Who would you rather have in your corner, Sasso or Baker? In its hour of need the Kerry campaign brings on board John Sasso, breathlessly described in one news story as "canny and ruthless," but mostly known to the world as one of the men who ran the Dukakis campaign in 1988, which was about as far from "canny and ruthless" as you can go. Meanwhile, the Bush crowd brings on former Secretary of State James Baker to handle negotiations for the presidential debates. Yes, Baker, the man who negotiated the theft of the election in Florida in 2000. If you hunted for words that best describe Baker, "canny and ruthless" would do nicely.

When historians come to dissect the Kerry campaign they will surely marvel at the rich platter of issues handed the Democratic candidate, which he has thrust from him with shudders of distaste and instead turned back, like Mencken's Bryan, to swat at flies.

Read the report of the 9/11 Commission, as Kerry and his "strategists" have surely done, and there are mounds of fragrant dung to hurl at Bush and Cheney: the warnings from the FBI and CIA ignored by the White House, the obvious lies about Cheney getting Bush's go-ahead to issue the shoot-down orders that never reached the Air Force pilots.

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