ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MARCH 31, 2004

WASHINGTON - - Doing the right thing for the wrong reason gets you points in this town, because so rarely is the right thing done at all.

So everybody is now praising the Bush administration for allowing National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify under oath and in public before the Sept. 11 Commission.

For months, the White House has refused to allow this, citing a sacred and inviolable Constitutional principle: the separation of powers.

Rice could not testify, the White House insisted, because unlike cabinet members whom Congress approves, she is a White House staff member and has no responsibilities to the legislative branch.

For that branch to demand her appearance in public and under oath (she had already testified in private and not under oath before the commission) would violate the separation of the executive and legislative branches.

So even though Rice blanketed the airwaves giving her version of events, which conflicted with the version presented by former counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke, she would not do so in front of the commission.

But what happened this week? Why did the White House change its mind? Well, one unnamed White House source told a reporter that “Bush advisers concluded that Rice can effectively counter Clarke in a high-profile public forum. The official also said polls showing Bush leading Sen. John Kerry, the likely Democratic presidential nominee, made this an opportune time to yield to the commission's demands.”

Constitutional principle? Oh, yeah, that. Well, we can forget about that.

The Sept. 11 Commission was very happy with this, but still had one more demand: That George Bush and Dick Cheney face questioning by the entire commission. (The White House had wanted only the chair and vice chair to do the questioning.) The session would be closed, the two men would not be under oath, and no transcript would be made, which was a pretty sweet deal for the White House, when you think about it.

The White House finally agreed to questioning by the entire commission, but only after extracting a very interesting but little commented-upon concession: The White House insisted that Bush and Cheney be questioned together and not separately like all other witnesses.

Commissioner Slade Gorton, a former Republican senator from Washington, said of that agreement on Wednesday, “It’s curious.”

It’s very curious. Does Cheney have to be in the room with Bush to make sure Bush does not screw up again like when he told Bob Woodward in Woodward’s 2002 book “Bush at War” that al Qaeda was not his focus before Sept. 11? “I was not on point,” Bush told the Washington Post reporter. “I didn't feel a sense of urgency.”

And if Bush starts going down that road with the commission, is Cheney supposed to kick him under the table?

At a press conference announcing the deal with the White House, Commission Chairman Tom Kean had the following exchange with a reporter:

QUESTION: “Can you say why you would agree to have the vice president and the president testify at the same time? To someone else, it might be to allow, you know, Mr. Cheney to help Mr. Bush with the answers. And I'm just confused why you would allow them to go together. It seems like it compromises your investigation to have them answer questions at the same time.”

KEAN: “Well, we recognize that Mr. Bush may help Mr. Cheney with some of the answers. (LAUGHTER) But it was the suggestion of the White House.”

No kidding it was at the suggestion of the White House. The White House’s first rule is that you never want the president facing questions alone. He could say anything. Like the truth.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MARCH 29, 2004

WASHINGTON - - According to the White House game plan, this was supposed to be the week that we were asking, “Can Richard Clarke hang on?”

Instead, I know more people who are asking, “Can Condoleezza Rice hang on?”

It is not that the White House counter-attack on Clarke has been an utter failure or that it did not raise some questions about him.

But rarely has the White House tried to kick somebody so savagely and ended up stubbing its own toe so hard.

Clarke, a former top counter-terrorism adviser to George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, has made serious charges against the Bush administration in a new book. He says that Bush did not take terrorism seriously enough before Sept. 11, 2001 and that by launching a war in Iraq, Bush managed to strengthen rather than weaken al Qaeda.

One of the most dramatic scenes in the book, which Clarke talked about on television, involves a meeting on Sept.12, 2001 where Bush drags Clarke into a small room and tries to shift the focus of U.S. retaliation to Iraq, even though Clarke has made clear to him that al Qaeda and not Iraq had just flown airplanes into our buildings.

The White House was caught by surprise by Clarke’s book even though the book had been over at the White House for months. Clarke followed the rules by shipping his book to the National Security Council last November so it could make sure he had not revealed any national secrets.

But did the National Security Council, a White House agency, alert anybody else at the White House? Apparently not.

So the White House was caught flat-footed and kicked back hard: Clarke was an embittered publicity seeker trying to make a quick buck, we were told, and that meeting he said took place Sept. 12, 2001? There was no record of it at the White House.

That particular denial lasted almost a week. Today, the White House admits the meeting took place.

I was sick at home all last week and so I got to lie on a couch and watch every minute of the Sept. 11 commission hearings on TV, in which Clarke and others testified in public and under oath.

Clarke’s simple apology at the beginning of his testimony was both wrenching and seemingly sincere.

"Your government failed you," Clarke said to the families of those who were killed on Sept. 11. "Those entrusted with protecting you failed you, and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter, because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask -- once all the facts are out -- for your understanding and your forgiveness."

It was a simple statement and when I heard it, I thought, “Somebody ought to have apologized before now.”

But just to show how much the White House attack machine did not get it, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist not only blasted Clarke for his apology, but mischaracterized what Clarke had said.

“In his appearance before the 9/11 commission,” Frist said on the floor of the U.S. Senate, “Mr. Clarke’s theatrical apology on behalf of the nation was not his right, his privilege or his responsibility. In my view it was not an act of humility, but an act of supreme arrogance and manipulation. Mr. Clarke can and will answer for his own conduct, but that is all.”

But that is all Clarke was saying. He never apologized “on behalf of the nation.” That was Frist creating a straw man in order to knock it down.

The administration ran into other problems in its efforts to stomp on Clarke: According to an article in the Washington Post, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice’s rebuttals to Clarke “contradicted other administration officials and her own previous statements.”

Oh, no! This is not what the White House wanted! Richard Clarke was supposed to be the guy who contradicted himself, not Condoleezza Rice!

And right in the middle of things, President Bush went to one of those awful press dinners that are considered very big deals in this town and did what he is supposed to do - - try and be funny. He showed a slide show in which he poked fun at himself for trying to find weapons of mass destruction in the Oval Office.

Some people were offended by this. Personally, I thought no offense was meant and Bush’s joke was within the bounds of good taste.

So when his Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, was asked at a press conference whether the joke was appropriate, did he make the same defense I just made? No! He refused to defend the president at all.

"I am just not in a position to be judgmental about that," Rumsfeld said.

As the week ended, Clarke was selling tons of books and Condoleezza Rice was trying to explain why she could go on every TV show in the world to attack Clarke, but would not do what Clarke had done: Raise her right hand and swear under oath that what she was saying was the truth.

Think it couldn’t get worse? On “Sixty Minutes” Sunday Ed Bradley asked Rice: “Will the families of those people who were killed hear an apology from you, do you think that would be appropriate?”

Rice refused. She did say she was “deeply sorry” for the “loss” that people endured, but concluded: “The best thing that we can do for the memory of the victims, the best thing that we can do for the future of this country is to focus on those who did this to us.”

But part of what Clarke is shining a light on and part of what the Sept. 11 commission is investigating is not just who did this to us, but who let them do it.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MARCH 17, 2004

WASHINGTON - - The George W. Bush and John Kerry campaigns are now caught up in a vicious cycle of attack and respond.

While each knows it needs to build a positive image of its candidate, each also believes it must use precious time and resources to respond to attacks from the other side and to launch its own attacks, forcing the other side to respond.

Because Kerry has fewer resources and is less well known than Bush, he may suffer from this kind of competition.

But the Bush campaign is clearly worried, if not downright frightened. It has used its greatest resource, the president, himself, very early in the campaign to launch attacks not only at political events but from the Oval Office, itself.

There are certain benefits an incumbent president gets by remaining above the fray, by staying non-political as long as possible and by doing the public’s business before he does his own political business.

But clearly the Bush campaign was concerned with polling that showed if Bush remained on a presidential pedestal, Kerry might open up too large a lead.

So now we have two candidates bashing each other very early Why? Michael Dukakis and 1988, that’s why.

The lesson that Democrats take away from that campaign is that Dukakis did not defend himself early and vigorously enough from the Bush attacks on Willie Horton and other issues.

Just this week, George Stephanopoulos of ABC News said the “Kerry campaign remembers 1988, feeling that Michael Dukakis didn't fight back strongly enough against the first campaign by President Bush."

The lesson that Republicans take away from that campaign is that it pays to attack often and early.

In case you were not around, Willie Horton was a convicted murderer who was granted 10 weekend furloughs from prison in Massachusetts under the administration of Gov. Michael Dukakis. Nine times, Horton returned to his cell. The tenth time he fled to Maryland, broke into a home, repeatedly slashed a man with a knife and beat and raped a woman. Horton was caught and sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus 85 years in a Maryland prison.

The sentencing judge refused to return Horton to Massachusetts, saying, “I’m not prepared to take the chance that Mr. Horton might again be furloughed or otherwise released.”

But Dukakis was sure the Horton affair could not be used against him. When Al Gore raised the issue in a New York primary debate, the Democratic crowd booed Gore and applauded Dukakis when Dukakis explained the “facts”:

Under Dukakis, Massachusetts had one of the lowest crime and incarceration rates of any industrialized state in the country. Furloughs were cost-effective. They were progressive. They were sensible. Michael Dukakis understood that kind of thing. His life revolved around that kind of thing. Government was based on sense. And furloughs made sense.

But Bush’s campaign manager, Lee Atwater, knew that politics often had little to do with sense and much more to do with fear. "The Horton case is one of those gut issues that are value issues, particularly in the South," Atwater said. "And if we hammer at these over and over, we are going to win.”

Nobody had to ask what Atwater meant by "particularly in the South." Photographs of Horton showed a frightening-looking black man and Atwater knew the media could not resist running that picture.

And the media could not. Every time George Bush raised the Horton issue, the media ran the Horton picture. Later, a group acting in support of the Bush campaign also ran Horton’s picture in a television commercial. And the Bush campaign ran an ad that featured both white and black “prisoners” going through a revolving door.

Today, the use of Willie Horton almost certainly would be denounced fairly or not as racism, but Dukakis did not want to do that. His campaign was going after “Bubba” and “Joe Six Pack” voters, too. So Dukakis’s campaign manager, Susan Estrich, was told to stay away from raising the race issue. “I am not proud of our silence,” she said later.

But it was not as if Dukakis did not attack Bush at all. By July, Dukakis was already hitting back at Bush in his speeches. And he had always been tough on Bush. He had said Bush "made deals with foreign drug-runners" and was secretly planning to cut Social Security benefits. He said Bush had lied about the Iran-contra affair.

And the polls were showing Dukakis well ahead in July. So why screw around with a winning game? Besides, what was he going to say about Willie Horton that the public would buy?

This was best demonstrated at the time by a senior Dukakis aide who disgustedly pushed a piece of paper across a table at me and said: "OK, you write our response to Willie Horton. You write the catchy phrase. You come up with the 30-second spot. You come up with the jingle. What are we supposed to say? That Horton wasn't let out of prison and that he didn’t rape that woman? What the hell are we supposed to say?"

So instead of responding to Horton directly, Dukakis tried to exploit public disgust at the whole nature of the campaign. Dukakis ran a commercial in late October called "Counterpunch" in which he is watching a Bush negative ad on TV.

Dukakis snaps off the set in disgust and turns to the camera and says: "I'm fed up with it. Haven't seen anything like it in 25 years of public life. George Bush's negative TV ads: distorting my record, full of lies, and he knows it."

But the ad was judged not very effective, so Dukakis took the final step. There is an old saying that you should never get down in the mud with a pig because all that will happen is you will get dirty and the pig will like it.

But with the Angel Medrano ad, Mike Dukakis got down in the mud with George Bush.

"George Bush talks a lot about prison furloughs," the Dukakis ad said. "But he won't tell you that the Massachusetts program was started by a Republican governor and stopped by Mike Dukakis. And Bush won't talk about the thousands of drug kingpins furloughed from federal prisons while he led the war on drugs."

Then the photo of Angel Medrano, a convicted heroin dealer, appears on the screen.

"Bush won't talk about this drug pusher -- one of his furloughed heroin dealers -- who raped and murdered Patsy Pedrin, pregnant mother of two."

The picture of Patsy Pedrin being carried away in a body bag flashes on the screen.

"The real story about furloughs," the ad concludes, "is that George Bush has taken a furlough from the truth."

The Bush campaign felt that Dukakis had given up any moral superiority by running that ad. After all, the Bush campaign had never "officially" used a picture of a black man, while the Dukakis campaign had "officially" used the picture of an Hispanic.

"What about their ad about the halfway house?" Bush told reporters whenever they brought up Willie Horton. "Is that racism against Hispanics? That's what I think."

Mike Dukakis was sure that the voters would see through Bush's attacks. "The American people can smell the garbage," Dukakis said.

But by the end of the campaign, neither side was exactly smelling like a rose.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MARCH 15, 2004

WASHINGTON - - How come smart people do dumb things? No, don’t ask Martha Stewart. Ask the geniuses over at the White House, who have created two TV commercials that rank right up there with New Coke and the Susan B. Anthony dollar as expensive and avoidable failures.

Two of George W. Bush’s new re-election commercials feature images from Sept. 11, 2001 including World Trade Center wreckage and firefighters carrying a flag-draped coffin.

Some people, including some families of the victims of Sept. 11, are horrified by the use of these images for political purposes. Other people, including some families of the victims of Sept. 11, think using the images is just fine.

Which has led to a nice discussion of the controversy day after day after day.

Which is the problem for Bush: These ads were not supposed to create controversy. They were supposed to make you feel good about President Bush. They were supposed to be warm and fuzzy commercials that created feelings of gratitude and confidence.

The ads - - there are three of them reportedly being shown in 18 states at a cost of at least $10.5 million - - are not issue ads. The best one (the only good one, actually) is titled “Lead” and features George Bush saying. “I know exactly where I want to lead this country.” The president and Mrs. Bush sit together at the White House and there are also images of a teacher in a classroom, men in hard hats, a family at a dinner table, etc.

The second ad, officially titled “Safer, Stronger” should be titled “Dumb, Dumber” for the people who dreamed it up. This ad includes the World Trade Center wreckage and the firefighters with that coffin. The third ad, “Tested”, shows a variety of images including Sept. 11 wreckage.

The anger over the second and third ads was immediate and the defense followed a day or two later.

But according to a recent poll by the University of Pennsylvania’s National Annenberg Election Survey, “A majority of the American public considers it inappropriate for President Bush’s re-election campaign to use images from the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in its television commercials.”

It is not a huge majority - - around 55 percent - - but these were not wedge issue ads designed to divide people and turn out a partisan base vote. These ads were supposed to unite people and create a nice feeling about President Bush.

Ads create feelings all the time. Remember that Pepsi ad of some years ago with that little boy surrounded by puppies who were frolicking around him and licking his face? The message was not: “Drink Pepsi and dogs will lick your face.” The message was: “Feel good about Pepsi.” (That ad ran in 1976, by the way, and people still remember it.)

So why didn’t anyone at the White House realize that using Sept. 11 imagery would lead to controversy, discordance and bad publicity? Well, we don’t know for sure. Maybe they have started to believe they really are geniuses instead of just ordinary political operatives capable of making good and bad decisions.

A focus group or two might have helped them. This is the proper use of focus groups. (The improper use is when the media use focus groups to substitute for polls even though they are very different things.)

You sit a group of people down in a room, you show the people the ads and you encourage them to talk.

If the White House had actually done that before releasing the ads, I cannot believe somebody in some group wouldn’t have piped up and said, “Hey, you can’t use the victims of Sept. 11 in a political ad! That’s wrong! People will be really upset with you!”

Let me say right here that I believe the effect of political ads is overrated.

Campaigns are obsessed with ads for two reasons: Ads are totally controllable. Unlike speeches, town halls, press conferences and debates where the candidate can screw up and say something unscripted, every frame of a TV commercial can be shaped and reviewed until it is perfect. (Or until the ad makers think it is perfect.)

The second reason campaigns are obsessed with ads is even less appetizing: Campaign operatives often get a percentage of the TV ad buy, so naturally they love ads.

As far as real voters are concerned, however, they switch the channel as soon as the ads come on, they hit the mute button, or they instantly forget the ads as soon as they have seen them.

Unless a campaign creates a really, really memorable ad, that is. One that creates controversy. Like the Bush campaign has just done.

In that case, people remember those ads for a long, long time and for all the wrong reasons.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MARCH 10, 2004

WASHINGTON - - Sometimes our vast power surprises even us.

Just two days after we printed an item that John McCain was a longshot possibility to become John Kerry’s running mate, McCain went on television Wednesday and said: "John Kerry is a very close friend of mine and we've been friends for years so obviously I would entertain it.... But I foresee no scenario where that would happen."

In the world of politics, “foreseeing no scenario” is the equivalent of saying, “Let’s make this happen!”

The appeal of the ticket is obvious: Both are Vietnam vets, one from the Northeast and one from the Southwest. The more staid Kerry would be complimented by the more free-wheeling McCain, who is popular among independent voters.

The problem is that Kerry is a Democrat and McCain is a Republican. So that makes this ticket impossible, right?

Wrong. As Slate magazine has pointed out, in 1864 incumbent Republican Abraham Lincoln selected Democrat Andrew Johnson as his vice president and the ticket won. (Of course, Lincoln got shot and Johnson got impeached, but, hey, you can’t have everything.)
As I wrote earlier: “The two are good friends and worked together to restore U.S. relations with Vietnam. In fact, in 2000, McCain pushed Kerry for the vice presidency under Al Gore. ‘I think it would be very helpful to Vice President Gore. I think that Sen. Kerry has proved his service to our nation and his ability as an accomplished debater and a person who knows the issues,’ McCain said at the time.
“Kerry didn’t get selected, but isn’t it time for him to return the favor to McCain?….I asked Kerry about this and his answer was typical Kerry.
“ ‘Maybe I should support McCain to replace Cheney on the Republican ticket,’ he said. ‘That was a joke.’ ”
But today, who is laughing? Not the reporters who would line up to get on the McCain bus to relive those rollicking days from McCain’s presidential campaign four years ago!

Just grab your copy of “Divided We Stand”, the definitive account of the 2000 race, and turn to the chapter titled “Kick the Tires and Light the Fires!” to experience again those golden moments:

“On a five-day tour of New Hampshire in late August 1999, already his 15th Granite State trip since he began running for president, McCain unexpectedly began the day by volunteering some of the terrible things he has said in the past.

“First there was the time he referred to the "Leisure World" senior citizens home as "Seizure World," and then there was the time he said "the nice thing about Alzheimer's is you get to hide your own Easter eggs" and then there was the national eruption he caused with an egregious joke that went something like, ‘Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Janet Reno is her father and Hillary is her mother.’ (McCain will later apologize to the Clintons, but never to Reno. He doesn’t like Reno.)

“And as he goes on and on, a reporter pipes up and just begs McCain to shut up and protect himself. Later, at dinner, I ask why she interrupted McCain. ‘But he was hurting himself,’ she says, as if to say why should we hurt him when he is the one candidate who gives us everything we want? Why would we print negative stuff about McCain, even if it comes out of his own mouth, considering how nice he is to us?

“Clearly she is not of the old school of journalism, which taught that the only way for a reporter to look upon a politician is down. She was not even of that school of journalism that says a reporter should report ‘without fear or favor.’ It is difficult, spending so much time with McCain every day, basking in his glow, being a recipient of the largesse of time and words he bestows upon us, not to get caught up in his mystique and charm.

“John McCain is funny, irreverent, a great story teller. He easily wins the Presidential-Candidate-I-Would-Most-Want-to-Be-Trapped-in-an-Elevator-With contest. And some reporters resolve the problem of how much distance to keep from him by deciding to keep none whatsoever. One reporter admits in a profile of McCain she does for Vogue magazine that she actually wet and combed his hair for him one morning because his wartime injuries keep him from doing it himself. A more common example is the many reporters who protect McCain from his own words, something McCain never asked them to do.

“I was not the first journalist to hear McCain use the word ‘gooks,’ but I was the first to print it in a piece that appeared in U.S.News & World Report on September 27, 1999. My rule was fairly simple: If the candidate says it, I report it. There is no journalistic justification for protecting a presidential candidate from himself. (And even though McCain's use of the word would go on to create a huge stink for him, he never refused me any access or any request for an interview, during or after the campaign. Nor did he ever mention it. McCain's attitude was fairly simple: Whatever he said, he was responsible for. This attitude is not universal among politicians, many of whom believe that the media should report ‘what I mean’ rather than ‘what I say.’ McCain’s staff, whose power and authority are vastly diminished by McCain dealing directly with the media, often warns him that he is following a dangerous path. ‘I get a notification from the staff and they are usually correct,’ McCain says. ‘But life is too short, and you got to enjoy it. And I enjoy the exchanges, I enjoy the company, and it's a lot of fun.’)

“In any case, McCain often couldn't help what he said. He was what he was, and he was not a guarded man. He was a Navy jet jockey, and while regulations (to say nothing of good sense) required him during his flying days to follow a careful checklist before each takeoff, McCain would dispense with it. ‘Kick the tires and light the fires!’ McCain says, recalling his motto back then. ‘To hell with the checklist. Anybody can be slow.’ Which is exactly the way he runs his campaign.”

Now, I ask you: Couldn’t the Kerry campaign use a little of this?

Kick the tires! Light the fires! Choose McCain!

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MARCH 8, 2004

WASHINGTON - - John Kerry will be only the third Catholic in U.S. history to be nominated for the presidency by a major party. The other two were Al Smith in 1928, who lost to Herbert Hoover, and John F. Kennedy in 1960, who defeated Richard Nixon.

I asked Kerry if sewing up the nomination has any special meaning for him as a Catholic, and he said, “Historically yes, substantively no. I subscribe completely to the speech Kennedy made in Houston in 1960 and believe completely in the separation of church and state.”

Kennedy’s speech made to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association on September 12, 1960 is eloquent, powerful, emotional and stirring. (And comparing it to the typical political speech today is profoundly depressing.) The most famous line is: “I am not the Catholic candidate for President. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic.”

Kerry said of the Catholic issue today, “I really think Americans have ceased to think about these kinds of things. I don’t think people care. I think people are in a different place.”

If Kerry wins, he would become not just the second Catholic president in history, but the first with Jewish grandparents. And for decades, voters in Massachusetts assumed Kerry was Irish, as did members of his own staff and newspapers often described him that way.

Oddly Kerry never wrote a letter to the editor complaining and pointing out that he was Austrian on his father’s side and British on his mother’s side. This may have been because Massachusetts has more Irish-Americans than any other state.

But Kerry says he never lied about it. In any case, aside from not being Irish, Kerry is not a Boston Brahmin, either, though he is often described that way.

The phrase was coined by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. to designate the elite WASP ruling class of Boston. Since you have to be a Protestant to be a WASP (that’s what the P is all about), Kerry isn’t one. All this is rendered moot, however, because Kerry really wants to be black.

Last week, Kerry gave a little-noticed interview to American Urban Radio in which he said, “President Clinton was often known as the first black president. I wouldn’t be upset if I could earn the right to be the second.”

When Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison wrote that about Clinton at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal in October, 1998, however, Morrison was not talking about Clinton’s empathy with black people, she was talking about his being a victim.

“Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President,” Morrison wrote in the New Yorker. “Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime.”

What Clinton’s “blackness” earned him, however, according to Morrison, was to be persecuted and possibly “fired from your job, sent away in disgrace, and- - who knows? - - maybe sentenced and jailed to boot.”

Donna Brazile, Al Gore’s campaign manager in 2000, a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention this year and an African-American, was somewhat taken aback when I read Kerry’s statement to her, but she quickly recovered.

“That’s a very steep hill to climb,” she said. “Clinton bonded with African-Americans and they never, ever left him. I saw some internal polls recently. Clinton’s favorable rating with black people was at 91 percent in 2000, 92 percent in 2002 and 94 percent this year. It will take years for John Kerry to build that kind of credibility with black voters. Clinton started in high school. He knew the verses at Baptist services. He knew the songs. He knew how to do the Electric Slide! Now, Kerry looks presidential and acts presidential, and African-Americans will be open to that. And if he can learn to dance and sway like Clinton, Kerry can get there.”

I have never envisioned Kerry dancing and swaying (the mind boggles) but he told me that there is a “new” Kerry, that the primary campaign has had a “profound impact” on him, that his speeches are “shorter and tighter” and this his demeanor is “softer and easier.”

And, Kerry said: “I am having fun and letting it all hang out.”

Groovy.

Enough of the presidency, however. Who will be the vice presidential nominee? No, not the Democratic vice presidential nominee, anyone can speculate on that. (“The Hotline,” National Journal’s daily briefing on politics, has a list of 53 people whose names have already been mentioned.) Who will be the Republican vice presidential nominee?

True, President Bush has said he wants to keep Dick Cheney on the ticket, and loyalty to vice presidents runs strong in the Bush family. (His father kept Dan Quayle on the ticket.) And Cheney certainly wants to keep the job. But what if Cheney becomes a drag on the ticket? What if, as some fear, the Plame Affair gets uglier?

Valerie Plame is the CIA operative whose cover may have been blown by a leak to columnist Robert Novak and other journalists. A grand jury is now investigating, and there has been at least one published report quoting an unnamed source saying some of the targets of the probe work or worked for Cheney.

That is a long way from toppling a vice president, but those close to the White House say there is some nervousness there. So what if Cheney needed to be replaced for this or health or other reasons? Who would replace him? Certain names leap into play: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and - - here’s the longshot - - National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

The odds on Rice could get shorter if the Democrats go for their longshot choice for vice president, Hillary Clinton. Keep in mind that the head of Kerry’s vice presidential search team, Jim Johnson, filled the same role for Walter Mondale in 1984 and came up with Geraldine Ferraro, the only woman ever nominated by a major party for vice president.

If you like longshots, here is an even longer one: the All-Navy Vietnam Veterans ticket of John Kerry and John McCain. Though defeated in his presidential bid in 2000, the Arizona senator remains very popular.

Like Kerry, he served in the Navy in Vietnam (McCain in the air and Kerry on the water) and is considered at least by reporters to be much funnier and more personable than Kerry (but, then again, who isn’t?).

The two are good friends and worked together to restore U.S. relations with Vietnam. In fact, in 2000, McCain pushed Kerry for the vice presidency under Al Gore.

“I think it would be very helpful to Vice President Gore. I think that Sen. Kerry has proved his service to our nation and his ability as an accomplished debater and a person who knows the issues,” McCain said at the time.

Kerry didn’t get selected, but isn’t it time for him to return the favor to McCain? Well, one problem: McCain is in the wrong party. He is a Republican.

“Do you think the Democrats would want a pro-life, free-trading, fiscal conservative?” McCain told a reporter recently. “They’d be smoking something pretty strong, stronger than they usually do. I will not leave the Republican Party.”

I asked Kerry about this and his answer was typical Kerry.

“Maybe I should support McCain to replace Cheney on the Republican ticket,” he said. “That was a joke.”

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MARCH 3, 2004

WASHINGTON - - John Kerry will not choose John Edwards as his running mate and I will tell you why:

Kerry looks at his own career: Nineteen years in the U.S. Senate preceded by being a lieutenant governor preceded by being a prosecutor preceded by being an anti-war activist preceded by being in combat in Vietnam.

Then he looks at John Edwards’s career: Five years in the Senate preceded by being a personal injury lawyer.

It is not just that Kerry believes Edwards has not punched his ticket, it is not just that Kerry believes Edwards has not paid his dues, it is that Kerry believes John Edwards is not ready to be President of the United States.

Many considerations go into choosing a vice president - - most of which are wasted since the American people rarely look at the No. 2 spot on the ticket when casting their votes - - but nobody as serious as John Kerry is going to pick a man who cannot do the job of president should fate call upon him to do so.

Others will say Edwards has earned a spot on the ticket, that he ran a terrific campaign and Kerry would be a fool to pass him up. But what did Edwards really accomplish during his campaign?

The most important primary he won was the media primary. He was the beneficiary of a media swoon different in intensity but not in kind from the John McCain media swoon of 2000.

The media went on and on about Edwards’s speaking skills, his good looks, his energy, and his ability to connect with audiences. The voters, however, seemed somewhat less impressed: Edwards won only one primary, his native state of South Carolina.

The Edwards swoon reached the height of its silliness in Wisconsin, where Kerry beat Edwards by six percentage points. Six percentage points is a very solid victory, especially in a multi-candidate field. Six percentage points is only four percentage points away from a landslide.

But the press treated Wisconsin as an Edwards victory, not a Kerry victory, writing about how close the outcome was and how Edwards had beaten expectations (meaning the foolish expectations of the media based on foolish polls.)

I guarantee you that if Kerry beats George W. Bush by six points in November, the same reporters who wrote that six points was a razor thin margin in Wisconsin will write that Kerry decisively beat the incumbent president signifying a sea change in American politics.

Edwards kept saying he could carry the South in the fall, but he presented no evidence. And, in fact, preserving the illusion of his southern support is what caused him to drop out this week.

Next week, four southern states, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida, will hold primaries. If Edwards had entered those primaries and lost, his southern support would have been exposed as mythical, making it very hard for him to run again.

He was not a bad candidate. He got farther than many thought he would get. And having good speaking skills is no small thing. But the vote-drawing ability of your speaking skills is diminished in a vice presidential candidate because very few people are listening to you.

Some say Edwards will not get the vice presidential nod because a vice presidential candidate should be the attack dog of the ticket and Edwards was not good on the attack. I disagree, however. He was not mean on the attack, but he was good. His message about George W. Bush creating two Americas, one fixed in favor of the rich and powerful and one for the rest of us, was a good one.

But Kerry doesn’t need an attack dog. Kerry is going to be his own attack dog. He has to make the case for change; he has to make the case that George Bush has been a failure. If Kerry doesn’t, Kerry will lose. Unless voters are given a convincing reason to oust an incumbent president, they will retain an incumbent president.

So who will Kerry select as his running mate? The list of possibilities is pretty long, but I think Dick Gephardt has a strong shot. And Hillary Clinton has an outside chance.

But don’t Republicans hate Hillary Clinton? Yes, but they hated her husband even more and he got elected and re-elected.

Why would Hillary want the job? Wouldn’t it be better for her to run on her own some day as senator from New York? Maybe. But look at the record: Only two people in history, Warren Harding and John Kennedy have gone directly from the U.S. Senate to the White House. (John Kerry is hoping to be the third.)

But vice presidents have gotten to the presidency 14 times: five times through election, four times through assassination, four times through natural death and once through resignation.

So if you want to be president some day, the vice presidency turns out to be a very good job to have while waiting around.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
MARCH 1, 2004

LOS ANGELES - - Just how smart a president has to be is a matter of some debate. It is clear from past elections that Americans do not demand genius.

And no candidate wants to be considered an intellectual, which happily is not a problem for anybody in the race today. The last time anyone deemed an intellectual was nominated was 1956, when Adlai Stevenson lost to Dwight Eisenhower for a second time.

When Americans view the presidential choice as between brains and leadership, they almost always choose leadership. As Al Gore found out in those debates with George W. Bush in 2000, being the smartest kid in the room may get you a gold star, but not the White House.

And Bill Clinton warned his fellow Democrats last December that voters would “rather have someone strong and wrong than weak and right.”

But candidates still walk a fine line. Become a “policy wonk” and the media will tear you apart. Appear uninformed about important issues and the media will tear you apart. Some fun this running for president.

John Edwards has based his campaign on an emotional appeal to voters from the very beginning. His speaking style, his warmth, and his ability to connect with his audiences have all been hailed in news article after new article. But in the last week, he has appeared to falter when it comes to a deep understanding of the issues.

Asked about threatened sanctions against the United States by the European Union if Congress does not repeal a corporate tax credit, Edwards replied with the political equivalent of “huh?”

"I'm not sure I even know what you're talking about,” Edwards, a U.S. Senator in his first term, said. “If I understand what you're asking, and I'm not sure I do ... I'm opposed to us using our tax system to give tax breaks to American companies who are shipping jobs overseas."

Which is not, as it turns out, what the issue is about, but what the heck, have you
seen this guy’s hair? Fantastic.

Edwards’s spokesperson, Jennifer Palmieri, admitted Edwards had a lack of familiarity with the matter, but invoked the leader vs. smarts defense.

"When the American people make a decision about security, about who they trust to lead the country, I don't think they're going to be concerned about a relatively obscure dispute between the European Union and the U.S. on a corporate tax credit," Palmieri said.

Democratic operative Garry South said at least Edwards didn’t call Greeks “Grecians.”

But to the New York Times editorial board a few days later, he might as well have. Being a policy wonk is not exactly a bad thing when you are in front of the Times editorial board, but once again Edwards struggled.

According to a news story he “responded with uncertainty” about the violence in Haiti” and "seemed caught off guard by fairly standard questions.”

But it wasn’t a total loss. Edwards was, according to the paper, "lively and engaging, smiling and leaning into his questioners as he talked animatedly….”

The editorial board was so impressed with Edwards’s ability to smile and lean at the same time, in fact, that it promptly endorsed Kerry.

There is, in fact, precious little difference between the two men on the issues, which is why Edwards constantly emphasizes his working class roots as the chief distinction between them.

Kerry counters that if we held upper-class backgrounds against presidents, we would never have had Franklin Roosevelt nor John Kennedy in the White House.

In any case, both Kerry and Edwards are multi-millionaires now.

While it is said that the two men differ on trade policy, the difference seems less than huge. Edwards attacks the North American Free Trade Agreement, saying he wants to take another look at it. Kerry defends the North American Free Trade Agreement saying he wants to take another look at it. (This may be another “huh” moment.)

Ten states hold primaries or caucuses on Tuesday, including California, New York, Ohio and Georgia and Edwards has been emphasizing his opposition to NAFTA, which he says costs Americans their jobs, in each one.

This may work against him in California, the largest state, however. “We are an exporting state,” says Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, Senior Scholar, School of Policy, Planning and Development at the University of Southern California. “While our unemployment is higher than that national average, we care a lot about trade, especially our trade with Mexico.”

She does say that Edwards is certainly likeable - - “I saw him at a senior center in Culver City and they ate him up” - - but that electability is going to beat likability this time around.

“Nothing matters to California Democrats except the ability to beat George Bush,” she says. “And Kerry has that.”