U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, after two days of relentlessly inept spin, has finally said he won’t accept free credentials to see Nevada boxing matches anymore, even though he legally could accept them.

Problem solved, right?

Nope. In fact, the problem is now made worse.

“In light of questions that have been raised about the practice, Sen. Reid will accept these kinds of credentials in the future,” said Reid “war room” employee, Jim Manley. He added Reid would forgo credentials “to avoid even the faintest appearance of impropriety.”

Too late.

What Reid should have is declined to accept free credentials in the first place, or if he really wanted to go to the fights, expend his personal or PAC money to buy a ticket. You know, like his constituents.

But, even if he did take free admission to the fights in the past, once he was caught by The Associated Press’ John Solomon, he should have immediately said he was reimbursing the Nevada Athletic Commission for the cost of the credentials, and forgoing accepting free stuff in the future. It was then, and only then, that this “faintest appearance of impropriety” line could have worked.

Instead, Reid spent two days defending himself, justifying the free credentials by saying he needed to attend fights in order to fully understand regulations governing boxing and their impact on pending federal legislation on the subject. (It was, in fact, the revelation that Nevada Athletic Commission had an interest in a bill backed by Reid that brought the matter of the free credentials to light.)

So, taking his earlier statement at face value, we are left to wonder: Just how will Reid possibly understand boxing and boxing regulations now? By not going to fights, won’t he have to fall back on … let’s see, his own experience as a boxer; his experience as a boxing judge; his experience judging championship fights; his long history of writing and testifying on boxing regulation, and the like?

Two possibilities exist: Either Reid was full of it when he said attending matches was a necessary part of doing his job (we vote for that one) or Reid was telling the truth before, and now he’ll be legislating out of ignorance. Either way, it’s not good.

And this is always the problem with bad spin: It comes back to bite you when you’re forced by a public and media outcry to do the ethical thing. If Reid had just done that in the first place, he’d never have had this problem. But by doing something unethical, he’s not only created problems for himself, he’s muted anything useful he might have had to say about Republican corruption.

Ironically, Reid ended up in the same place, pledging to abstain from free fight admissions in the future. Had he traveled the sensible route, he’d still have some credibility on ethics left. But since he went his own way — aided by a staff that lamentably parroted the party line, oblivious to the old “if you’re explaining, you’re losing” maxim of politics — he’s arrived without that credibility.

Republicans must be — no, scratch that, Republicans are — loving it. And Manley’s final quote — “Any comparison to the ethics problems facing some Republicans is ridiculous and absurd” — totally misses the point. Of course what Reid did isn’t as bad as what President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, ex-Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, U.S. Reps. Tom DeLay, Bob Ney and Randy “Duke” Cunningham, et. al. have done. That’s not the point.

The point is this: Republicans can credibly ask for someone without sin to cast the first stone. And that means Reid has got to drop his rock.