ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 28, 2004

WASHINGTON - - It might appear as if John Kerry has plenty of time to pick a vice presidential running mate. After all, the Democratic National Convention is not until the last week of July.

But some think Kerry has waited too long already. Some think it is no accident that Vice President Cheney has heated up his attacks on Kerry at a time when Kerry has no running mate to reply.

The result is that Kerry must do the counter-attacking himself. This makes him look negative at a time when he should be building a positive image with the American people.

Some have advised Kerry to ignore Cheney, who this week attacked Kerry for his “inconsistencies and changing rationales” on the war in Iraq. Those who advise not responding to Cheney do so under the theory that Cheney is irrelevant because when it comes to choosing a president, hardly anybody casts a ballot based on who the running mate is.

In other words, demonizing Cheney is a waste of good demonizing.

I don’t buy this theory, however. True, polling shows that Cheney has high negatives and his presence on the ticket will probably not affect the outcome of the election.

But Cheney commands attention when he speaks. And Kerry cannot afford to let Cheney define him to the American people. If Kerry had a running mate, the running mate could respond to Cheney and the media, at least most of the media, would try for balanced coverage. But Kerry’s surrogates - - a few governors, members of Congress, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee - - cannot command the same attention as a vice president or a vice presidential candidate.

This is a problem. The story line for Kerry, the filter through which the press and public see things, is being set in stone for Kerry just as it was for Al Gore: Kerry waffles, Kerry flip-flops, Kerry lies.

Need evidence? Whether Kerry threw away his Vietnam medals or his Vietnam ribbons 33 years ago would, under normal circumstances, be a trivial story, barely worthy of mention. Yet this story received major attention this week. Why? Because it was viewed as being more than about medals vs. ribbons, it was viewed as a revelation about Kerry’s character. (He once had said medals and now he says ribbons.)

So the issue is never the issue. The issue is always the candidate’s character. Does anyone remember what Al Gore allegedly “lied” about during his first debate with George W. Bush? Probably not, but many remember that it was the “sighs and lies” debate, with Al Gore fulfilling the story line that had been laid out for him: He was a waffler, an exaggerator, a man of untrustworthy character.

The Kerry campaign must work hard to change the story line, to alter the filter, if Kerry is to succeed. And, when Kerry is attacked, the campaign will often need to attack back. But that does not mean that Kerry, himself, should be left to do all the dirty work.

"If they're going to attack me, and they're going to start accusing me of something, then I'm going to demand a level of accountability from them that I think ought to be forthcoming," Kerry said Tuesday on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews."

What is wrong with that sentence? To many I’s and me’s. The election (as Howard Dean kept reminding people) is not about the candidates. It is about the voters. Or should be.

Kerry needs somebody to do the negative thing, so he can do the positive thing, the vision thing, the what-I-want-to-do-for-America thing.

In other words, Kerry needs a running mate.

Picking one is not as difficult a chore as campaigns make it out to be. Kerry does not have that large a field to choose from and even bad choices are usually not fatal: Dan Quayle did not keep George H.W. Bush from being elected.

The Kerry campaign needs somebody who can get down in the mud, so Kerry can climb out of it. And it needs him or her now.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 26,2004

WASHNGTON - - There is no law that says elections have to be about anything important.

Most would agree that the presidency is a significant job - - since Sept. 11, 2001, our president is now also viewed as Protector of the Homeland - - and we would like to be believe that the way we elect presidents is significant, also.

But if modern presidential elections have taught us anything, it is how trivialized the process has become.

Not every presidential election has to be about war or peace, prosperity or poverty, leadership or drift.

But I would like to think a presidential election is about something.

The election of 1988, one of the worst elections in modern history, was about nothing. Nothing that mattered anyway. It was about flag factories and Willie Horton and the Pledge of Allegiance and who really was the wimp.

It was so bad, that George H.W. Bush felt he had to promise “a kinder, gentler nation” if he won.

Bush’s media adviser, Roger Ailes, described his theory of dealing with the media during that campaign this way: “You try to avoid as many mistakes as you can. You try to give them as many pictures as you can. And if you need coverage, you attack, and you will get coverage.”

Judy Woodruff, then with the “MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour,” responded, “So you’re saying the notion of the candidate saying, ‘I want to run for President because I want to do something for this country,’ is crazy.”

“Suicide,” Ailes replied.

As David von Drehle of the Washington Post wrote this Sunday, our nation is not sharply divided today by accident. The presidential candidates, he writes, no longer are trying to unite Americans, but are trying to divide them.

“Occasionally speeches may pay homage to broad, unifying themes,” he writes, “but the campaign day to day seems intended to deepen, rather than erase the rift.”

Nor is that the only problem. While hot-button issues (abortion, affirmative action, etc.) are often used to divide people, at least those issues are about something.

As 1988 shows, campaigns don’t have to be about anything at all and there are signs the 2004 campaign is heading in the same direction.

The John Kerry campaign had to spend precious time last week defending Kerry against charges that the first Purple Heart he was awarded in Vietnam (he ended up with three, as well as a Bronze and Silver Star) was for a trivial rather than a serious wound.

Even though there is nothing funny about Purple Hearts, I had to smile when I first heard that accusation. As anyone in the military can tell you, Purple Hearts have over the years been awarded for all kinds of reasons.

My father, a combat veteran of the Pacific in World War II, received a number of medals including a Purple Heart. The Purple Heart was the only one he would talk about. “We were unloading sides of beef off a ship,” he told me, “and there was an air raid and some jerk let go of his rope and the side of beef fell right on top of me. When I woke up in the hospital, an officer was going down the rows handing out Purple Hearts to everyone. So that’s how I got my Purple Heart.”

According to the Associated Press: “Kerry got his first Purple Heart after he got shrapnel in his left arm above his elbow. Kerry's third Purple Heart came from an incident on March 13, 1969, when a mine had exploded near Kerry's swiftboat. A small piece of shrapnel lodged in his left upper buttock. He was treated with a tetanus shot, topical dressing and an ace bandage. Kerry also was wounded by a piece of shrapnel on Feb. 20, 1969, on his left thigh. Doctors decided to leave the shrapnel in place rather than make a wider opening to remove it.”

So here is a guy still walking around with shrapnel in his thigh that he got while serving his country in combat and he has to defend himself against charges that his first wound wasn’t big enough?

Which leaves me with two questions: One, how many of those who are questioning his service in Vietnam served in Vietnam at all?

And, two, who the hell cares about how big his wounds were? What’s the standard? The bigger the wound, the more qualified you are to be president?

Because if that is the standard, then George W. Bush is in big, big trouble.

That was last week. This week began with another Vietnam accusation. Monday, Kerry was accused of contradicting himself as to whether he threw away his combat medals when he returned from Vietnam or his combat ribbons.

Kerry has said frequently that he threw away his ribbons. But a TV network found a tape of Kerry in 1971 saying he threw away his medals.

Got that? This whole story hangs on whether it was medals or ribbons. Do you know the difference? Do you care?

Kerry says that he and the military make no distinction between medals and ribbons, but in any case he is sticking to the story that he threw away his ribbons. And he snapped back that this “comes from a President who can't even [provide
evidence] whether or not he showed up in the National Guard.”

Perhaps Americans are bored with discussions of Iraq, terrorism, jobs, health care and schools. But are we really going to spend the next seven months talking about medals, ribbons, shrapnel and the National Guard?

Sen. John McCain, R-AZ, put it this way: "I'd like to see us put the war that was over more than 30 years ago behind us. I've spent the last 30 years trying to heal the wounds of the war….We have enormous challenges facing America. I believe that President Bush served honorably in the National Guard. I believe that John Kerry served honorably, and I wish we would move forward and face the challenges that lie ahead of us. I don't think most Americans are enjoying this.”

Well, they may not be enjoying it, but, boy, oh boy, are they going to be getting it.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 21, 2004

WASHINGTON - - April should have been George W. Bush’s cruelest month.

In April, the Sept. 11 Commission heard testimony that accused the White House of hindering the fight against al Qaeda and terrorism in order to conduct an unnecessary war against Iraq. The commission also heard testimony that members of the administration were not really interested in terrorism before Sept. 11 and that key warnings of the attack were ignored.

In April, the U.S. death toll mounted dramatically in Iraq as rebel forces led uprisings across the country. The U.S. media reported that key roads to Baghdad had been cut and the city was experiencing a shortage of food for civilians and ammunition for U.S. troops.

In April, Bob Woodward’s new book was released containing explosive charges that Bush, himself, had little faith in the evidence that Iraq harbored weapons of mass destruction, that funds were diverted without the knowledge of Congress from fighting the war in Afghanistan to launch a war against Iraq and that Saudi Prince Bandar promised to lower oil prices to help Bush get re-elected this November.

In April, Bush held a shaky press conference in which he stated that before Sept. 11 he actually believed that the Atlantic and Pacific oceans would protect the United States from attack. “After 9-11, the world changed for me, and I think changed for the country,” he stated. “It changed for me because, like many, we assumed oceans would protect us from harm. And that's not the case. It's not the reality of the 21st century. Oceans don't protect us. They don't protect us from killers.”

Which left the obvious (but unasked) question: Considering that on February 26, 1993 foreign terrorists exploded a bomb inside the World Trade Center that left a crater 22 feet wide and five stories deep killing six and injuring more than 1,000, how could anybody still believe in 2001 that our “oceans would protect us from harm”?

One would think that an April like this with events like these - - to say nothing of high gasoline prices and a continuing job slump - - would give Bush’s opponent, John Kerry, a big lead in the polls.

Instead, polls show Bush leading Kerry. In an ABC-Washington Post poll, Bush leads among registered voters 48-43 percent (with Ralph Nader at 6) and in a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll, Bush leads among likely voters 50-44 percent (with Nader at 4.)

So what is going on here?

Possible explanations:

1. These polls don’t mean anything and are not measuring anything significant, especially considering most people are not paying attention to an election which does not take place until Nov. 2.

2. George Bush is a likable, confident leader untroubled by self-doubt, who does well when the subject is terrorism - - even if the details tend to indict his leadership - - because Americans are reminded that he is a war-time leader who saw us through a terrible attack and is now fighting a war against terrorism (or so the administration claims) in Iraq.

3. Kerry has yet to hit his stride as a campaigner and is still unknown to most Americans. In the end, this might not matter. If it is true that this election is about George Bush alone and whether the American people want to re-hire him for another four years, then if Bush becomes unpopular enough - - either through a worsening war or a worsening economy or both - - then Kerry would win by default.

As Kerry said recently at a $25,000-a-plate breakfast at the "21" Club in Manhattan, "Their goal is to define me and make me unacceptable. Our goal has to be to keep that acceptability."

Remaining “acceptable” to the American people is a very modest goal. But it could be enough.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 19, 2004

WASHINGTON - - To be an effective president or an effective presidential candidate you have to be able to perform well in public.

As Lewis L. Gold, author of “The Modern American Presidency” writes, “Over the past 50 years, the institution of the presidency has evolved into a mixture of celebrity and continuous campaigning.”

So it is fair to evaluate the performance abilities of our presidents and presidential candidates (yes, even down to what kind of ties they wear on TV.)

In the last week, the public has been treated to two major performances: George W. Bush held a formal press conference in the East Room of the White House last Tuesday and John Kerry was interviewed on “Meet the Press” for the full hour on Sunday.

Both events were fraught with peril for the performers. Both events required preparation, which is to say rehearsal. The campaigns can guess at what their performers will be asked, but they cannot know with certainty.

President Bush has had 12 formal press conferences since taking office and until last week I thought he did very well at them.

He clearly knows how to handle the press: He knows how to disarm reporters with humor or intimidate them with a sharp word. He knows how to deflect. He knows how to answer the question he wishes he were asked rather than the question he actually was asked.

These are not easy skills to acquire - - they demand a reasonably nimble performer - - but they are skills Bush has mastered.

Or so I thought until last week when Bush gave his third poorly-reviewed performance in a row. (The first one was his State of the Union speech in January and the second was his interview on “Meet the Press” in February.)

Since the Bush press conference has been much written about, however, let me leave that for a future column in order to evaluate Kerry’s interview by Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” Sunday.

While I thought Kerry performed well when he was attacking Bush, I thought he did less well when he was defending his own past words and positions.

The worst moment came when Russert played a videotape of Kerry’s first appearance on “Meet the Press” on April 18, 1971 in which a 27-year-old, bushy-haired Kerry admits that he committed (sort of) atrocities in Vietnam:

“There are all kinds of atrocities,” Kerry says on the tape, “and I would have to say that, yes, yes, I committed the same kind of atrocities as thousands of other soldiers have committed in that I took part in shootings in free-fire zones. I conducted harassment and interdiction fire. I used 50-caliber machine guns which we were granted and ordered to use, which were our only weapon against people. I took part in search-and-destroy missions, in the burning of villages. All of this is contrary to the laws of warfare.”

The clip ends and Russert says to Kerry: “You committed atrocities.”

To which Kerry replies lightheartedly: “Where did all that dark hair go, Tim? That's a big question for me.”

I think that when humor is used well it can be a powerful tool. Humor is a good way to divert a tough question to safer ground. But after you have just admitted to blowing people apart with 50-caliber machine gun rounds, humor is not going to get you anything except winces and groans. Kerry went on to a serious reply, but the damage was done.

It was a bad moment. (Inexplicably, since Kerry had a transcript of his 1971 performance and should have been prepared for questions about it.) And it had been preceded by a missed moment: Russert asked Kerry about his now-famous assertion in March that “I have met more (foreign) leaders who can't go out and say it publicly but, boy, they look at you and say, 'You gotta win this, you gotta beat this guy, we need a new policy.’ ”

Russert asked Kerry to name the leaders and quoted a Washington Times story stating that Kerry “has made no official trips abroad in the past two years. Within the United States, he has had the chance to meet with only one foreign leader since the beginning of last year, according to a review of his travel schedule."

Kerry replied to Russert that “you can go to New York City and you can be in a restaurant and you can meet a foreign leader.” This is no doubt true, but it was a missed opportunity.

What Kerry should have said is: “I’ll tell you one foreign leader I did not meet with, Tim. I did not meet with Saudi Prince Bandar and collude to fix oil prices like President Bush did!”

Am I using 20-20 hindsight on all these points? You bet.

It always has been easier to be a critic than to be a performer.

Which is why we have so many critics.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 14, 2004

WASHINGTON - - Listening to George W. Bush and members of his senior staff talk about the days leading up to Sept. 11, 2001 reminds me of an old, sad joke: The doctor comes into the waiting room and tells the family, “The operation was a success, but the patient died.”

The official line of the Bush administration is that no mistakes were made.

They are so adamant about this it makes you want to rush to New York to see if the World Trade Center is still there.

True, when pressed, the administration admits that a bad thing did happen. And some members of the administration actually have the decency to feel some guilt.

CIA Director George Tenet said before the Sept. 11 Commission on Wednesday that, “The victims and the families of 9/11 deserved better.” FBI Director Robert Mueller told the commission a few hours later, “I feel a tremendous burden, guilt for not having done a better job.”

But the top members of the administration sing a different tune. They are without guilt.

According to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice all the problems leading up to Sept. 11 were “systemic.” Individuals were not at fault. She has nothing to apologize for.

According to Attorney General John Ashcroft, there was a “wall” that prevented him from preventing the attack. (He mentioned this wall so often in his testimony before the Sept. 11 Commission that one got the impression somebody had actually encased him in masonry.)

And the president says he couldn’t have prevented the attack because nobody told him the “time and place” of the attack.

Nobody told him the time and place? Did he think terrorist attacks were like weddings? Did he think that terrorists announced the time and place in advance?

Aren’t things like the time and place of future attacks what our intelligence and law enforcement agencies are supposed to find out by “shaking the trees”?

Asked at his press conference Tuesday night if he had made any mistakes, the president seemed genuinely baffled. He froze like a Miss America contestant who had just been asked her formula for world peace.

“I am sure something will pop into my head here,” he said.

Nothing did.

So can I suggest perhaps just one, little mistake? On Aug. 6, 2001 while on vacation in Crawford, Texas, the president got a briefing titled “Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US.”

I have that now-declassified briefing paper in front of me. It is not long. And one paragraph leaps out: “…FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparation for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.”

True, Osama Bin Ladin was crafty enough not to take out an ad in the New York Times telling Bush the time and place of the attack, but the president could have sat sharply upright and said the following to his staff:

“This vacation is over. I am heading back to the White House immediately. We will meet again in 48 hours and I expect you to have some answers as to the time and place of a possible attack. Meanwhile I am placing the nation on a heightened state of alert. Tell all the airlines that there is an increased threat of a hijacking. Shake the trees! Get me some answers! And get to work!”

President Bush did none of these things. In fact, nobody seemed especially excited at all by the Aug. 6 briefing. “Frankly, I didn’t think there was anything new,” Bush said Tuesday.

Bush also said he had “no inkling whatsoever that the people were going to fly airplanes into buildings.”

“We were not on a war footing,” the president concluded sadly.

And that is a sad answer. Because it take a president to place the nation on a war footing.

And George Bush has to ask himself: Where was ours?

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 12, 2004

SIMON SAYS:
The longer you are willing to wait for a cup of coffee, the more you need to re-examine your life.

Next time Condoleezza Rice testifies in front of a commission, they ought to install a shot clock. She really knows how to run out the time.

I don't understand the TiVo craze. I can barely find anything to watch on TV, let alone anything to record.

We all know that Rutherford B. Hayes was the first president to hold an Easter Egg roll on the White House lawn in 1878. But did you know that Lucy Webb Hayes was the first wife of a president to be called “First Lady”? I wonder what they called them before that. Hey, you?

Raisins covered with dark chocolate may be the best food ever invented.

Civilizations go into decline when they stop making their libraries grand.

It seems pretty clear that if any organization is going to take it on the chin in the final Sept. 11 Commission report, it is going to be the FBI.

Thank goodness cigar snobbery is over. Can wine snobbery be far behind?

According to MSNBC, some of our troops in Iraq report they are “chronically short of ammo” during firefights. We have been occupying the country for more than a year and we can’t get our troops enough ammo? And is there any relationship between that and the fact that 48 Americans were killed there last week?

Yet another thing I have in common with Tony Soprano: We both watch the History Channel.

Unlike all other witnesses before the Sept. 11 Commission, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will be allowed - - at their insistence - - to testify together. So have they established a set of secret signals? If Cheney gives Bush one kick under the table, it might mean Bush should say, “Nobody briefed me.” If Cheney gives him two kicks, it might mean he should say, “Nobody briefed Cheney.” And if he gives him three kicks, it might mean he should say, “It’s all Dick Clarke’s fault.”

Is John Kerry still running for president?

And contrary to what some think, I think Bob Kerrey improved his chances of making John Kerry’s vice presidential short-list through his questioning of witnesses before the Sept. 11 Commission.

Quick, which costs more: A gallon of gas or a gallon of milk? (Answer: Just be happy your car doesn’t run on skim or 2 percent.)

As we all know, dealing with human beings is just not worth it. That is why we prefer ATMs to dealing with bank tellers. So when I learned I had to fill out an IRS form that I never heard of, I tried to follow the IRS phone instructions for getting the form by fax. But that didn’t work, because I was not calling from my fax line.. OK, so how about downloading the form from the internet? Forget it. The form you can download is only a sample and cannot be used for actual filing. In desperation, I pressed the phone button to talk to a human being. And an IRS human being answered instantly! He took my name and address and said he would mail the form. Could human beings be staging a comeback?

John Stewart is right: In China they call “Chinese food” food.

The New York Times headline that caused sweaty palms at the White House Sunday was not the page one headline that said: “Pre-9/11 Secret Briefing Said That Qaeda Was Active in U.S.” It was the page 14 headline that said: “Among Military Families, Questions About Bush.”

How unlikely can you get? Janet Jackson was actually funny on “Saturday Night Live” last week.

Bumpersticker of the month: “How Come We Choose From Only 2 People for President, but 50 for Miss America?”

This column is certified to be free of carbohydrates and was not out-sourced. It was produced entirely in the United States by an American worker grateful to still have a job.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 7, 2004

WASHINGTON - - The 1988 campaign of Michael Dukakis is still studied today as an example of how not to run a presidential campaign.

Dukakis was considered cold and aloof, unwilling to listen to advice, and unable to convincingly portray himself as a patriotic American and not just a far left-winger.

Some see certain parallels between the Dukakis campaign of 1988 and the John Kerry campaign of 2004. The White House sure does.

But Kerry has a number of advantages over Dukakis, including the ability to study where Dukakis went wrong. Which is one reason it is so interesting that Kerry quietly appointed John Sasso to be general election chairman of the Democratic National Committee last week.

Sasso ran the Dukakis campaign, got bounced for leaking damaging information about a rival to the press in 1987, and then returned to the campaign in 1988 after the Democratic Convention.

But a few months after the Dukakis defeat, Sasso made an extraordinary and explosive speech in Boston, one that may have helped shape the future of the Democratic Party.

Sasso came up with five reasons for the Dukakis loss. Most are still very instructive.

“First,” Sasso said, “we did not, to my mind, properly or convincingly, make the case for change.

“Second, it is politically dangerous to take for granted that voters will automatically assume the Democratic candidate holds dear the country's basic values: God, patriotism, family, freedom.

“Third, the Republicans routinely field a squad of political professionals, most of them now with years of White House and presidential campaign experience (while) Democrats somehow field a squad of smart but insurgent players, who do not fully understand whole areas of the country and operate far more narrowly.

“Fourth, the media still have not figured out how to deal effectively with negative advertising."

Sasso's fifth reason, however, was the shocker. In 1988, Jesse Jackson had garnered about 7 million votes in the primaries and caucuses, while Dukakis had gotten about 9 million. Jackson insisted this earned him the right to be Dukakis’ vice presidential running mate and he threatened to launch a floor fight at the convention if he was not selected.

Though Jackson had no realistic hope for the vice presidential slot, Dukakis had to spend a great deal of time both publicly and privately soothing Jackson before, during and after the convention. To Sasso, this helped doom the Dukakis campaign.

"If the presidential candidate disagrees with the party's most influential black leader, the candidate must, in my view, break out of his political fright and disagree," Sasso said in his speech. "In some ways voters seem to judge the strength and skill and character of the Democratic candidate on how effectively he gets along with or copes with Jackson. It becomes an unending litmus test.”

These were daring words back then and some credit Sasso with beginning the Democratic Party’s “liberation” from Jackson’s influence. (Others saw it as a slap in the face to the man who had probably registered more Democratic voters than anyone in history.)

Afterwards, Sasso outlined the on-going, post-convention conflict between Dukakis and Jackson. It remains an instructive disagreement: "Jackson believed Dukakis was reaching way too far to attract the so-called Reagan Democrats, traditional Democrats who in the past couple of elections had voted in large numbers Republican. He was convinced we could not lure them back. Instead, he wanted us to concentrate on constituencies who had far more consistently and faithfully voted Democratic: blacks, Hispanics and those under economic stress. He warned us we were slighting these constituencies, taking them for granted. We held a different view. We felt it was vital to reach out and broaden that base. This was an ongoing debate."

It is a debate that is still on-going. But what about the importance of the candidate himself and his personality? Didn’t that have a big role to play?

“It is certainly true that Dukakis is a man who holds his emotions closely,” Sasso said. “It is true that supporters inside the campaign and out hoped the candidate would periodically let his feelings fly. But that was not our man, and that was not our campaign. The fact that Michael Dukakis always refused advice to be something he was not, to me, tells a lot about him.”

Yeah, it tells us that he lost.

Does the Dukakis campaign of 1988 hold any lessons for today? Plenty.

But recognizing the mistakes of the past doesn’t always mean you will learn from them. Sometimes it just means you will repeat them.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
APRIL 5, 2004

WASHINGTON - - By quietly naming John Sasso to be general election chairman of the Democratic National Committee, John Kerry has served notice that he is no longer afraid of the Michael Dukakis curse.

Kerry does not exactly go out of his way to remind people he was Dukakis’ lieutenant governor in Massachusetts. The official biography on Kerry’s website says merely, “In 1984, after winning election as Lieutenant Governor in 1982, Kerry ran and was elected to serve in the United States Senate….”

You can’t exactly blame Kerry for not mentioning Dukakis’ name. The Dukakis 1988 presidential campaign is not considered one of the high points in Democratic history and few in the party today want to be cursed as a “Dukakis liberal.”

But by naming Sasso to a very important job at the DNC, Kerry is signaling he really isn’t worried about labels or curses. Because few people were as closely identified with Michael Dukakis as John Sasso.

Come with me down memory lane: In September, 1987, Dukakis was running for president and Sasso was not only his campaign manager but a person Dukakis considered “like a brother.”

One of Dukakis’ chief rivals and a man neck-and-neck with him in fundraising was Joe Biden, senator from Delaware.

Sasso found some dirt on Biden. At the Iowa State Fair, Biden used some of the same words in a speech that Neil Kinnock, leader of the British Labor Party, had previously used. It was not exactly a felony and Biden previously had given Kinnock credit. This time Biden had merely forgotten the rule that if you steal from one person it's called plagiarism and if you steal from many it's called research.

But when Sasso got his hands on a videotape of the Kinnock speech and a videotape of the Biden speech, Sasso figured he had a way of damaging Biden.

Sasso put the two tapes together on one tape and leaked the "attack video," as it came to be known, to the New York Times, NBC and the Des Moines Register. All three published the story. None revealed its source.

The story immediately snowballed. Other Biden character flaws were discovered (he had inflated his academic record and had insulted a voter in New Hampshire) and Biden withdrew from the race.

But one question still remained: Who had leaked the attack video?

At first, Biden thought it was the Paul Simon campaign and then suspicion turned to the Dick Gephardt campaign.

Eventually, attention turned to the Dukakis campaign.

Here, Sasso made his fatal error. He denied being behind the Biden attack. And Dukakis denied it, too.

Eventually, Sasso went to Dukakis and came clean. Dukakis held a news conference and apologized, saying he had no idea that Sasso had done it. He was reluctant to fire Sasso, the most important figure in his campaign. But this just kept the snowball rolling and Dukakis was forced to dump Sasso.

All of which led to one of the more esoteric jokes of the 1988 campaign: Jimmy Carter, Richard Nixon, Gary Hart, Joe Biden and Mike Dukakis are all on a cruise ship when it hits an iceberg and begins to sink.

Carter says: "Women and children first!"

Nixon says: "Screw 'em!"

Hart says: "Do you think we have time?"

Biden says: "Do you think we have time?"

Dukakis says: "Did you hear what Joe Biden just said?"

Sasso's departure from the campaign was a major blow, even though he would rejoin it after Dukakis' nomination.

Some felt that without Sasso the campaign never went about the essential task of establishing a clear and appealing persona for Dukakis (who seemed to lack one of his own).

But what had Sasso really done that was so terrible when he leaked the attack video?

There was ample precedent for digging dirt on opponents. The Republicans had a "truth squad" following Harry Truman around the country in 1948, leaping on his every word and reporting on its findings to reporters. And in 1968, the Republican National Committee tape-recorded every Hubert Humphrey speech and provided reporters with lists of what it considered inconsistencies and errors.

Today, campaigns make e-mail accusations on a daily basis. Dirt is dug and served up to the press regularly.

But Sasso got bounced, not so much for what he did, but for not coming clean about it from the very beginning.

Soon afterwards, U.S. Rep. Bruce Morrison, D-Conn., met with Dukakis. Dukakis was wooing congressmen, looking for their support.

"I asked Dukakis the question that nobody else had asked him," Morrison said. "I asked: 'What would you have done if Sasso had come to you with the Biden tape?'
And Dukakis said: 'I would have burned it.' "

"And right then," Morrison said, "I knew Mike Dukakis would never be president."