected dust on the spike.