The Other Shoe

I mean, OK, it was what he was saying in the narrow technical sense of words emerging from between his lips, day after day, night after night, all through primary season. I had a quick rummage through the Nexis database, and found a mere 746 citations for Kerry and the expression ''Benedict Arnold.'' I myself have personally been present on three occasions when he attacked ''Benedict Arnold CEOs'' who ''take jobs overseas,'' and on two of them he didn't have a TelePrompTer or even a script. He just stood in front of us and the words came out of his mouth, almost as if they were what he himself believed.

Kerry sure is developing a reputation for trying to have it both ways, at least until a third way comes up and then...what's the French term for menage a trois?

When John Kerry the war hero became John Kerry the most famous anti-war protester in the world for 15 minutes back in 1971, it was only the begininng of John Kerry's public life as a work in progress.

Democratic operatives have long dismissed the moron Bush as incapable of stringing two words together without puppetmaster Dick Cheney shoving his arm up the back of the coat. By announcing that he too is merely a brainless stooge reading out whatever's put in front of him, the senator could seriously cut into Bush's base in key swing states. It takes a smart guy like Kerry to position himself as such a dummy. Unless, of course, it's the new speechwriters who did it for him.

Maybe that's why he (and they) did it again. Lawrence Kaplan reports in the New Republic about a meeting the senator had with Jewish leaders to assuage their concerns about his offer to dispatch Jimmy Carter or James Baker (both regarded as pro-Arab) to the Middle East. ''One of the first things Kerry did at the meeting was to blame his aides for the mention of Carter and Baker as possible envoys in his December speech,'' writes Kaplan. ''The names, Kerry said, had been inserted by mistake, and he had even asked that they be removed.''

But apparently his request to the overzealous speechwriters to remove the names was turned down. So Kerry dutifully went ahead and read out the speech complete with the mistakenly inserted names. ''There are a number of uniquely qualified Americans among whom I would consider appointing, including President Carter, former Secretary of State James Baker or, as I suggested almost two years ago, President Clinton,'' he told the bigwigs at the Council on Foreign Relations. ''And I might add, I have had conversations with both President Clinton and President Carter about their willingness to do this.'' So not only did he read out the mistakenly inserted names he'd asked to be removed from the speech but he even went ahead and met with one of the mistakes about offering him a key role he didn't want him to have.

Why would he do this? The New Republic obtained this explanation from the campaign: ''The candidate eventually did speak with Carter -- but only after noticing that a draft of his speech said that he spoke with Carter.''

Ho!