Politics is a rough business.

That was amply demonstrated this past month when Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins' campaign produced a particularly pungent video for use in fund raising against her Democratic challenger, Rep. Tom Allen.

The video and its accompanying fundraising appeal was targeted to out-of-state potential contributors with a distaste for the liberal advocacy group Moveon.org. That group has thrown its support and money behind Allen, and made the Collins-Allen match one of its four priority campaigns nationally.

If the potential donors didn't like Moveon.org in the first place, they won't like it any more after seeing the Collins video. It features unflattering and downright provocative images of what the campaign calls Move on.com's "extreme allies," including a flag burning and an image of anti-war demonstrators holding aloft a banner that says, "We support our troops when they shoot their officers."

Another section shows a demonstrator shoving her hand -- which looks like it's been dipped in blood -- in the face of Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice. It's notable that when you look carefully at the T-shirt worn by the demonstrator, it says "Code Pink" on it, the name of a women's group opposed to the war. That's the beauty of using the term "allies" -- you can put almost anyone in that group.

Predictably, Allen partisans went on the attack. Collins was going all negative, they said. Bloggers called the video "over the top." Allen called it inflammatory and said it insulted citizens who were against the war.

All true.

This is a hotly contested campaign, with huge stakes given the close divide in the Senate. Strong partisan appeals, with all their potential for ugliness, will likely be a constant part of the next eight months of this campaign. Anyone who expects the Collins-Allen race to be a polite tea party is out of touch with reality.

That said, we're bothered by one aspect of the video affair. Collins' Maine campaign manager, Steve Abbott, told Blethen Maine News reporter Jonathan Kaplan that Collins had not seen the video until after it had run.

Unlike federal law governing campaign television advertisements, which require that the candidate state that they "approved this ad," this was a fundraising appeal that required no such endorsement from Collins.

But in an interview with an editorial board member of this newspaper, Abbott said, "It's not like she didn't know that we were doing it." Indeed.

It's a rare politician who leaves even the details to campaign surrogates, let alone the substance of campaign appeals. Abbott's explanation of Collins' lack of involvement in the video then took a strange twist: Had the appeal been to Mainers, he said, Collins would have been much more involved in it. But this was an appeal to out-of-state contributors whose primary focus was on Moveon.org, not the actual candidates, so she didn't review its final form.

That's one of the most peculiar forms of constituent service we've ever heard of.

Collins can't have it both ways.

The materials produced by a candidate's campaign to drum up support are a reflection of the candidate. Especially when the message is this edgy and powerful, it's incumbent on a candidate to take responsibility for it -- yet Collins herself has remained silent about the video.

The fundraising video is strong stuff. There's no legal requirement for the senator to have vetted the video before it went out, but neither the senator nor her campaign should be hiding behind those legalities.

We have nothing against the video -- it's the lack of accountability by the senator that's the problem.