As Noel Sheppard writes, "Lib Photographer Admits Making McCain Look Sinister for Mag Cover", quoting from the photographer in question, Jill Greenberg:

I am a pretty hard core Democrat. Some of my artwork has been pretty anti-Bush, so maybe it was somewhat irresponsible for them [The Atlantic] to hire me.

Update: Bumped to top, to include this post from Gateway Pundit, who has a link to Greenberg's homepage, which currently has a rotating series of vile Photoshopped and crudely captioned images of McCain. Now that's dispassionate freelance photojournalism in action!

But more than that, it's also worth flashing back to this April post from Jim Geraghty regarding the far left's meltdown over Hillary Clinton, and this article from last year by Noemie Emery on what was said by the left about President Reagan near the end of his second term. Both of which help to place the burgeoning McCain Derangement Syndrome displayed by self-professed "hard-core Dems" such as Greenberg into sharp perspective, and illustrate that there was nothing out of the ordinary about George W. Bush's presidency to set the left off over the last eight years. He was simply yet another in an endless series of political enemies of the far left who needed to be destroyed. That's valuable governing knowledge for the next Republican (heck, maybe even moderate Democrat) in the White House, whether he's sworn into office this January, or four or eight years hence.

More: Gerard Vanderluen has additional Photoshopped images of McCain that Greenberg has run on her site, along with a press release from Atlantic editor James Bennet:

"We stand by the respectful image of John McCain that we used on our cover, and we expect to be judged by it. We were not aware of the manipulated and dishonest images Jill Greenberg had taken until this past Friday.

When we contract with photographers for portraits, we don't vet them for their politics--instead, we assess their professional track records. Based on the portraits she had done of politicians like Arnold Schwarzenegger and her work for publications like Time, Wired, and Portfolio, we expected Jill Greenberg, like the other photographers we work with, to behave professionally.

Jill Greenberg has obviously not done that. She has, in fact, disgraced herself, and we are appalled by the manipulated images she has created for her Web site of John McCain."