The Nation

The mud is flying, as a bitter presidential campaign is under way. With eight months remaining until E-Day, commentators are already pointing to the vicious and caustic debate as yet another sign of the coarsening of America's political culture. The mainstream media hypes the charges and countercharges exchanged by the candidates without fully evaluating them and fixates on who's up and who's down (and who is screaming) rather than what's at stake. With the rise of the cable-news gabfests, there's more information but not necessarily more understanding. Despite the McCain-Feingold law, special-interest money continues to pour into electoral politics. Democrats are bending, if not breaking, the rules to keep soft-money alive. On the Hill, conservative Republicans are using mob-like tactics to control legislation. Are all the trends in the political-media world negative?

No. In recent decades, there has been one undeniable advance in the land of politics-and-the-media: C-SPAN. On March 19, the cable network that airs the proceedings of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, will turn 25 years old. Anyone who gives a damn about politics, policy, and public affairs ought to wish it a happy birthday and, more importantly, say thank you. They should also pay attention to regulatory and legislative actions that could threaten C-SPAN. More on that below. First, some praise.

C-SPAN has opened up Congress and Washington, broadcasting to the citizenry the (public) workings of the House and Senate: the deliberations on the floor, committee hearings, press conferences conducted by legislators. No longer do Americans have to page through the Congressional Record to see what their representatives have said. They do not have to rely upon reporters to learn what has transpired at a hearing. They can directly witness the actions of the legislative branch--without leaving the couch. The network has covered presidential speeches and showed White House press secretaries spinning and squirming as they conduct their daily press briefings. C-SPAN has also smashed the Beltway border by airing conferences and events sponsored by the various policy and political organizations of Washington. A C-SPAN viewer can become a Washington insider by watching think-tank wonks debate budget policies, the head of the Republican Party address political strategy, and consultants discuss technical changes in campaign-finance law.

And C-SPAN has delivered more than inside-Washington policy and politics. It focuses on books and provides an essential venue for discussions of nonfiction works. ( Book TV on C-SPAN2 airs 48 hours of literary programming each weekend, including the signature show Booknotes.) C-SPAN imported to the United States question time from the British House of Commons, showing Yanks that the Brits were playing hardball long before Chris Matthews came along. And it aired campaign events--uncut and uncensored. Would-be voters who might never see a presidential or congressional candidate up close and personal have been handed front-row seats. They can watch incumbents and challengers speaking at dinners or working the crowd at state fairs. C-SPAN conveys the scripted moments--such as the entire Democratic and Republican presidential conventions--and the unscripted. I remember watching Rep. Dick Gephardt a few years ago on C-SPAN. He was shaking hands at a campaign event, trying to engage with each person he briefly encountered. Whatever anyone said Gephardt found a way to agree and to move on. One man grasped Gephardt's hand and told him it was essential to get rid of the U.S. Postal Service. Yeah, yeah, Gephardt replied, we can do that. Then he pushed on--a politician on automatic pilot, brilliantly captured by C-SPAN.

More recently, C-SPAN did a wonderful job of covering the Iowa caucuses. On caucus night, it broadcast the deliberations of a caucus at a YMCA in Dubuque. This was the most gripping reality TV I have watched in years. Whoever directed the show deserves an Emmy. Several video crews tracked the lead organizers for each of the Democratic candidates. We could see them recruiting supporters and haggling with the other campaigns--sometimes quite desperately. There was emotion; there was drama. How could a viewer not share the sadness when the most ardent Gephardt backer--a young woman who had tried mightily to persuade her neighbors to back the Missouri congressman--trudged over to join the John Edwards crowd after her man failed to reach the 15 percent threshold? This was far more gripping than watching some prescreened make-believe real person get voted off an island.

C-SPAN makes politics and policy real. It does the same with commentary. As a television pontificator--I'm a contributor to Fox News Channel--I've grown accustomed to debating world-changing matters in two-minute snippets. C-SPAN, though, affords pundits, journalists, analysts, politicians, and authors whole swaths of time--from half an hour to 60 minutes--to discuss the crucial matters of the day. With no commercial interruptions. This can lead to the sort of in-depth conversations that are nearly impossible on many cable news shows. (Then again, there was the time I appeared on C-SPAN with conservative author David Horowitz for a full hour. That was more of a food-fight than an enlightened exchange of competing views, mainly because he kept shouting and accusing me and other war-in-Iraq skeptics of trying to destroy the United States. He even decried The Nation for having used French words on a recent cover. This was not a debate; this was a therapy session for Horowitz.)

Brian Lamb, who founded C-SPAN, is a true visionary. In 1977, he first pitched the idea of a public affairs network to the cable television industry. He then persuaded the House to let television cameras into its chamber. (It took the Senate nine years to catch up.) In all this time, he has kept the programming fair and balanced. As an interviewer and moderator, Lamb has played it straight down the middle. My hunch is that he's a Main Street-kind of Republican. But who knows? First and foremost, he wants a serious discussion that serves the viewer.

Lamb has also been a public affairs missionary. Not only has he expanded the reach of C-SPAN in the media (C-SPAN radio began a few years ago); Lamb has developed an extensive educational component for C-SPAN. The C-SPAN bus brings civics and history to school kids across the nation. Months ago, I participated in a new C-SPAN project: tele-teaching. A poli-sci professor was conducting a class on how Washington works for university students in Colorado, but he was doing it from a studio in C-SPAN's Washington offices. Thanks to a two-way video flow, he could see his students, as they sat in a classroom watching him--and me--on a video screen. The session worked, and this setup enabled him to bring in a string of Washington guest lecturers for the student's benefit.

C-SPAN is perhaps the closest-to-perfect Washington (and media) institution there is. Do I say this because it has always been kind to me? (It did put me on Washington Journal to discuss my latest book, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception.) Not entirely. I am an unabashed fan. And as a journalist, I appreciate that C-SPAN makes life easier for those of us who cover politics, Congress, the White House, and public affairs. There are times when I cannot make it to a White House press briefing, a congressional hearing, a campaign event, or a think tank conference. Yet they appear on the little box in my office, and--presto!--I have the information or quote I need.

Twenty-five years old, C-SPAN is thriving. But it does face threats. The Federal Communications Commission has for months been putting off a decision on whether cable systems must give local broadcast stations two channels--one for an analog signal, the other for a digital signal. The point is to ease the transition from analog broadcasting to digital broadcasting. Yet if the FCC does require cable operators to assign two channels to each local broadcaster, that could create pressure on cable systems to dump other cable programming. The folks at C-SPAN fear this rule would cause some maxed-out systems to eliminate C-SPAN or C-SPAN2 to make room for the broadcasters' extra channels. "We are a niche service that does not provide revenue," says Bruce Collins, the corporate vice president and general counsel of C-SPAN. "How virtuous do you expect the cable operators to be? People think we're a public utility that will always be there, but that's not true."

Cable systems are not required to carry C-SPAN. They do not offer C-SPAN as a public service. It's part of most cable menus because there are enough Americans who want to watch their government in action. Cable operators use C-SPAN as a selling point for their services, and they pay C-SPAN for this privilege. C-SPAN, unlike PBS and NPR, receives no government funding and accepts no corporate sponsorships. It relies 100 percent on the license fees paid to it by the cable guys. In fact, Lamb pioneered a business model. He developed a public-interest media organization that is unsubsidized and generates no revenues and found a home for it within the for-profit jungle of the cable television industry. But if cable systems are forced to hand out a second channel to local broadcast stations and conclude they can make more bucks without C-SPAN than with C-SPAN, local citizens could be cut off.

Another threat to C-SPAN materialized just days ago. On March 9, in a narrow vote--12 to 11--the Senate commerce committee barely beat back an effort to extend the decency standards that now apply to broadcasters to all cable programming (with the exception of premium and pay-for-view channels). How could this harm C-SPAN? After all, it's not as if it airs Howard Stern. But C-SPAN routinely shows events--campaign rallies, protests, and press conferences--where occasionally words deemed "indecent" by the FCC are uttered. That's what happens in real life. And there have been times when C-SPAN has covered a march or demonstration when a Janet Jackson-like moment has occurred. Lamb's guiding editorial philosophy has been that viewers in their living rooms should be able to see and hear exactly what they would see and hear if they were sitting in a hearing room or standing on the Washington Mall. But an indecency standard applied to C-SPAN could destroy its commitment to a showing events unedited in their entirety. "We don't want to edit and pixilate," Collins says.

Since C-SPAN has become such an essential part of the nation's political-media infrastructure, it should be able to handle the challenges it now faces. But let's hope it also continues to expand its (and our) horizons. Oral arguments at the Supreme Court ought to be carried on C-SPAN. Perhaps one day, Lamb will overcome the resistance of the robed ones. And imagine if C-SPAN could somehow facilitate the creation of question time in the U.S. House--when members of Congress could confront the president with queries.

That is raising expectations high. But Lamb and C-SPAN deserve high expectations. Who (besides Lamb) thought that C-SPAN would go so far--and enrich the national discourse so much--when it first started showing House members orating (or bloviating) in 1979? Many happy returns, C-SPAN. The Republic is better for your efforts.

*********

DON'T FORGET ABOUT DAVID CORN'S BOOK, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! The Library Journal says, "Corn chronicles to devastating effect the lies, falsehoods, and misrepresentations....Corn has painstakingly unearthed a bill of particulars against the president that is as damaging as it is thorough." For more information and a sample, check out the book's official website: www.bushlies.com.

**********

Bush's 9/11 campaign commercials are reckless and offensive. Depicting firefighters carrying bodies, draped in American flags, out of the World Trade Center rubble, they trivialize the rescue workers' sacrifice, exploit the victims' families and mock the enormity of the national tragedy.

The commercials' tag line, "steady leadership in times of change," recalls just how erratic Bush's leadership has, in fact, been. (A more accurate slogan would be "arrogant leadership in times of recession.") Instead of steady leadership, the "war president" fled on 9/11, retreating into a bunker somewhere in Nebraska.

Initially, the president attacked airline security legislation that ultimately put federal law enforcement officers in every airport. Bush also flip-flopped on homeland security, opposing it at first, supporting it later, and eventually demanding that worker rights in the new agency be shredded.

The reality is that Bush has transformed 9/11 into an all-purpose excuse to enact his radical rightwing agenda. The White House cited 9/11 as a reason to pass a so-called stimulus bill that included $254 million in retroactive tax rebates for Enron, just before the company collapsed. Bush scorned shared sacrifice as he championed tax cuts for the wealthiest. The erosion of civil liberties through the Patriot Act and the increasing criminalizing of dissent--two longterm rightwing goals--have also been justified in the name of 9/11. And the invasion of Iraq itself, another longtime neo-con obsession, was justified, in part with cherry-picked intelligence allegedly linking Saddam to Al-Qaeda

Moreover, by disdaining the international community, Bush's arrogant leadership virtually guaranteed that US taxpayers would foot the bill for reconstructing Iraq while US troops, for the most part, have been forced to go it alone.

Currently, Bush is stonewalling the federal commission responsible not only for investigating the 9/11 attacks but also for recommending steps to prevent future attacks. The President has had time to attend NASCAR races and a rodeo show, but he says he has only one hour to meet with two of the Commission's members. Furthermore, while Bush is spending 10.5 million dollars to air his 9/11 commercials, he is refusing to release records requested by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission's members. (Like President, like Vice President.)

So it's no surprise when one 9/11 widow calls Bush's commercials "a slap in the face of the murders of 3,000 people." Or when Harold Schaitberger, the President of the Firefighters Union, calls the ads "hypocrisy at its worst." Or when New York firefighters by the dozens denounce the president's use of their images in his ads.

One woman recently captured the outrage people feel when she wrote the ,Washington Post: "In the next round of ads, to show concern for Americans in the wake of that tragedy, why not throw in a few images of [Bush] cooperating with the 9/11 commission?"

And why not? Bush's 9/11 commercials, it turns out, feature paid actors as well as stock footage of volunteer firefighters. In other words, the commercials, like their tag line, are, in fact, a big fat fraud.

It should not come as a surprise to anyone who has watched American politics over the past several years that George W. Bush has begun his formal reelection campaigning by exploiting the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, for political advantage. This is, after all, the president whose aides schemed on the day of the attacks to use them to get Congress to grant Bush "Fast Track" authority to negotiate a sweeping Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement. And it is the president whose political czar, Karl Rove, conspired with Republican Senate candidates in 2002 to employ 9/11 images as tools to attack the patriotism of Democrats, such as Georgia Senator Max Cleland, a decorated and disabled Vietnam veteran.

Everyone expected the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign to begin its television advertising campaign by branding Bush as the 9/11 candidate.

The only surprise is that the Bush political team would, after more than two years of preparation, perform the task so gracelessly.

Was there no one in the close confines of the Bush campaign with enough awareness of the sensitivities that remain -- especially among the friends, families and colleagues of the dead -- to suggest that it might be inappropriate to produce campaign advertisements featuring images of the dead being removed from the wreckage of the World Trade Center?

By any measure, the much-heralded opening of the Bush-Cheney Version 2.0 campaign has been a disaster for the president.

The point of the sort of gauzy, flag-flapping political advertisements that the Bush campaign has begun airing was to raise the president's approval ratings after a Democratic primary season in which Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and his rivals landed some serious blows to Bush's reelection prospects. Bush aides had planned to use the advertisements and a busy schedule of appearances by the president and Vice President Dick Cheney to regain dominance of the media coverage of the 2004 campaign.

Instead, the "story" of the week in which Bush was supposed to be reintroducing himself to the voters focused on the anger of people like Kristen Breitweiser over the Bush ads. "After 3,000 people were murdered on his watch, it seems that that takes an awful lot of audacity," declared Breitweiser. "Honestly, it's in poor taste."

What a nightmare for the Bush campaign crew when New York City firefighter Tommy Fee was asked by a reporter about the ads and responded, "It's as sick as people who stole things out of the place. The image of firefighters at Ground Zero should not be used for this stuff, for politics." And Fee was not alone. Tom Ryan, a 20-year veteran with the city's Fire Department, reacted to the use of footage from a fireman's funeral in one of the ads bysaying, "As a firefighter who spent months at Ground Zero, it's deeply offensive to see the Bush campaign use these images to capitalize on the greatest American tragedy of our time."

Suddenly, family members, friends and colleagues of 9/11 victims were all over television, radio and the newspapers echoing the sentiments of Monica Gabrielle, whose husband died in the collapse of the Twin Towers. "It's a slap in the face of the murders of 3,000 people," Gabrielle said of the use of images of the removal of the 9/11 dead for political purposes. "It's unconscionable."

By Friday, just a day after the commercials began airing in battleground states, the September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows group was circulating the names of a long list of family members and firefighters who were objecting to the ads.Spouses, parents and siblings of 9/11 victims were holding press conferences in New York to call for the ads to be taken down. And the critics weren't just talking about the ads; they were making very public note of the president's failure to cooperate with the 9/11 commission that is charged with investigating how and why the attacks occurred.

The Bush campaign had tested the ads with focus groups. They knew the use of the 9/11 images was risky; but they very much wanted to begin the process of branding 9/11 as a campaign issue and they thought they could easily dismiss any criticisms as partisan bickering. What the Bush camp failed to anticipate was the speed and the intensity of the negative response to the ads.

As the firestorm built, team Bush went into immediate damage-control mode. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was dispatched to defend the ads as a reflection of America's "shared experience" during Bush's term. But Giuliani refused to say whether he would exploit 9/11 images in a similar way if he was running for office, so his did not prove to be a particularly effective defense.

The Bush campaign has been counting on Karen Hughes, one of the president's closest and most camera-friendly aides, to provide the first line of spin. She did a round of television talk shows to defend the commercials as tasteful and necessary. But, as usual, Hughes pushed the Bush line harder than was appropriate, or useful.

"I can understand why some Democrats not might want the American people to remember the great leadership and strength the president and First Lady Laura Bush brought to our country in the aftermath of (the attacks)," she grumped on "The Early Show" on CBS.

Does Hughes seriously mean to suggest that Americans have forgotten the details of September 11, 2001, or of the president's actions in the weeks and months that followed? That's a stretch. Even Hughes admitted, in the same interview, that, "September 11 was not just a distant tragedy." And what aspect of the president's "leadership" is highlighted by incorporating images of the dead being removed from Ground Zero into a campaign commercial?

More importantly, why would Hughes, an expert in the choice of words, choose to dismiss the widows, relatives and comrades of the dead as "some Democrats"? The answer speaks volumes about the thinking within the closed confines of the president's inner circle. The Bush team's view is that anyone who criticizes the president, even someone who lost a family member or colleague in the collapse of the twin towers, is automatically an anti-Bush partisan.

That's a serious miscalculation by the Bush campaign. And a surprising one. Hughes and others are allowing intense loyalty to their boss to cloud their judgement. Does this mean that the Bush team, which is made up of some of the ablest political minds that money can buy, is destined to blow this reelection campaign -- just as the able team of Bush's father blew the previous president's 1992 reelection campaign? Not necessarily; it is still a long way to Election Day and this campaign will take many unexpected turns over the next eight months. But it does suggest that the people who dressed the president up in flight-suit drag to declare the Iraq War mission accomplished last May are still off their game. In a week when they had planned to claim control of the political discourse, they lost it. Badly.

1. Conventional wisdom rules. John Kerry started out the front-runner, according to the political handicappers. And largely because of the same reasons that he was initially dubbed the guy-to-beat, he ended up the front-runner, winning nine of ten contests on Super Tuesday. The no-longer-running Howard Dean finally won a state: Vermont. Kerry was the safe choice. Democrats went for a fellow who was not too young, not too fiery, not too bold, not too flashy; they selected a solid, workhorse Democrat who is mostly liberal but who is no rip-roaring populist. He has the experience and the gravitas--perhaps too much gravitas--to be president. Some observers have likened Kerry to the dead-man-walking Bob Dole of 1996, but Kerry, who could use a jolt of Dole-like humor, is much more a fighter. Don't forget he was a crusading prosecutor before becoming lieutenant governor of Massachusetts. Which brings us to the next point.

2. A million cuts. A journalist called me the other day to ask what would be the most perilous time for Kerry between now and the convention. My answer: every day. It's clear the Bush campaign strategy is to nick away at Kerry 24/7. They will go over the thousands of votes Kerry has cast and use them as ammunition, accusing him of voting to weaken national defense and supporting wacko liberal positions. This has already started. The White House and the GOP have cited long-ago votes against certain weapons systems as evidence Kerry cannot be trusted to safeguard America. Recently Fred Kaplan on Slate debunked much of this early attack. A good example he cited: Republican Party chief Ed Gillespie slammed Kerry for having voted to cut $1.5 billion from the intelligence budget in 1995. But this money was appropriated for a spy satellite that the National Reconnaissance Office never launched. And the Senate was voting to rescind these funds, which were not going to be used. A majority of the Senate supported this position. But facts don't matter. The goal of the GOP is to turn Kerry into a bleeder. To force him to explain his votes and past positions over and over--and then again. Even if he has reasonable explanations, he still could end up looking weak if he constantly has to defend his past actions. Kerry is going to have to find a way to answer the attacks without becoming too entangled in a charge-countercharge dance. He has to avoid appearing as if he has lots of 'splaining to do, but he also cannot let criticism go unanswered. This will not be easy. His top aides tell me that they are ready for the Bush assault. But they are only now in the process of creating a war-room type of operation to deal with the incoming.

3. After 9/11, grown-ups are wanted. John Edwards ran a swell campaign. He had the best speech of all the candidates. ("There are two Americas....") He had the best temperament. And he has plenty of brains beneath his golden locks. But he couldn't seal the deal. He didn't even come close. It was not because of his ideas; he had few policy differences with Kerry. It was not because he didn't have the funds to make himself and his positions known to primary voters. It was probably because in this post-9/11 period he did not come across as ready-to-lead. He has not finished his first term in the Senate; he had no previous experience in government or foreign policy. He talked--at length!--about sharing the values of the working class (having been the son of a mill worker before becoming a millionaire trial attorney) and understanding their lives (presumably in a way that the blue-blooded Kerry could not). But empathy only goes so far. It's not the same as inspiring confidence and reassurance. And it could well be that Democratic voters in 2004 wanted a candidate who reeks of maturity and experience. Edwards was confronted by a stature gap--and the gap won. After 9/11, protector-in-chief is at the top of the list of the president's job responsibilities. Edwards was not able to persuade voters he yet has the chops for that.

4. Issues? We don't need no stinking issues? This was not a contest decided by issues. Most Democratic primary voters were opposed to the Iraq war, skeptical of Nafta and similar trade accords, and uneasy about the Patriot Act. Yet the two candidates who fared best in the primary contest--Kerry and Edwards--both voted for legislation granting Bush the authority to go to war and for the Patriot Act. Kerry voted for Nafta; Edwards was not yet in the Senate for that vote, but he did vote for extending most favored nation trading status to China. No issue--not even the war--defined the campaign for most voters. When Howard Dean, the only top-tier candidate who had opposed the war, dropped out, his antiwar vote did not flock to Representative Dennis Kucinich, the only other serious antiwar candidate. (Sharpton is not a serious candidate.) Edwards tried to make trade an issue separating himself from Kerry. But he was hanging on to a thin reed: that his criticism of the recent trade pacts was edgier than Kerry's. But that effort failed. Union voters--who perhaps are the most concerned about trade--still went overwhelmingly for Kerry. This was a contest among candidates not messages. Dean learned that early. Which brings us to electability.

5. It ain't no sin to be electable. And there's nothing wrong with a voter using electability as a criterion. When I heard voters remark that Kerry had the E-quality, they often explained it by saying he possessed a solid record in the Senate, had acquired years of experience in foreign policy, boasted sound and decent policy stands, and was ready and able to challenge Bush forcefully. Those are all fine reasons for picking a candidate. Selecting a candidate based on electability is not necessarily a cop-out; it's rendering the judgment that the candidate is equipped to beat the other guy and become president. In 2000, many Republicans signed on early with George W. Bush, noting his electability. But what they had in mind was that he had the bucks, the brand name and the endorsements needed to clobber his primary opponents. They were right, and it worked out well for Republicans and conservatives. Kerry's so-called electability seems based more on his qualifications than his advantages.

6. But what about Edwards' cross-over appeal? Yes, Edwards did well among Republicans and independents in those states where the Rs and Is can vote in the Democratic primary. But in 2000 Senator John McCain was a big hit with the Indies and had more appeal to Dems than Bush. And he only got so far. In party primaries, the first-place ribbon goes to the guy who excites (or wins the votes of) the party faithful. Parties do not nominate folks because they are liked by the other side. That's the way it is. Each party is burdened by this dynamic. And most Republicans who voted for Edwards would probably end up voting for Bush.

7. Edwards for veep? He has a net worth of millions, but Edwards is not a retire-early-and-take-up-fly-fishing guy. He's already given up his Senate seat. What's he to do now, except angle to be Kerry's sidekick? He could be a fine choice. But it's far too early for Kerry to be thinking about getting hitched. He has until the convention in late July. And he should wait to see how the race against Bush develops. Then he will know what he might need (or want) in a running mate. Perhaps polls will show a toss-up state Kerry must win is fading for him. A veep candidate from that state might reverse the drift. It's true that a running mate rarely has much impact on a presidential race. (See Dan Quayle.) But if a few extra votes can be gained by a good pick, Kerry ought to make his calculated choice as close to the November election as possible. Edwards will have to sit tight.

8. Kucinich has pushed far enough. Every presidential campaign needs someone to push the policy envelope. With his advocacy of a single-payer, nonprofit healthcare system, his proposal for a Department of Peace, his pledge to trash Nafta, and his call to replace U.S. troops in Iraq with international peacekeepers (a plan that rests on several optimistic assumptions), Kucinich played that noble role. But now it's time to fold the tent. He had his shot. The left wing of the party--the peaceniks, the anti-Naftaistas--did not rally behind him in sufficient numbers. And the math is undeniable; he has no chance. One can--and should--only defy the physical laws of the universe for so long. Yet before the votes were tallied on Super Tuesday Kucinich was vowing to keep going until the convention. On CNN, he claimed that Democrats had to choose him because he is the only candidate who could bring in "the Greens, the Natural Law Party." The Natural Law Party? While every vote does count--Florida showed that--it's doubtful that the Democratic nominee's fortunes will rise or fall on the disposition of the Natural Law Party vote. And Kucinich failed to win over more than 9 percent of the Democratic voters of his home state of Ohio. With his presidential campaign, Kucinich did position himself as a--if not the--leading progressive of the House Democrats. But if Kucinich stays in the race, insisting that only he can beat Bush by attracting outsider voters, he risks coming across as a crank who cannot recognize political realities rather than as a visionary willing to challenge conventional thinking.

9. If Kucinich should go, then Sharpton should really go. It's galling to watch this man go on and on about the need to stay in the race so he can arrive at the convention with delegates and make sure his party ends up with the right policy positions. Sharpton endorsed Republican Senator Alfonse D'Amato, an ethics-challenged machine hack, in 1986 over Democratic nominee Mark Green. (History declared: I worked on the Green campaign.) Sharpton also supported Republican Michael Bloomberg's mayoral bid in 2001 (again, over Green). And this year he is being advised and assisted (including financially) by GOP strategist Roger Stone, who was involved in the so-called khaki riot at the Dade County municipal office in 2000 that may have led to the shutdown of the Miami recount. So where is (and was) the party loyalty Sharpton now cites as his reason for staying in the race until the convention? He's not in this for a platform debate--as if that matters this year. He's in this to advance a single cause: Al Sharpton. He wants the camera time, and he wants a speaking gig at the convention. The Democrats have showed him more than enough kindness. He's lucky to have received the free air time he's already obtained. This reverend deserves no more time in the pulpit.

10. It's the journalists, stupid? Right before Kerry made his victory speech on Super Tuesday, one of his top advisers told me, "The real question in this race will be, do American journalists take presidential politics seriously?" By that he meant that the media can play a critical role in the contest: truth-testing the attacks (and shaming candidates that mount dishonest and unfair assaults), highlighting the important policy differences between Bush and Kerry, and making clear for the voters exactly what is at stake. He obviously believes that Kerry would benefit from such media behavior. But if the Kerry campaign is relying upon the media to do a good job consistently on these fronts, then Democrats ought to worry. Kerry now has to figure out how to do three things simultaneously: thwart the Bush attacks, launch his attacks on Bush, and present a positive message based on his positions and his own attributes and past actions. He cannot count on reporters to assist him. This is not their fight; it's his. And it will be a helluva battle.

*********DON'T FORGET ABOUT DAVID CORN'S NEW BOOK, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown Publishers). A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! The Library Journal says, "Corn chronicles to devastating effect the lies, falsehoods, and misrepresentations....Corn has painstakingly unearthed a bill of particulars against the president that is as damaging as it is thorough." For more information and a sample, check out the book's official website: www.bushlies.com.

***********