DIED: Five years, six
months and 30 days after the conclusion of “The American Century”; the credibility of a once great publishing institution founded by Henry Robinson Luce; following decades of dunderhead leadership, complicated by footsying with Hollywood and Steve Case; in Manhattan; by its own hand; Time Inc.

The
actual obituary, delivered via press release, went as follows:

“Time
Inc. shall deliver the subpoenaed records to the Special Counsel in accordance with its duties under law …. Our nation lives by the rule of law and … none of us is above it.”

Thus
did Norman Pearlstine, editor in chief of the world's largest magazine publisher, kiss off journalism's bedrock principle last week, announcing a hitherto unknown “but” in the commandment reporters proudly go to jail to
uphold: “Thou shalt not cough up confidential sources.”

But:
Except when the Supreme Court rules
against you.

As
Mr. Pearlstine told it in subsequent interviews, that qualifier kicked in when the court declined to hear the appeal of the contempt charges of Time White House correspondent Matt Cooper (and Time Inc. itself, which was threatened with $1,000-a-day and rapidly-up fines for refusing to turn over Mr. Cooper's notes and e-mails) in the Alice in Wonderland saga that is Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's endless investigation of “Who Blew Valerie Plame's Cover?”

That
another reporter, The New York Times'
Judith Miller, dangled from an identical hook, and potentially faced even greater jeopardy if left to swing alone, apparently played no role in Mr.
Pearlstine's deliberations. It was every man for himself, making what Mr.
Pearlstine
termed “the toughest call” in his career—and in getting to the lifeboats, he out-elbowed J. Bruce Ismay.

“We
are deeply disappointed,” Times
publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said of the Pearlstine decision, displaying a knack for understatement absent in other reactions. “Who Rules the Roost at Time Magazine?” headlined Forbes (a publication once edited by Mr. Pearlstine). “Chicken Little.” “A day that will live in infamy,” pronounced Editor & Publisher.
“Unconscionable
… a profound betrayal … damaging for journalism the world over,” said the general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, which represents reporters in more than 100 countries. “A bleak precedent for all journalists in a democratic society,” editorialized the San Francisco Chronicle.
“Corporate cowardice,” chimed The Salt Lake Tribune. “Pearlstine has hung his own staff of many hundreds of reporters and many dozens of editors out to dry,” adjudged the Columbia Journalism Review. “Why should any source seeking anonymity hereafter trust a reporter from any of Time Inc.'s magazines?”

On
it went. “A dreadful mistake,” said Vanity Fair editor (and onetime Life
hand) Graydon Carter. “Time is the largest magazine publisher in the world, and if any company should be able to stand its ground, it should.”

“It's
pretty shocking,” agreed Pulitzer Prize winner David Halberstam. “For 30 years, we've assumed that strong journalistic institutions would stick together and protect their employees. Now, a new wind is blowing. That united front is gone.”

Conspicuously
not heard from were three reporters who found outs (getting releases from pledges of confidentiality) allowing them to cooperate and duck acquaintance with cells: Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post, and NBC News' Washington bureau chief and Meet the Press host, Tim Russert. According to Editor & Publisher, Mr. Russert (who's refused to disclose what he told the grand jury) has been sweatily spinning ever since how he could pull that off, while serving as a member of the steering committee of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

In
the midst of the hoo-hah, Robert Novak, whose July 2003 column outing Ms.
Plame
triggered everything that's followed, announced that as soon as the case winds up, he'll break his attorney-advised silence and tell all—including, presumably, the identities of the two “senior administration officials” who blabbed about Ms. Plame with him. That was followed up by MSNBC senior political analyst Lawrence O'Donnell fingering White House political guru Karl Rove as Matt Cooper's source during a taping of The McLaughlin Group—a claim Mr. Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, denied to Newsweek.

At
least sort of. Yes, attorney Luskin admitted to Mike Isikoff, his client had talked to Mr. Cooper, but no, he hadn't “knowingly disclosed classified information.” Whether Mr. Rove did so “unknowingly”—a distinction that might spare him from the dock—remains to be seen.

None
of which has diminished the Pearlstine furor, which has intensified with Mr.
Pearlstine's telling NPR that while he's duty-bound to hand over the goods to the feds, he doesn't want the feds doing likewise with the public. More combustible material will be added July 6, when D.C. Circuit Court Judge Thomas Hogan passes sentence on Ms. Miller (a close friend of this correspondent); she's likely to get the four-month max.

What
fate befalls Matt Cooper—Time Inc. royalty once removed, through marriage to political consultant Mandy Grunwald, a daughter of the late Henry Grunwald, a Time managing editor and one of Mr.
Pearlstine's predecessors as editor in chief—is not clear.

In
the days immediately after Mr. Pearlstine's caving, it seemed likely he'd avoid incarceration altogether. That, clearly, was Mr. Cooper's hope, when—shortly before his boss ran up the white flag—he told The Wall Street
Journal: “A corporation is not the same thing as an individual. They have different responsibilities and obligations and there is no dishonor obeying a lawful order backed with the force of the Supreme Court of the United States. I prefer they not hand over documents that disclose the identity of my sources, but that's their decision to make.”

Tuesday,
however, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald threw a spanner in the works, by announcing that documents alone weren't sufficient: Mr. Cooper still had to testify—or else. Should he refuse (as The Observer went to press, Mr. Cooper had yet to respond to the prosecutor'
s
demand), there won't be any cushy home detention, either, if Mr. Fitzgerald gets his way. Anything short of the slammer, he said in court filings, may “negate the coercive effect contemplated by federal law.”

It's
a bizarre case, the United States v. Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper, made the more so by the players: Bob Novak, the most obvious target, not under legal threat, for reasons no one can figure out; Judy Miller, preparing for prison over a story she never wrote; Matt Cooper, an amateur stand-up comedian, testifying, then refusing to testify, about jottings that appeared only on the Internet; a distinguished federal prosecutor playing Inspector Javert, because of a probably unconstitutional law never before enforced; ex-Ambassador Joe Wilson, now more famous for whose husband he is than for investigating African uranium sales that didn't occur.

And
all of them bound together by a war based on fiction.

Nothing,
though, is stranger than the behavior of the latest actor to cross the stage.
Norm Pearlstine is a journalist of legendary accomplishment and shrewdness—and ample good works besides: board memberships on Harvard's Nieman Foundation, U.S.C.'s Annenberg School of Communications and the Committee to Protect Journalists; president of a foundation that provides scholarships for Asian journalists to study in the U.S.

Indeed,
only days before Mr. Pearlstine did the unthinkable, the Carnegie Foundation was announcing his election to its board of trustees in rapturous tones. How could such a man—member of the Magazine Editors' Hall of Fame, winner of this year's Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors—reason himself into such a mess, and at, of all places, Time Inc., once the platinum standard of magazine journalism?

To
begin to venture an answer requires going back some—to 1973, to be precise, six years after the death of Time Inc.'s first editor in chief, the sainted Luce.
It was then, entrail readers say, that the House That Hank Built started going astray. Purchasing an East Texas forest-products outfit called Temple Industries didn't seem that big a deal—and it wasn't, except for the number of shares swapped to complete it. For the first time, a huge hunk of the company lay in the hands of outsiders whose only knowledge of journalism was that paper was required to print it.

Fortunately
for Luce's heirs, Temple proved content to stick to its tree-cutting, and happy a decade later to have Time Inc. buy back its interest, with another recent, non-publishing acquisition, Inland Container, thrown in for its trouble.
Nonetheless, the episode was seismic: In a stroke, it gave Time Inc. the appearance of—and succeeding generations of executives the incentive to behave like—just another conglomerate.

Another
straw in the wind—an entire bale, measured by physique—was the ascension of Henry Grunwald to editor in chief in 1979. Famed for having rendered Time a publication sensible folk could display on coffee tables without embarrassment, Mr. Grunwald also brought with him a reputation for running up monsoons of past-deadline charges. The fiscal profligacy continued as editor in chief, only in different form. Now the waste came from D.O.A. publishing notions, sprung not from the gut—as were Time, Life, Fortune, Sports Illustrated and People—but from corporate demographic and consumer studies. Thus was born TV-Cable Week ($47 million down the drain), Picture Week (another $50 million), the purchase of the Washington Star
($85 million phfft, though Grunwald escaped blame for that one), the resuscitation of once-great piece of photo-artillery Life as a blurry album of cuddly animals, Princess Di and sufferers of incurable diseases. On and on ran the deficits, to paraphrase the great Wolcott Gibbs, until reeled the mind.

To
stanch the red-ink tide, Mr. Grunwald became budget-cutter nonpareil.
Bureaus
were closed, personnel whacked, perks eliminated—even as the corporate budget fattened. The predictable results were two: a hemorrhage of writing and reporting talent elsewhere, and a growing conviction on the business side that edit—stupid, spendthrift edit—could do nothing right.

The
belief deepened when Mr. Grunwald went off to become ambassador to his native Austria in 1987, leaving behind as successor dull, don't-rock-the-boat Jason McManus, a former Time managing editor. He demonstrated his corporate savvy by ceding the editor in chief's seat on Time's board. The power of the M.B.A.'s, kept carefully checked by Luce and his successor, Fortune editor Hedley Donovan, was now unfettered.

Time
passed. Progressive Farmer and two other titles in the South were added to the portfolio for $480 million, a third more than Rupert Murdoch had just paid for a better-known dozen belonging to Ziff-Davis. Entertainment Weekly saw light, looking a lot like People's “Picks & Pans” section. Then more time. Ted Turner's CNN was acquired for several hundred spare million. Then still more. Fleets of management consultants were engaged to determine what to do next. Their answer: sell the Time-Life building.

Then,
in 1989, things really got bad: Steve Ross bought the company.

It
was, supposedly, a merger of equals, the megabillion lashing-together of glitzy, showbizzy Warner, home of producers, limousines, amusement parks and car crashes, with staid, WASP-y Time, where bow-tied and suspendered Harvard and Yale men advised Presidents, dispensed on foreign policy, expensed their club memberships.

But
the truth lay in the sale papers, which identified Ross as “the executive,”
the
Time guys, “the employees.” But, what the hey, it only confirmed what everyone knew anyway: out-of-sight divisions HBO and cable were annual report kings, and Time's business—the part that bought in the real loot—was increasingly entertainment. Steve Ross as C.E.O. merely removed the pretense.

The
new, even deeper rounds of cutbacks needed to whittle the $12 billion debt incurred whilst making him so were a drag, and the parade of decidedly non–Brooks Brothers customers emerging from limos at 50th and Sixth a start to old-timers who hadn't taken the buyouts. But, after a while, life returned to normal.
Which is to say, edit continued to flounder.

Under
managing editors Henry Muller and Jim Gaines, Time—whose clout had once quaked Presidents—now soothed patients waiting for tooth extractions. Life had returned to extinction, with “Hooray for the Bra! It's 100 Years Old This Month”
among its final gasps. Sports Illustrated was getting whacked around, part by ESPN and part by befuddlement over what to do about it; as for Fortune, except for the difference between a 500 and a 400, who could tell it from Forbes?

But
from out of the mists in 1995, a seeming savior appeared: His name was Norman Pearlstine.

The
new editor in chief hadn't worked a day in his life for Time Inc., which at that point appeared a plus. Certainly his résumé impressed: toughening boot-camp reporting for The Wall Street Journal from domestic bureaus; a stint running the paper's key Tokyo bureau, followed by overseeing the operations of Dow Jones' Hong Kong–based Asian Wall Street Journal. A two-year sojourn as executive editor of Forbes came next, then a return to The Journal and a steady climb to the upper rungs, culminating in 1991 with his appointment as executive editor. He lasted only two years before being done in by Karen Elliott House, dragon-lady wife of his good friend, publisher Peter Kann, but his tenure had been exciting and innovative.

Even
the fights with Ms. House were lively: During one, she'd punctuated a point by throwing a glass of wine in his face. He went off to launch Smart Money for Dow Jones and Hearst afterward before joining his third wife, sex-book author Nancy Friday, in running Friday Holdings, a multimedia investment company. It was from there that Time Inc. recruited him.

Wisecracking,
irreverent, unafraid of breaking corporate crockery, he was a refreshing change in Time Inc.'s buttoned-down precincts. Who else, after all, padded the executive suite in slippers adorned with bright pink penises? The “penis slippers,” a gift of his wife (they have since divorced, and Mr. Pearlstine is a newlywed for the fourth time), became the stuff of Time Inc. legend.

Ditto
Mr. Pearlstine's appointments, particularly John Huey, another Karen Elliott House casualty brought over to revitalize Fortune, which in a trice became the hot business book. He shook up Time too, with the installation of Walter Isaacson as managing editor; then People, by moving its longtime editor into a dirigible captain's job; then Sports Illustrated, by bringing in ex-Esquire editor Terry McDonell to recast and run it.

With
Norm Pearlstine in charge, the pot was ever bubbling—a little too hotly for some, who found him, as one rival editor put it, “a man in perpetual midlife crisis.” But, like the magazines started under his watch (Time for Kids, People en Español, Teen People, the huge hit InStyle, This Old House, Real Simple, All You), the method worked, even if brutally sometimes, especially after the appointment of no-prisoners Mr.
Huey
as his deputy/hatchet man.

Except
for the disposed of, it was great fun. But then Steve Case showed up, and the merriment ended.

Mr.
Pearlstine's boss, C.E.O. Gerry Levin, thought joining with AOL a swell idea; the confusion came over who was acquiring whom. Whose stock was worth more soon settled that, and the letterhead on the new stationery announced: AOL Time Warner. They hadn't gone through the first ream when the stock started plummeting and teeth gnashing became the order of the day. As employee pension plans headed to the vanishing point, executives came and went in dizzying profusion, including, eventually, Mr. Levin, who, having deconstructed the institution that was his charge, departed to an island to, he said, search for his “inner self.”

Mr.
Pearlstine, who'd been a sidelines player throughout, was consigned to the margins; before long he, as well, began planning retirement. The date was set (end of 2005), as was Mr. Huey as his successor.

He
was just heading into the home stretch when the Circuit Court denied the Cooper-Miller appeal. The only hope now was the Supreme Court. Norman Pearlstine, who'd years ago collected a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania after graduating from Haverford, suddenly dug it out.

The
first move came this April, with the announcement that Matt Cooper's defense—until then under the care of Floyd Abrams, the nation's premier First Amendment attorney, and also counsel for Ms. Miller—would henceforth be handled by George W. Bush's former solicitor general, Ted Olson, a hard-lining conservative more accustomed to pummeling the press than protecting it.

Eyebrows
lifted, but not high enough. For Time Inc. wasn't merely shifting legal deck chairs; it was separating itself from Judy Miller, whose adherence to maintaining source confidentiality was set in granite.

Mr.
Pearlstine was changing, too, behaving less the editor in chief and more the chief corporate counsel, poring through volumes and badgering experts in search of case law and precedent. The items that seized his fancy, such as Harry Truman's battles with the steel companies and Richard Nixon's turning over the Watergate tapes, had one thing in common: All established the primacy of law over principle.

Cases
to the contrary, Mr. Pearlstine ignored. And the civil disobedience of Henry David Thoreau and Martin Luther King Jr. and others who changed law by defying it? They didn't have stockholders.

The
weeks passed, the strategy formed. By the end of June, all that was left was framing the news. Norman Pearlstine was sober upon announcing it, resolute defending it, insistent denying that corporate pressure had anything to do with it. The decision was his, his alone, he said interview after interview, where he talked of the “anarchy” that would be loosed without obedience to law, and sloughed off the sacrifice of Myron B. Farber, The New York Times reporter who'd gone to jail for 40 days in 1978 rather than give up his sources—and there was no cause not to believe him.
And
for some who'd admired him, that was the pity.

“Would
John Huey have decided differently?” mused a Time Inc. editor over a recent dinner table, where the conversation was nothing but Norm and what he'd done.
“I think so. Because John, you see, is a journalist. A tough son of a bitch as an executive, but still a damn fine journalist.” He shook his head.

“Just
like Norm used to be,” he said.

Robert Sam Anson was a
correspondent for Time from 1967 to 1972, and later wrote for Life. A contributing editor at Vanity Fair, he is presently at work on a biography of Dick Cheney to be published by Simon & Schuster.

Twenty-six weeks ago, this column got going with the story of an encounter on a cool April night in 1971 with a tall, young ex-Navy lieutenant in a veterans’ tent pitched on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

The next morning, he led a march to the Capitol of the United States to try to end a war.

Three decades plus have passed, and we are at war again. And, once more, John Kerry is leading a march to end it. His intended objective: the marble steps where he left his combat ribbons, all those years ago.

Luck has permitted your correspondent to chronicle both journeys—with more than a few barbs directed at the journeyer this time round.

His every falter and fault—and they’ve been numerous—has been noted in this space, which has ridiculed him some weeks, flat despaired of him others. In the telling here, he’s done few things right, other than not being the person he’s running against. "May be the worst candidate for President the Democratic Party has offered up in a century," it was inscribed a while back. The conviction remains: At the ordinaries that win elections—connect, glad-hand, self-deprecate, speak simply—he’s woeful, and if he loses, that will be the cause. Not what John Kerry stands for. Or because of John Kerry, the man: In all the essentials—all the things that count judging someone who would be President—he’s no different today than he was in Vietnam. Or (even more admirably) when we both came home.

There was an aura about him, on first meeting, a specialness that invited penetration only so far. He was good company, great—hard as it may be to believe—to b.s. with, kid with, have a few beers with, talk about dames with. But there was always that reserve. The one thing about John Kerry you could stake your life on—which is what this election is about, bottom line—is that, physically and morally, he had a sackful of guts. That never goes away.

Reporters have allegiances, just like normal people. The rapidly dwindling best do their jobs despite them—and, on exceedingly few occasions, because of them. What reporters who cover campaigns religiously avoid is making predictions—unless protected by thickets of hedges, qualifiers and nuance that make them sound like a certain Presidential candidate from New England. Reason’s simple: Who wants to look stupid if they don’t come true?

One of the luxuries of occupying this space has been hectoring John Kerry to stick his neck out (about the war, the war, ever the war), without having to expose that which connects your correspondent’s body to his sometimes fat head. With this, the final Kerry Watch, time has arrived for a sliver of equality. Leap without net:

A few minutes past noon on Jan. 20, a tall, not so young any longer, ex-Navy lieutenant will begin making us feel proud again of who we are.

Sure thing? If you’re seeking certainty, a suggestion: turn to the Classifieds, under "The Very Personal Observer"—outcome’s guaranteed there.

Desires of more fickle sort are the topic here, and with days till Nov. 2 now in single digits (and a good slice of the vote already cast), they’re all over the map.

Polls have the finish too close to call, and all the other normally trusty indicators—turnout, new registrations, incumbency, undecideds breaking to challenger, reluctance to swap horses mid-conflict, etc., etc.—are, as Ron Ziegler memorably put it in a similarly stressful moment, "no longer operative." What from the jump was plain as pie to everyone who didn’t identify themselves as "media" has, at the 11th hour, attained press-certified status as conventional wisdom: This election is like no other.

But numbers you’re expecting, so numbers you shall get (though they’ll have changed by the time you finish reading them, if they haven’t already).

According to a poll commissioned by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel (which this weekend endorsed a Democratic candidate for President for the first time in 40 years), John Kerry now leads George W. Bush in First Brother Jeb’s adopted domicile 48 percent to 47 percent. One percent ain’t much, but it sure beats the 2 or 3 percent Mr. Kerry trailed Dubya by in two other Sunshine State polls last week.

Newspaper polls also have Mr. Kerry a sudden smidgen ahead in Ohio and Pennsylvania—a development that makes the L.A. Times interactive Electoral Map of the U.S. fun to fiddle with after ages.

Of course, you’re waiting for the "but." ’Tis thus: The Rasmussen and Zogby tracking polls of the national horse race have Mr. Bush heading into the homestretch leading by 1 and 2 points, respectively (wouldn’t you know? Fox News numbers exceed every poll in that department); while surveys in Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota put him ahead by a nose in those flyovers—plus Democratic-forever Hawaii, if you put stock in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin ’s poll, which was apparently taken at the monthly lunch of the Oahu Rotary.

The polls, in sum, offer something for everyone, including those needing a push deciding which newsmagazine to renew: According to Time, Mr. Bush’s approval rating stands at a fortress 53 percent; according to Newsweek, a chicken-coop 46.

Where the numbers unite is in dismay produced. "Apprehensive," an unnamed Republican official described the mood of Rove & Co. to The Washington Post. "‘Grim’ is too strong," he went on. "If we feel this way a week from now, that will be ‘grim.’"

Kerry handler reaction, a likewise anonymous Democrat familiar with their deliberations told the Los Angeles Times, ranged from optimism (presumably, those who hadn’t heard of the survey reporting that twice the number of black voters were supporting Mr. Bush than in 2000) to "Oh gosh, it’s lost" (presumably those who had). "At this point," the Dem source added, "they don’t know what to think." To which a cynic can’t resist adding, "When have they ever?"

Mutual angst/chops-licking kicked up a notch with word of the 80-year-old Chief Justice’s thyroid cancer, which didn’t need Gallup for divination: anticipation from Democrats (assuming Mr. Kerry’s election); sympathy from Republicans (assuming Mr. Bush’s); dread from both, if assumptions don’t work out.

Meanwhile, the campaign—which has no precedent, either—continued apace, with a dash of extra oomph. In the case of the President, this took the form last week of: wowing Florida supporters by having Marine One touch down on the turf of half-filled football stadiums to the boom of the theme from Top Gun. Accusing his opponent of failing to recognize Wilkes-Barre, Pa., as "the heart of America." Replacing the "liberal" epithet—down to the gums from repetition—with the toothier "far-left," as in John Kerry "sits on the far-left bank" while being "part of a far-left minority."

Rhetorically, the Vice President bested his boss. Had Mr. Kerry owned the keys to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, said Mr. Cheney, the following would or could be fact: Saddam Hussein in control of the Persian Gulf (with nukes to back it up). The Soviet Union still in business. U.S. defense entrusted to the U.N. The American military stripped of weapons to fight terrorism. And God knows what else, none of it good.

Mr. Kerry countered with appearances from Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg (who reminded wavering females of crises in schools, health care, distaff joblessness and college tuition) and risen Bill Clinton, who looked bouncier than Mr. Kerry at the debut Philadelphia rally, saying of the greeting huzzahs: "If this isn’t good for my heart, I don’t know what is." From there, recharged Bill was on to stops in South Florida, New Mexico, Nevada and home-state Arkansas, where polls show Mr. Kerry with an even chance—a miracle the candidate hopes to realize by reciting passages from Scripture. If nothing else, this confirms the presence of at least one born-again Baptist in the Kerry camp, since Catholics are from nowhere remembering the Gospel According to John.

Then there was the Elephant-produced wolves ad, followed by the Donkey-produced ostrich ad—neither as compelling as the Ronnie-the-eagle bear ad.

The only serene soul in this zoo parade, which also included an unfortunate Ohio goose slain by Mr. Kerry, was genuinely estimable Laura Bush, who told Charlie Gibson on Good Morning America that she and husband George have done all that can be, and are at ease, come what may Nov. 2. "We have a certain peace about it," said the First Lady.

Serenity was in short supply in Iraq, where events hint that not being President the next four years might have something to say for it.

You’re doubtless aware of the ambush and execution-style killing of 50 just-trained Iraqi troops, either by bogus Iraqi policemen or—equally possible—actual Iraqi policemen. All that’s clear is that the killers acted at the behest of the infamously slippery Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, whom President Bush ordered not molested in June 2002, when the U.S. military had the even-then-well-known terrorist (along with a number of Al Qaeda buddies he was hosting in northeastern Iraq) in its cross-hairs. Why the kid gloves? An article by Scot J. Paltrow in Monday’s Wall Street Journal quotes Pentagon and National Security Council sources offering excuses identical to those Mr. Bush lambastes Mr. Clinton for. The sole reason left out is the obvious: Offing Zarqawi—who instigated the murder of a U.S. diplomat in Amman, Jordan, while the White House foot-dragged—might have queered furiously forming plans to invade Iraq.

You certainly know, too, about the whoopsie! that was the disappearance of 380 tons of really high explosives from a bunker Rummy forgot to guard, and whose filching the White House covered up for a year. Ditto the emergence of the U.S.’s worst nightmare—a fundamentalist religious party—as the one to beat in January’s scheduled presidential election. Add to that the killing of a State Department security officer who was under the misimpression that being at the Baghdad airport’s "Camp Victory" meant staying in one piece.

What you may not know (unless you read the Herald-Palladium of St. Joseph, Mich.) is that George Tenet now has second thoughts about having helped get us into this mess. The other day, on the lecture circuit in southwestern Michigan (part of a new career that will shortly include forming young minds as a professor at Georgetown), the ex-C.I.A. director called the war and/or his "slam-dunk" W.M.D. assurances "wrong." Like so much else in the intelligence game, which wasn’t clear; but whatever, he was sorry. "At the end of the day," said Mr. Tenet, "I have to stand accountable."

Still recovering from having told Sean Hannity that permanent respite from terrorism is "up in the air" (an honesty slip on which Mr. Kerry immediately pounced), the President had no reaction to Mr. Tenet’s remarks. None, either, to the appropriation of sufficient combustibles—by New York Times arithmetic—to repeat the downing of the Pan Am 747 over Lockerbie 760,000 times and detonate a few A-bombs in the bargain. He did find 55 loose minutes, however, for an exclusive Oval Office chat with Trude B. Feldman. Among Dubya’s droppings: "The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it."

It was Ms. Feldman’s second extended tête-à-tête with Mr. Bush in six months. And who is Ms. Feldman to merit such access? Retired White House correspondent for The Washington Times, now performing the same function for World Tribune.com. And what is World Tribune.com (other than a source of loony tidbits for Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News)? An Internet publication, edited and published by Robert B. Morton, assistant managing editor at The Washington Times and (according to The New Yorker) former corporate editor for News World Communications, publishing arm of the Unification Church. And the common denominator that links the aforementioned? Convicted felon, cult leader and big-time right-wing cause contributor the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a.k.a. "The Messiah."

Other friends of Mr. Bush in the press were behaving per usual:

Self-identified lifelong "minority group" member William Safire was using his New York Times column to call on his co-religionists to vote their overseas interests as faithfully as polls said Kerry-supporting Michigan Muslims were. Matt Drudge was suggesting that Teresa Kerry was a drunk. And the Sinclair Broadcast Group—having fired its Washington bureau chief for declining to participate in what he called "blatant political propaganda"—aired a truncated, discussion-panel-wrapped version of Stolen Honor, the anti-Kerry bile of another Moon alumnus, Carlton Sherwood.

As entertainment, the hour (partially defanged by a plunge in Sinclair share price) proved less diverting than what the Los Angeles Times dug up about "conservative-leaning, publicity-shy" Sinclair president and C.E.O. David D. Smith. Mr. Smith, it develops, has to his credit an arrest for suspicion of soliciting a prostitute from a Sinclair-owned Mercedes, and back in the 70’s was partner in a company the Baltimore cops raided for distributing eight-millimeter porno flicks. According to Salon, Mr. Smith’s brother, Sinclair vice president Fred, has an interesting sideline, too: owning a Baltimore trailer park currently being sued for discrimination against African-Americans.

Whose honor got stolen? We report, you decide.

Undertaking either task will require multiple medications, if current vote-suppressing/outcome-rigging doesn’t abate. From Florida to Ohio to Colorado to Wisconsin to Arizona to Michigan to Oregon to Pennsylvania to New Hampshire, it’s going on with varying degrees of inventiveness, legal, quasi- and il-. And also in New Mexico, which Al Gore carried by a closest-margin-anywhere 366 votes. In alien tourist spot Roswell, for instance, The Washington Post reports that the early-voting site on the Anglo-Republican north side of town was doing land-office business last weekend, while that on the Hispanic-Democratic south was shut tight. Among the lonesome north-living Democrats, courtesy of an art fellowship, is your correspondent’s daughter, Christian Kennedy (she was christened when Bobby was running in ’68) and her husband, who pass their spare hours listening to neighbors talk of preparations for the Rapture, and counting bumper devices showing a big fish, "Truth," swallowing a tiny one, "Darwin." Bravely, they erected a "Kerry-Edwards" poster on their lawn, which shortly disappeared. The next day they spotted a car filled with torn-up Kerry signage; it bore Texas plates.

Is there a moral here? Only this: There are more Roswells in America than there are East Hamptons.

Speaking of which, while monkeyshines was occurring in the former, yours truly bumped into George McGovern in the latter, where a film about his life— One Bright Shining Moment —was premiering. The Senator, now 76, is doing fine—tanned, fit, with a typically contrarian new book out: The Essential America: Our Founders and the Liberal Tradition (Simon & Schuster). We reminisced about the ’72 campaign (the inspiring idea, not the unhappy outcome), and, with one of his tight, ironic Dakota smiles, the Senator said he still identifies himself as "a McGovern Democrat." Too late, the reply rose to lips: If the election allows Mr. Bush another four years, many may join him.

And that’s how it went, the concluding installment of the most important election in our lifetime.

Thank you for reading. And, if you’re so disposed, say a Hail Mary.

One hopes.

In case you were too timid to catch the latest, four national surveys of "likely voters" (CNN/ USA Today/Gallup, Time, Newsweek, ABC News/ Washington Post) have George W. Bush widening his lead over John Kerry—CNN/ USA Today/Gallup putting the margin at a landslide-territory eight points, a nine-point shift in a week, and the President’s highest level of support since Mr. Kerry clinched the nomination in March.

That’s the bad news.

Now the worse:

These numbers were gathered after Dubya’s third successive trip to the debate cleaners, during a week which saw: the price of oil touch $55 a barrel. The record federal deficit hit the legal national debt ceiling. Seniors panicked at the eminently preventable disappearance of half the flu vaccine. Even stranger than usual happenings in Iraq, including a platoon of Army Reservists refusing a direct order to undertake what was judged a "suicide mission."

Any good news? Kinda.

Two other polls (Zogby and Rasmussen), report a tie—which at this point in a normal election cycle is not kissing your sister, but the White House goodbye. However, another poll puts John Kerry ahead by three points. Only catch: This survey’s done by Stan Greenberg, Bill Clinton’s former pollster.

Yet another poll, by the more independent-inclined Washington Post, puts Kerry four points up in 13 "battleground states." You’d never know it, though, from the L.A. Times interactive Electoral Map, which as of press time had 19 "white states" with a total of 194 Electoral College votes "UP FOR GRABS." Clicking enough blue to attain the magic 270 for Mr. Kerry requires Irish optimism; getting Mr. Bush past the threshold, on the other hand, is a snap.

So what do all these numbers mean?

In a normal election, the ball game. Normal, though, this one ain’t. Ask Newt Gingrich, whom Tom DeLay makes more missed by the hour. "If you don’t have some anxiety, you are not in touch with reality," Newt said the other day. "We don’t understand this election. No one does."

That goes for your correspondent, who’s traded examining poll results for reading Kafka, who knew a thing or two about the unreal and the surreal—both in ample supply this season.

Begin with Iraq, since it appears that’s what the election’s going to turn on, all the talk about health care, Social Security, taxes, jobs and Mary Cheney’s sexual preference notwithstanding. That an Army Reserve unit risked court-martial by declining the opportunity to be blown away is remarkable enough; where the decliners hail from puts it in the staggering category. Namely, Mississippi, Alabama, North Carolina, Kentucky and South Carolina. For the military, that’s like the College of Cardinals telling the Pope to do what Dick Cheney advised Pat Leahy.

For Vietnam hands, the episode brought back Peter Arnett’s "Sir, my men refuse to fight" story—a lieutenant’s report to his commander about why a useless, enemy-infested hill wasn’t being taken. Few had heard of such a thing until then, but it became a commonplace afterward. Frequent as well was what befell gung-ho types who ordered venturing into harm’s way once too often: They got "fragged," after "fragment," which is what a grenade does after it’s tossed into an officer’s tent. That hasn’t happened in Iraq—yet. But, according to stories making their way out of blogs and into the MSM, all the needed ingredients are there: bitter troops yanked from home, long tours, rotten equipment, invisible enemy, combat without end or point. John Kerry appears to have picked up on it: Departing from the domestic script, he was bashing the commander in chief about each and every one of these items this week.

As for the percentage of Americans who continue to believe the war a swell idea, that number is worth citing, since—unlike here-today, gone-tomorrow, back-again-the-next day political popularity—movement is pretty much one direction: down. Presently, the figure stands at 47 percent—identical to what it was with Vietnam circa late ’67/early ’68. More to the point, 47 percent is also Mr. Bush’s overall approval rating, according to Zogby and Newsweek. Why’s that coincidence notable? No President since Ike has been returned to office heading into an election with an approval rating less than 50 percent. Such ratings didn’t exist when Harry Truman ran in 1948, but a certain polling organization’s final survey had him losing by five points—exactly the margin he won by. And what organization was it, do you suppose, that so legendarily blew it? Gallup—the same head-counters who today put John Kerry eight points back and have consistently been out of the polling norm, reporting some swings of 20 points.

How Gallup pulls this off is simple: It routinely samples more Republicans than Democrats. On purpose. (So do the Newsweek, Time and CBS News/New YorkTimes polls.) The firm offers a highfalutin statistical explanation, but critics find possible other reasons in the original Mr. Gallup’s portraying opinion-surveying as doing the Lord’s work—just the way Dubya explains Iraq. Whatever the Almighty’s involvement, Gallup’s been often wrong—including about Al Gore at this time in the 2000 election, when it had him behind by 13 points. (As you may recall, Al went on to win the popular vote by 500,000 plus.)

A record like that, you’d think, would spell unemployment. But like McDonald’s, Gallup’s the name brand, so people keep going to it, even though, like McDonald’s, they know it’s bad for them. CNN and USA Today are the two big consumers of Gallup’s offerings, which are trumpeted by the likes of Fox News—so long as they’re bad for Mr. Kerry. As Mickey Kaus notes, in a contest as close as this, such polling hazards a bandwagon effect, with voters hopping aboard the advertised winner, if only to avoid a repeat of the Florida mess.

Kerry partisans say not to fret: There are untold cell-phoned kids who don’t get sampled (along with land-lined adults who hang up on Gallup at the dinner hour—as your correspondent possibly cost Mr. Kerry the Presidency by doing twice), and they’ll pull the Democratic lever on Election Day. But that’s one of those Don Rumsfeld known unknowables. What’s Jack Nicholson crystal is that events can stand poll results on their head.

Example No. 1: If our boys come up with beheader-in-chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi between now and Nov. 2 (as they’re presently strenuously attempting by reducing Falluja, block by block), it will not—to put it mildly—enhance Mr. Kerry’s chances. Particularly since Zarqawi has just pledged allegiance to Osama bin Laden—providing the administration with yet another rationalization for the war (the 26th, by the Kerry campaign’s count).

Example No. 2: Though the Citigroup Center and the New York Stock Exchange still stand, despite Tom Ridge’s warnings two days after the Democratic National Convention, the Homeland Security chief’s saying the sky is falling packs an opinion-altering wallop—an average of 2.75 points added to Mr. Bush’s approval ratings, according to a Cornell University study cited by The Nation last week. Should Mr. Empty Suit decide that red’s his favorite color a few days before ballot-casting, it could be the balance-tipper.

Example No. 3: The Washington Post poll’s glad tidings for Mr. Kerry in battleground states do not factor in the impact of the Sinclair Broadcast Group’s Stolen Honor "news" documentary, which has yet to air. It will, close to the election, since Colin Powell’s boy, F.C.C. chairman Michael, has refused to block it. No surprise: Powell fils (whose résumé lists him as a former advisor to Dick Cheney) favors Sinclair being free to acquire even more stations than its current 62. Whether Mr. Kerry survives their prime-time disgorging of Carlton Sherwood’s 45 minutes remains to be seen. Mr. Sherwood, who was boasting this week of having been sued for libel 23 times without a loss, better hope that he does: His admitted 30-year loathing of John Kerry—the Times v. Sullivan "actual malice" standard in spades—could break the string at 24.

The candidate himself has been bearing up well, considering what else has been going on, which ranges from the ridiculous (the press hoo-hah over his supposed debate "outing" of the Vice President’s long open and proud daughter); to the inexplicable (230,000-jobs-lost Ohio still colored white); to the bizarre (Mr. Kerry adding watching frisky-fantasies-about-showering Bill O’Reilly to NASCAR and Razorback football as favorite pastimes); to the possibly clinical—if Internet-reported diagnoses of his opponent’s condition are believable (which they assuredly aren’t).

Observing "the drooping left side of the President’s face, his mouth and nasolabial fold" during the last debate, Dallas anesthesiologist W. Kendall Tongier saw a possible recent "transient ischemic attack" (stroke). Either that, or—less alarming, but more embarrassing—"overzealous Botox injection." A second, unnamed doc with a couple of Ph.D.’s to go with his M.D. fingered "Bell’s Palsy" as the culprit; while a third, Dr. Joseph M. Price of Carsonville, Mich., settled on "pre-senile dementia" after reading James Fallows’ July-August Atlantic article, comparing Dubya’s silkiness debating Ann Richards in 1994 to his halting, malapropism-ridden search for words since becoming President. Still another opinion—heart problems — issued from a poster of unknown c.v., who solved the riddle of Dubya’s mysterious "back bulge" in the bargain by including a photo of a strap-on portable defibrillator. Last in this rundown (but by no means in the Web post-mortem, which has assumed Zapruder-film proportions): New Republic senior editor Ryan Lizza spotting spittle decorating the right corner of the President’s mouth during Debate No. 3. His judgment: Dubya flummoxed.

They’re all wrong, and every member of "the reality-based community" with them, according to a senior Bush advisor quoted by Ron Suskind this weekend in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. Said he: "We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

See why Kafka’s so handy?

Franz would also appreciate how Powell père ’s State Department has been contributing to the war effort with its announcement that part of a $10 million grant to prepare Iraqi women for participation in democratic life would be going to the "Independent Women’s Forum."

How independent are these gals? A look at their founders’ list offers a clue. Among the grandees are: Second Lady Lynne Cheney (the real conservative in the family); Midge Decter, mate of neocon founding father Norman Podhoretz and no slouch herself; Kate O’Beirne, the National Review columnist who thinks so highly of Carlton Sherwood’s cinematic talents; and Wendy Lee Gramm, wife of former Texas Senator and Republican Presidential candidate Phil, and head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission under Ronald Reagan and Bush 41, in which capacity she freed Enron and other oil and gas companies of burdensome regulations, before joining Enron’s board.

According to the I.W.F. Web site, the ladies are dedicated to combating "the women-as-victim, pro-big-government ideology of radical feminism." In practice, that’s translated as: lobbying against the Violence Against Women Act. Opposing the distribution to schools of materials to combat sex discrimination. Heading up forces against Title IX, which mandates gender equality in education, including collegiate sports.

The newest string in the I.W.F.’s harpsichord is joining David Horowitz’s "Students for Academic Freedom," to cleanse institutions of higher learning of perceived spreaders of anti-Americanism. This is accomplished by various means, including placing ads in college newspapers instructing boys and girls how to rat out their professors. At Dave Letterman’s alma mater, Ball State, "WANTED" posters have appeared, with a headshot of history prof Abel Alves. (His seditions: putting Fast Food Nation on the freshman reading list and inviting members of the Humane Society to guest-lecture.) At the University of Arizona in Tempe (site of last Friday’s Presidential debate), a student in associate professor David Gibbs’ "What Is Politics?" class has reported him to the F.B.I. as "an anti-American communist who hates America and is trying to brainwash young people into thinking America sucks."

Unalloyed joy—all those fresh-faced youngsters registering in record numbers? Ummm, maybe not, Mr. Kerry.

In preparing to receive "God’s gift," as the President described freedom the other night, Iraqi women might want to take a look at how the gift’s handled in Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon and Florida, where election-outcome-rigging is proceeding full-steam. More of the same’s in the offing when votes are cast, which has already gotten underway in a number of states, including First Brother Jeb’s, which experienced its first "touch-screen" glitch as soon as the machines were plugged in.

It’ll all end up in the courts, just like four years ago. In anticipation, a suggestion to a friend of better days:

John, remember how well the all–Ivy League glee club did for Al Gore in the temples of Justice? This time, have the Brooklyn Bar Association send over their three best guys named Vinnie. Then have them take their shirts off and turn around. The one with the most hair on his back? Hire him.

Yes, dear reader, Vietnam is back. Again? Afraid so. And if you thought the Swift boat stuff was awful, brace yourself: This is worse.

Unless decency or the F.C.C. intervenes (neither likely), you’ll be getting increasingly mouth-watering glimpses on your favorite cable news channel between now and a few days before the election. That’s when the Sinclair Broadcast Group (the right-wing corporation that’s the nation’s largest owner of television stations, with 62 NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, UPN and WB outlets in its portfolio) pre-empts its prime-time schedule to lay out the whole Brobdingnagian feast: a 42-minute documentary produced by prize-winning journalist Carlton Sherwood entitled Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal.

Its subject: John Kerry’s 1971 anti-war activities, and their alleged impact on then-captive U.S. P.O.W.’s

Its stars: Former, very bitter, very vocal residents of the Hanoi Hilton.

Its tone: Think Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, made by the 16th assistant director.

Herewith a taste, in the words of some of the featured players, all former longtime P.O.W.’s :

"This man committed an act of treason. He lied, he besmirched our name and he did it for self-interest. And now he wants us to forget."

"He’s been in Vietnam, now he swaps to the other side, and he’s saying the same thing we’re being tortured to say. That was a very difficult time."

"I’m convinced Kerry and his fellows, the anti-war people, cause the war to be extended two more years, throwing medals over the wall, speaking against our country in time of war. He knows it would extend the war and complicate things and probably hurt a lot of prisoners."

"To say we were rapists, we were murderers, we were pillagers, is absolutely a lie. There is just no two ways about it."

"[The testimony] was [from] John Kerry. The North Vietnamese [interrogator] told me it was a naval officer. I couldn’t believe this could possibly be true. He spent a long time just berating me, telling me, ‘Here, this officer proves that you deserved to be

punished."

"He betrayed all of us. He betrayed all the military .... We just don’t do that. We are Americans."

And that’s for openers.

There’ll also be stretches of John Kerry’s most incendiary testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971; footage of the hell-hole that was the Hanoi Hilton; recountings of torture without end; and a wife describing how a husband she’d been married to three impossibly happy days went off to Vietnam, not to return for six agonizing years, while she watched John Kerry on television accusing men like him of the barbarism of Genghis Khan.

It’s distorted and manipulative, and a lot of other adjectives, including not remotely close to the truth, not the way John Kerry spoke and meant it. And fairness? Forget about it. There’s none—and God knows how many P.O.W.’s were sorted through to produce the desired effect, or how many contrary opinions were left on the cutting room floor.

Stolen Honor is propaganda at its worst—just as surely designed. And a further sign, as if more were needed, of the lengths the right will go to, democracy be damned.

But the age-old formula works: The more grotesque the lie, the harder to combat.

The answer to the big question—the impact Stolen Honor will have—won’t be known until Nov. 2. But the right is already bubbling ("If the powerful documentary ... [is] seen by the huge audience it deserves, the junior Senator from Massachusetts wouldn’t get elected to a sanitation commission," enthuses the National Review ’s Kate O’Beirne); Chris Matthews seems enthralled; and Sinclair’s reach is ominous: Its lock-step stations beam to nearly a quarter of the country, including all the big battlegrounds: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa. The Electoral College ball game, in other words.

The mainstream media’s barely noticed what’s afoot. But Mr. Kerry’s backers sure have—and their alarm speaks volumes.

Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe has denounced Sinclair; dismissed Mr. Sherwood as a right-wing mouthpiece; and put his lawyers to work having the film labeled a paid campaign infomercial. The D.N.C. has also lodged a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission, charging that Sinclair’s plans to air the film constitute an illegal use of corporate resources as an in-kind donation to the Bush/Cheney campaign. "They have put their money where their right-wing mouths are," Mr. McAuliffe told The Hollywood Reporter. "Sinclair’s owners aren’t interested in news; they’re interested in pro-Bush propaganda."

Meanwhile, 18 Democratic Senators have fired off a letter to the Federal Communications Commission demanding an investigation of Sinclair for improper use of the public airwaves—a charge that, if substantiated, could lead to loss of broadcasting licenses. More may be ahead, including asking the F.E.C. to determine whether Sinclair is violating federal statutes prohibiting public corporations from airing "electioneering communication" 60 days prior to an election. "Nothing," a D.N.C. lawyer told Broadcasting & Cable, "is off the table."

Sinclair, anything but cowed, insists that it’s following the law, hewing to fairness (Mr. Kerry’s been asked to appear on a follow-up panel, but, no dope, has passed)—it’s merely reporting the news. "Would they suggest that our reporting a car bomb in Iraq is an in-kind contribution to the Kerry campaign?" Sinclair’s vice-president for corporate relations (and daily conservative commentator on Sinclair’s stations) said to the A.P. "Would they suggest that our reporting on job losses is an in-kind contribution to the Kerry campaign? It’s the news. It’s what it is. We’re reporting the news."

Mr. Sherwood, for his part, has been acting the innocent lamb, saying that the $220,000 cost of his film had been entirely financed by donations from Pennsylvania vets; that he’d been commissioned by no one to turn it out; and that only after it was complete did he approach Sinclair, not the other way around. He himself, he said, was a registered independent, who’d never done any political reporting, never worked for a campaign or contributed to one. "I did this as a journalist, for all the purest reasons," he insisted to the Los Angeles Times. "There is no political money and I did not engage anyone in the campaign. This is as clean as it gets."

Sure.

Plumbing the bottom of this involves a tangled tale, with dramatis personae ranging from the Reverend Sun Myung Moon to Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge—with Dubya’s dad, a swashbuckling anti-terrorist outfit, and a staffer for Ronnie Reagan’s National Security Council stuck in-between. Along, needless to say, with high stakes and towering lies.

Let’s start with the public record, the easy part, since it’s brimming with material about Sinclair’s peculiarity as a broadcaster.

The Baltimore-based company first achieved widespread notoriety last April, when it ordered its seven ABC affiliates not to air Ted Koppel’s Nightline reading of the names of U.S. killed in action, while their photographs were shown. The grounds, as stated by Sinclair: "Appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq." Firestorm instantly flared, with no less than John McCain accusing Sinclair president and C.E.O. David Smith of "a gross disservice to the public, and to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. It is, in short, sir, unpatriotic. I hope it meets with the public opprobrium it most certainly deserves."

It did that, with protesting phone calls and outraged editorials cascading in. But Sinclair didn’t budge—which came as no surprise to those who knew the company, its methods and its politics, a trio that at Sinclair are pretty much one and the same. After 9/11, for instance, the company ordered all its stations to air messages stating, "We stand 100 percent behind our President." At the home station in Baltimore, the dictum extended not only to news and sports anchors, but even the weather forecaster. Sinclair followed that up in July, 2003, by prohibiting its Fox affiliate in Madison, Wis., from airing a D.N.C.-sponsored ad with a clip of President Bush making his false Saddam-shopping-for-Africa uranium claim in his State of the Union Address. Lefty bloggers gathered other publicly-reported tidbits, such as Sinclair replacing most of its Pittsburgh affiliate news staff with easier to manage reporters from Baltimore, and airing administration-produced reports on the wonders of Dubya’s Medicare prescription drug payments without identifying the "reporter" as a government-employed flack.

Then there were nightly Mark Hyman "commentaries" Sinclair stations were required to run: They made Fox look limp. The French? "Cheese-eating surrender monkeys." The "liberal" media? "The hate-America crowd." Congressmen who failed to vote for a measure supporting Bush Iraq policy? "Unpatriotic politicians who hate our military." Nor did Mr. Hyman neglect John Kerry. A recent commentary ("Kerry and The Communists") began as follows: "A significant effect of the John Kerry-led 1971 protests was it strengthened the resolve of the North Vietnamese to continue to hold American POWs."

If fuzziness remained as to allegiance, Sinclair contributions made it crystal: money to Mr. Bush and allies: $130,000; to Mr. Kerry and friends: $0.

All Sinclair lacked was a well-timed scoop to seal the deal.

Enter Carlton Sherwood.

His résumé records him as prodigious, whatever he attempts—be it war (three times wounded, while serving as a Marine "sniper-scout" in Vietnam) or journalism (passel of awards both in print and television, where he won a Peabody while working for an Oklahoma City station; even an honor named after him—"The Carlton Sherwood Media Award" —annually presented by the Blinded American Veterans Foundation.) But the C.V. omits some items. Such as purportedly chummy association with right-wing former Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia and the Club for Growth; and, according to the not-exactly-disinterested Terry McAuliffe, the alleged termination of his TV career after he made an allegedly false accusation against a veterans’ group.

An accomplishment Mr. Sherwood has no trouble trumpeting is his 1991 book, Inquisition: The Persecution and Prosecution of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

As you may have surmised from the title, its sympathy is unstinting for the self-proclaimed "Messiah’s" multiple travails (including an 18-month sentence to a federal pen for income tax evasion, making false statements and obstruction of justice), which Mr. Sherwood brands, "the worst kind of religious prejudice and racial bigotry this country has witnessed in over a century."

The circumstances under which Mr. Sherwood formed this judgment (namely, while serving as chief investigative correspondent of the Moonie-owned Washington Times) is where eyebrows begin to lift. Giving them a further push is how the supposedly "independent" book came to be published. In 1992, Frontline took a look at the reverend’s emergence from the obloquy of prison and congressional investigation. The program dug up a letter from a Moonie aide, James Gavin, to the reverend himself: Mr. Gavin reported that he’d vetted the "overall tone and factual contents" of the manuscript; had proposed revisions to Mr. Sherwood; and been assured by him that they’d be undertaken prior to delivery to the publisher. "When all of our suggestions have been incorporated, the book will be complete and in my opinion will make a significant impact," Mr. Gavin wrote. "In addition to silencing our critics now, the book should be invaluable in persuading others of our legitimacy for many years to come."

Soon to help in that effort—in exchange for lecture fees reckoned somewhere between $1.8 and $10 million—was about to be ex-President George Herbert Walker Bush, a favorite of Moonie audiences from Washington to Buenos Aires to Tokyo. Son Dubya would benefit from Moonie largesse as well during his 2000 Presidential campaign, in the form of unusually aggressive reporting on his behalf by the Washington Times.

Mr. Sherwood’s opus, meanwhile, first touched down at a publisher called Andromeda, which proved nearly as hard to reach as the star system of the same name. When Frontline tried the phone number listed in the standard publishing directory, it was connected to the home of Reagan national security council staffer (and former Washington Times reporter) Roger Fontaine. His wife, Judy, answered; said she knew nothing about Andromeda; then amended that to saying it had gone bankrupt, and that Inquisition had been published by Regnery-Gateway, home to numerous right-thinkers. According to Washington Times editor James Whelan, yet another of the house’s authors, Regnery, in turn, was promised by Mr. Sherwood that the Moonies would purchase 100,000 copies. (Regnery denied it; Mr. Sherwood wouldn’t talk on camera; and Mr. Gavin wouldn’t talk, period.)

In any event, by the time Inquisition saw light 13 years ago, Mr. Sherwood had become the close, personal friend of a fellow Marine turned Congressman, who in 1994 would be elected governor of Pennsylvania. His name was Tom Ridge. Yes, that Tom Ridge.

When Mr. Ridge went to Harrisburg, Mr. Sherwood went with him to run the state’s television and radio operations. He won two Emmys and the governor’s enduring gratitude in the eight years he remained. Democratic takeover of the statehouse in 2002 brought re-location to the Washington area, where Mr. Sherwood enlisted as executive vice-president of the WVC3 Group, a Reston, Va., anti-terrorist security firm, whose Web site fairly bristles with capability.

Sample: "Whether it was routing out and targeting terrorists in the Middle East for the Pentagon and the CIA, or training and exercising first responders here in the United States for their State and local governments, our team members have been there, boots-on-the-ground. We were on special assignments in the jungles and mountains of Southeast Asia during the Viet Nam war, ran successful operations against the KGB’s and GRU’s best in Europe and Africa, and were proud to be part of the liberation forces in the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Operating continuously in Beirut during its darkest days, we ran a highly successful hostage rescue mission into Kuwait during its occupation by Saddam Hussein, and, later, we went to Iraq—from Baghdad to Mosul, Tikrit to Babylon—to provide the Pentagon, Capitol Hill, and international viewers with our battlefield appraisal."

Demonstrating his own mettle with several forays into post-invasion Iraq, Mr. Sherwood also showed a knack for commerce, scoring a contract from friend Tom’s Homeland Security Department to create and manage a federal Web site directed to the nation’s more than 8 million "first-responders." But before it could get off the ground, he went on leave from WVC3 to produce his anti-Kerry documentary.

The project took six weeks, start to finish. Why it was undertaken in the first place is a matter of conflicting speculation. Mr. Sherwood’s version is that the P.O.W.’s had a story dying to be told, and that until he happened along no one had.

"What John Kerry did in 1971 … didn’t just vilify all of us who served in Vietnam," he explained on Fox News last week, "he jeopardized … several hundred P.O.W.’s still being held, men who were brutally tortured, brutally tortured .... And John Kerry labeled all of them war criminals." (In fact, Mr. Kerry did no such thing.)

That Mr. Sherwood’s arrival with video camera came 31 years after events described was, apparently, just another of those many coincidences that happily shadow President Bush.

Plot or dumb luck (and you have to be gullible to believe in fortune), results are what counts, and since Stolen Honor ’s official introduction at the Reserve Officers Association last month (Bob Dole was advertised as guest of honor but he backed out after getting a whiff), the notices have provided Mr. Bush with needed cheer. To ensure smiles stay, Mr. Sherwood has been shepherding former P.O.W.’s from cable appearance to cable appearance, treading the path so successfully blazed by the Swift-boat vets, in whose commercials a couple of his principals appear. Absence of wish-washiness makes their latest outings the zippier. On Hannity & Colmes the other day, Navy pilot Paul Galanti, who spent nearly seven years in captivity, applied the T-words to Mr. Kerry—"traitor," "treason"—several times. Was he seriously challenged? Fox didn’t hire Alan Colmes for that.

Chris Matthews has provided credulous platform, too, listening rapt as P.O.W. James Warner told of being tormented by John Kerry’s 1971 Senate testimony, which was meant to spring him. When his guest’s narrative flagged, Chris coaxed, "So your feeling—I mean, you—this guy’s lived rent-free in your head, obviously, all these years, John Kerry ….What do you hold him responsible for personally? I mean, what—you have to speculate here a little bit." Obliged Mr. Warner: "They told me that Kerry said these things and that that proved that I deserved to be punished."

The effect of all of this?

That’s simple: Depends on how dumb you think the American people are.

Back then, the elite of New York was something you could hold in your hand, like a ball made of rubber bands. John Lindsay had defeated William Buckley, and people actually cared what Norman Mailer was saying to Lillian Hellman at a party on the Upper West Side. It was before the Big Bang: Donald Trump was still in Queens and the Newhouses were in Jersey. On Friday, Oct. 1, it felt that way again. A Kennedyesque Democrat from good family was maybe going to become President, there were candles up and down the grand staircase of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the elite was something you could hold in your hand. William F. Buckley and Leonardo DiCaprio. Jeff Greenfield and Mark Green. Daniel Menaker and Mike Wallace. Hamilton Fish and Samantha Power. The paparazzi were out. It was either a nostalgia trip or the future foretold. Cross your fingers.

The movie was called Going Upriver, and it was directed by George Butler, who was at Yale with Mr. Kerry and later made Pumping Iron, about Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The movie was set in the years 1968-1971: Mr. Kerry as war hero, before he comes home to oppose the war. The story is of course mythic, and Mr. Butler told it in mythic terms. Something out of the Iliad, as Ben Affleck intoned in the voice-over, "the story of a soldier committed to duty—and sometimes that duty is not to fight." The only problem in the film was the Kerry role, grand and elusive, impossible to embrace.

People cried and applauded throughout the film. They cried at the faces of the soldiers devastated by Vietnam, they applauded Coretta Scott King and Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug. That was the nostalgia trip. Liberalism was once so righteous—we yearn for that clarity and simplicity. How relevant are those images to our time? That is the big question. The film footage of Vietnam vets now looks as ancient as Civil War footage. When the ragtag soldiers threw their medals over the fence in protest, it seemed like something out of Stephen Crane. "I see Leonardo there and I realize how old we’ve become," said executive producer Bill Samuels, before introducing the film’s director.

Mr. Butler has an impish and refined charm. He wore a British-cut suit, double-vented, in tan, and as he spoke, he bounced on his tiptoes in cadence with his rising eyebrows. If Tom Wolfe narrated the 70’s pantheon in the original, Mr. Butler was offering himself for the regurgitated 00’s version. Cross your fingers.

"We couldn’t pay attention to the Swift-boat controversy of July and August," Mr. Butler said apologetically, because the production staff was too busy, working 20-hour days to get the movie finished for its Oct. 1 release. From a marketing standpoint, this was a questionable decision: Mr. Butler could have gotten a lot of play during that bogus controversy. His movie has real footage of the afternoon on which Lieutenant Kerry killed a fleeing V.C. soldier. The movie shows Mr. Kerry waving around a rifle with a rocket-propelled grenade on the end of it. That would have been a good answer to those who said that Mr. Kerry killed a "kid" that day. And anyone who doubted that there was action on the river that day, a real firefight, would have been silenced by the dramatic memories and film of the encounter.

But Mr. Butler is an auteur. So he ignored the controversy. And maybe he will get his way in the end. The Swift-boat controversy is thankfully forgotten. Mr. Kerry was reborn at the debate the night before, reborn in Baghdad, and Mr. Butler’s image of Lieutenant Kerry waving a rocket-propelled grenade in February 1969 resonates because we have now seen so many images of "insurgents" in Iraq with R.P.G.’s.

The biggest nostalgia trip of all is the hope that John Kerry will serve the same function in the Iraq war as he did in Vietnam, that public opinion is as perfectly balanced on his long chin as it was in 1968-1971—or that the Establishment is balanced there. For here is what Mr. Kerry did in Vietnam: First he believed in a war that no one in the liberal intelligentsia believed in then. He fought for it; he gained honor by killing Vietnamese and wiping out villages. Then, coming home, he switched sides. He said his change was based on what he’d seen, the wrongs he’d seen. The real reason was that the Establishment needed to change and needed someone to follow. After all, most people who were against the war were incensed and enraged; they’d seen plenty long before John Kerry even went over. John Kerry was the Establishment’s anti-war figure. He spoke eloquently and grandly, with a Victorian fustian. He pronounced "after" as J.F.K. did, "ahhf-tah," and he became heroic.

It is the same role he would have now. He believed in this war till courageous Howard Dean gave him the news that public opinion was shifting. So Mr. Kerry changed sides—somewhat, anyway. He temporized, he had it both ways. Most people who have opposed this war are long enraged. They were in the streets even as Mr. Kerry was authorizing the war, and they can now look ahead to a crisis in leadership, à la the faithlessness of youth in the 70’s, whose Senate had voted with blind faith, by 98-2, to press a criminal war. The question now is where we are in that curve: closer to faith or faithlessness? John Kerry occupies that middle segment of the arc. Of course he is more against the war now than ever, but he is also acceptable to the Establishment. Richard Holbrooke is on his side, in the movie. One of his rich Yale friends is saying that Mr. Kerry "didn’t have a lot of money," even collected bottles at grocery stores. Oh, yeah. And comes to dinner at the Council on Foreign Relations.

So John Kerry is having the exact same function in his second act that he had during his first: He’s signaling a turn. His flip-flop is the country’s flip-flop. Cross your fingers.

The movie reveals something cipherish about Mr. Kerry: full of grand language, but unreflective. Hollow and yet strong as the hull of an aluminum Swift boat. The harrowing faces in the Butler film are not Mr. Kerry’s. They’re the faces of men who have been to hell and back, who were forever changed by the experience. They cry, they break down, they are lost and alienated, torn. They remind us of why we hated the Vietnam War. Ask any of those men about Iraq, they would all be against it from the start. They learned their lesson. Did John Kerry? No. He is unharrowed in the movie. He floats through things, heroic and empty, like an actor. Throwing a football at Yale, or skiing, or climbing a tree with ropes, he is skinny and kinetic as any young Kennedy. He gravitated to the flimsy Swift boat because it reminded him of the flimsy wooden P.T. boat that his predecessor J.F.K. piloted in the Solomons in World War II.

"We had a very simple mission," said Mr. Samuels, the producer. "We wanted you to know him as we know him." Their John Kerry truly has character: to be heroic to the Establishment when there is a crisis of leadership. To be acceptable to the Establishment when it knows change must come. The Establishment—or certainly the power elite that gathered the other night—recognizes that it made a mistake on Iraq. Many of the people in that auditorium went along with the war plans, after all. John Kerry is the agent that allows the Establishment to accept change. This is not a form of moral heroism that the common man can understand. As Bob Kerrey explains John Kerry’s choice in the film, he was risking a political career by opposing the war. You have to "pick one of the two."

The Butler movie celebrates Mr. Kerry’s character at the usual expense to John Kerry: He has no personality. There are a million people in the 60’s and 70’s you want to hug. Maybe you missed your chance then—well, you can do it now watching the movie. Shirley Chisholm, that noble, homely, passionate splinter. Bella Abzug, John Lennon. Stephen Stills, Bob Dylan—they were lifted as they deserved to be, they were our voices during a failure of leadership. A lot of the Vietnam vets tear your heart out. Even Dick Cavett makes you smile nostalgically.

But John Kerry is AWOL as an actual human being. He wears a ring on the little finger of his left hand in the movie. That is about the most personable detail I can relate about him. What’s that about? Later, at the Council on Foreign Relations, as we ate short ribs in the Rita Hauser room, the writer Ann Banks said that men sometimes wear the jewelry of a female ancestor on their little fingers. So what seemed a charming idiosyncrasy is actually a conventional aristocratic trait. When he speaks of putting a friend in a body bag, the story feels generic: He doesn’t mention the friend’s name. In the actual climax of the film, when the soldiers cry as they throw their medals over the fence, when they dance at the microphone and twirl and break down, Mr. Kerry is wan and erect as ever. And the truth is, according to Tour of Duty, the Douglas Brinkley book on which the movie was based, Mr. Kerry didn’t throw his medals. Just threw the ribbons, and some other guys’ medals by proxy. Kept his Silver Star securely at home, in the desk.

AWOL on passion. AWOL on personality.

The great thing about John Kerry’s Indian summer is that the country seems at last to have gotten past that. They don’t care. They have managed to accept Mr. Kerry’s negligible personality, to see the issues at last, to accept that he may be hollow, but he is strong. Something is happening, you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Bush?

That pleasure was in the air at the Council on Foreign Relations, a sense of change in the streets—and the elite’s secure place in the near future. Everyone was talking history. "The worst President since Hoover," general contractor Stanley Snyder said of Mr. Bush. "What Ichiro is doing surpasses Maris," Hamilton Fish said. I then praised the one incautious statement that John Kerry has made in the last year—saying that former Red Sox manager Grady Little was wrong not to pull Pedro Martinez in the eighth inning of Game 7 against the Yankees. To which the screenwriter Elliot Thomson responded, "Now Kerry is a shoo-in, but the Yankees might be vulnerable." Mr. Thomson was escorting Samantha Power, the chronicler of genocide, who said she was for the Red Sox: "I saw Gabe Kapler in the locker room. He has a Star of David tattooed on one leg and ‘Never Forget’ tattooed on the other." Someone else brought up the Dodgers’ Shawn Green and his echo of Koufax at Yom Kippur. Jewish baseball stars. The fall of the Yankees. The fall of Bush. Buckley and Leonardo, together again. Is it a nostalgia trip or a real change? Cross your fingers and hope to die.

A debate, that is.

Ninety nationally televised minutes of alternating stump-speech snippets is what the encounter actually amounts to, with style (maybe even height) as important as content.

So Lincoln-Douglas this is not. But then neither are the participants.

Whatever you call it, the showdown’s crucial—especially to Mr. Kerry, for reasons too dreary to explicate. Nearly one in three tell pollsters that evenings like Thursday help decide their choice (nine in 10 probably fibbing); the topics to be addressed —foreign policy and homeland security—couldn’t be more timely. And the stakes? Ask Al Gore: He seemed lead-pipe till his initial 90 sigh-filled minutes.

Predictions as to outcome, your correspondent shall eschew. You’ve doubtless had your fill, even if yours truly had a guess, which he doesn’t. One thing’s sure: As reality show, the production will be hard to beat. Because we’re not talking fake blood here, but the kind flowing daily in Iraq.

That’s what tomorrow night will be about, and that’s what what follows is about. With a little twist—to wit, how a war-hero U.S. Senator came to be portrayed as the favorite of the guys with long knives and AK-47’s.

The back story’s as basic as everything that surrounds it is messy. Commencing with a major address at New York University two weeks ago, John Kerry began laying into Mr. Bush for Iraq, which until that moment had been No. 7 on his list of seven electoral priorities. The war’s worsening was one reason for the switch, a new crew of advisors and a look at the polls two possible others. In any event, once embarked, Mr. Kerry piled on the coals, saying that the President had "misled, miscalculated and mismanaged every aspect of this undertaking," in the process leaving the world "a more dangerous place for America and Americans."

He proceeded in that vein onto the Sept. 20 edition of the David Letterman show, where Mr. Kerry responded to Dave’s key question—"If you had been elected President in 2000 … would we be in Iraq now?"—thus: "No."

Full stop, next question.

More than a few lamented the non-issuance of such a response many moons before. But, however 11th hour, Mr. Kerry had finally done it—with no ifs, ands, buts or nuances in between.

The shock was transforming, not least for Mr. Kerry, whose words got grittier as the days wore on: "Stubborn incompetence" ... "Colossal failures of judgment" ... "Wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time." More and more, he was sounding like the young lieutenant who came back from Vietnam to demand, "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?"

By now, even Republicans could smell fire crackling, and—showing just how big the conflagration sniffed—were saying so. "When we went in there, I thought we would build American-style democracy," House Appropriations Committee chairman Jim Kolbe quoted an administration official telling him. "Hell, I’d be happy with Romanian-style democracy now."

But Dubya stayed bouncy. The National Intelligence Estimate of Iraq’s bleak, bleaker and bleakest prospects? "Just guessing," he said. The right-track/wrong-track poll results for Iraq? Better than the U.S.A.’s, he joked. When Iraqi interim prime minister Allawi dropped by to say thanks, he was bright as the sun that bathed their Rose Garden press conference. "On television sets around the world we see acts of violence, yet in most of Iraq, children are about to go back to school, parents are going back to work and new business are being opened," the President proclaimed. Yes, he conceded, there were challenges, but America would overcome them. "Democracy in Iraq will put down permanent roots, and terrorists will suffer dramatic defeat," he said. But you-know-who should stop criticizing him: "You can embolden an enemy by sending mixed messages," he said, getting his squint. His guest dutifully agreed: "When political leaders sound the sirens of defeatism in the face of terrorism, it only encourages more violence."

The assessment of the person they were talking about: "The President is living in a fantasy world of spin."

It would be tidy to report that that’s the moment things turned nasty; truth is, Mr. Kerry’s prompt wasn’t required. Talk had been getting ugly since early this month, when Vice President Dick Cheney told a Des Moines, Iowa, crowd, "If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again, and that we’ll be hit in a way that is devastating to the United States."

Now, it got uglier.

Terrorists "are going to throw everything they can between now and the election to try and elect Kerry," said Senate Judiciary chairman Orrin Hatch, according to The Washington Post.

"I don’t have data or information to tell me one thing or another, [but] I would think they would be more apt to go [for] somebody who would file a lawsuit with the World Court or something rather than respond with troops," said House Speaker Dennis Hastert. By that tangle, did he mean Al Qaeda would be better off with Mr. Kerry? Answered the second in line to Presidential succession: "That’s my opinion, yes."

Mr. Bush provided the capper: "Incredibly," he told a rally in Bangor, Me. (a state all of a sudden tilting his way), "this week my opponent said he would prefer the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to the situation in Iraq today." Great line, no truth.

His fans in the press filled in the chinks. Sample compiled by Kerry-friendly Media Matters for America:

"Every terrorist is hoping John Kerry gets elected"—Oliver North.

"Of course, they’d like to see Kerry win, because it means Bush would get kicked out of the White House"—John Gibson.

"For all I know," the growing insurgency in Iraq was "designed … to help elect John Kerry"—Morton Kondracke.

And the usual from Ann Coulter: John Kerry "will improve the economy in the emergency services and body-bag industry."

But it wasn’t just the Foxies. On "America’s Most Trusted Source for News," CNN, senior political analyst William Schneider—former Richard Perle writing partner and resident fellow at the neocon refuge the American Enterprise Institute—was opining: "I can guarantee you, they don’t like George Bush. Do they think there’s a difference? I think Osama bin Laden, the Al Qaeda network—who I am certain follow American politics—look at the messages coming out on their tapes. They seem to follow politics very closely. They would very much like to defeat President Bush. But the question is, can they pull off the same trick that they pulled off in Spain?"

In other words: If you happen to get blown up between now and Election Day, thank John Kerry.

Two questions emerge: Who’s right? Why the rhetoric?

Statistics answer the first.

Take bad-guy strength. Last June, Gen. John Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command, put it at 5,000. Today, "senior officers" (none of whom wish to be identified, in the event they turn out to be General Abizaid himself) say it’s 20,000—a fourfold increase in as many months.

The "pouring in" of fighters across Iraq’s borders (Prime Minister Allawi’s phrase, pre-cheer-spreading in Washington), combined with the ongoing enlistment of the native-born, has swelled other figures. Like number of attacks. According to data compiled by Kroll Security International for the U.S. Agency for International Development (and revealed by The Washington Post on Sunday), they’re currently running at about 70 per day—versus 40 to 50 per day in the weeks before the interim government took over. (Compared to last winter and fall, attacks are up an even 100 percent.) "Very good and safe" Baghdad (as described by Mr. Allawi, following his address to Congress), has claimed a goodly share: Attacks there have been averaging 22 per day.

Casualties have also gone up, both among U.S. personnel (66 killed and more than 1,100 wounded in August, the bloodiest month since Mr. Bush declared "Mission Accomplished") and Iraqis—whom no one bothered to count until five months ago. Since then, the Iraqi Health Ministry has logged 3,487 dead (328 of them women and children), 13,720 injured. And those numbers are on the woefully low side. Many Iraqi deaths go unreported, and there’s no information from three of the country’s 18 provinces, apparently because they’re too dangerous for anyone to get close to with a calculator.

The one increase that’s been disappointing is the number of fully trained Iraqi troops. Starting from a base of zero (an L. Paul Bremer boo-boo), there were to be 25,000 by now. Instead, they total 5,000. Or rather 4,999, since one of their commanders, Brig. Gen. Talib Abid Ghayib al-Lahibi, was arrested this week for "having associations with known insurgents."

Allies, meanwhile, continue to dwindle, with the Brits the latest to look to the exits. Quoting military sources in Whitehall and Iraq, the London Observer reported last week that the 5,000-strong main U.K. combat force will diminish by roughly a third at the end of next month. The draw-down comes after sharply increased fighting in two of the formerly quiet southern provinces the Brits patrol. In the clashes, some units suffered more than one in three killed or wounded.

The financial side’s no brighter. Originally, the Bush administration put the war’s price at bargain basement—nearly all of it, Paul Wolfowitz promised, to be paid for by the sale of Iraqi oil. This hasn’t quite worked out. Courtesy of pipelines and pumping stations routinely blown up, oil production is now at Saddam overthrow levels. Meanwhile, the cost of the war now exceeds $200 billion, and is increasing at a $5-billion-per-month clip. To make do, the Pentagon has been forced to dip into its $25 billion contingency reserve, and $3 billion earmarked for reconstruction has been diverted to security purposes. Reconstruction itself proceeds at a crawl. Less than $1 billion of the $18 billion Congress appropriated a year and a half ago has been spent, producing an unemployment rate reckoned somewhere between 33 and 40 percent, which helps explain where all the terrorist recruits are coming from.

How long the expenditure of blood and treasure will go on, and with what result, nobody knows. But there are learned opinions.

For notable example: In the most comprehensive study yet of what’s actually happening in Iraq, the hawk-friendly Center for Strategic and International Studies reported this at the end of August: "In every sector we looked at, we saw backward movement in recent months." Who commissioned the examination? Reports The New Republic: Donald Rumsfeld.

For another: Britain’s Royal Institute of International Affairs—frequent advisor to whomever resides at No. 10—has concluded that the "default scenario" for Iraq is as follows: "Antipathy to the U.S. presence grows, not so much in a unified Iraqi nationalist backlash, but rather in a segmented manner that could presage civil war if the U.S. cuts and runs. Even if U.S. forces try to hold out and prop up the central authority, it may still lose control." Bottom line in either instance: "Violent and bloody."

Others have views as well. Colin Powell: "Getting worse," he said of the insurgency on Meet the Press on Sunday. Outgoing Marine commander Lt. Gen. James T. Conway: "We certainly increased the level of animosity that existed," he said of the reputedly White House–ordered attack then retreat from Falluja. British ambassador to Italy Sir Ivor Roberts: "The best recruiting sergeant ever for Al Qaeda," he said of Mr. Bush.

And the most up close and personal: Turkish journalist Zeynep Tugrul, released by Islamic militants after four days of torture and death threats. "Everybody is the resistance," she told Susan Sachs of The Times. "Not terrorists, but not civilians really either. They used small kids to bring them water, and nobody treated them like children. They’d be with the men who were talking about cutting off heads, and the kids would be standing guard, like little men, so you became afraid of the children, too."

The response from Washington has been two-track.

In Iraq, the military has effectively ceded large swaths of the Sunni triangle and other areas (some in the middle of Baghdad) to the insurgents, presumably in order to cut down vote-discouraging casualties. Saddam Hussein’s trial, which Mr. Allawi said would begin next month, has been put off till well after the election, apparently because someone remembered the unkind comments made about Mr. Bush during his first court appearance. The Pentagon has let it be known that the current year-plus Iraq tours—a source of fury for National Guard families of both registrations—is likely to be reduced, details to be announced after the election. (Ditto bruited plans to significantly increase National Guard and regular troop strength in Iraq.) To co-opt Mr. Kerry’s call for greater allied participation, Colin Powell has been trying to organize a NATO conference. (The French aren’t cooperating, coyly saying they’re too busy between now and the election.) In demonstration of democracy’s march, plans are moving full-steam for Iraqi elections in January—though few think they’ll actually occur, including the U.N., whose judgment trumps, since it has the job of supervising them. In the event Iraqis do go to the polls and survive the trip, Time reports, a secret "finding" has tasked the C.I.A. with ensuring happy results. (Protests from the Hill have scaled back ambitions.)

As for still-missing-after-all-these-months Osama, Teresa Kerry, for one, says she "wouldn’t be surprised" if he turns up before Election Day.

At home, recent past will continue as prologue. Evidence from press accounts: The Tucson, Ariz., Fox News affiliate warning out-of-state college students that they’re committing a felony by registering to vote. (The U.S. Supreme Court ruled it legal 25 years ago.) Announcement of increased F.B.I. surveillance and terrorist warnings, despite no direct intelligence of pending attack. Mass Republican mailings to Christian voters in Arkansas and West Virginia warning "liberals" will ban the Bible if Mr. Kerry’s elected. Postponement till after the election of F.D.A. regulations opposed by beef and feed industries increasing safeguards against mad-cow disease. Statement by Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage that Iraqi terrorists "are trying to influence the election against President Bush." Bush spokesman Steve Schmidt branding Kerry criticism of Iraq policy "defeatist." Television commercial financed by Republican group showing John Kerry, then images of Osama bin Laden, Mohammed Atta and World Trade Center ruins.

And Mr. Bush’s contribution tomorrow night?

His communications director, Nicolle Devenish, offered The Times a peek: "Someone who blinks when things get hard is not the right person to win the war on terror …. They are preaching retreat and defeat in the face of real challenges from an enemy bent on our destruction. I think that’s bad for the troops, it’s bad for our allies and it’s bad for our country."

No President in modern times—including up-for-about-anything Richard Nixon—has made such a charge, whatever the war or election. But for George Bush and his kind, it’s S.O.P.

Because it works.

The proof is last week’s CBS poll, which, despite the flood of dismal news, found that 61 percent of registered voters had "a lot/some confidence" that Mr. Bush would make the "right decisions about Iraq," while only 51 percent felt the same about John Kerry. That was a drop of 12 percent since August—when the White House began wondering which side he was on.

Whether the tactic continues with the same efficiency remains to be seen. The first clue’s tomorrow at 9 p.m., after Jim Lehrer leans into the camera and says, "Good evening and welcome to …. "

Until then, let us leave you with a quote cited by Jason Epstein in a New York Review of Books meditation on how things are. It’s what Hermann Goering told an interviewer during his trial at Nuremberg:

"People don’t want to go to war .... But, after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it’s always a simple matter to drag people along whether it’s a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship …. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leadership. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same in any country."

First Tuesday in November, we’ll know if he was right.

Good.

Reporters traveling with the candidate had expressed their unhappiness by posting a sign that kept track of the days since the last "availability." Mr. Kerry ignored it.

Even better.

Mary Beth Cahill—still in charge of the campaign, despite months of stories predicting her imminent removal—declined to make any promises about when (or even if) Mr. Kerry would meet the media en bloc again.

Best news of all.

But then he did. Oh well.

That aside, there were other glad tidings this week in the Kerry camp, reports of whose defenestration appear premature. The C.I.A.’s National Intelligence Estimate predicted three outcomes for Iraq: awful, terrible, catastrophic. Republican Senators John McCain, Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar blasted Mr. Bush’s handling of the war for "incompetence" (Mr. Lugar), "serious mistakes" (Mr. McCain) and getting our boys "in deep trouble" (Mr. Hagel). Better late than never, Mr. Kerry himself put Iraq at the top of his campaign agenda and stopped playing patty-cake. Perhaps not coincidentally, Mr. Bush’s poll lead narrowed.

Shifting the press hadn’t topped reasons for cheer, which also included Joe Lockhart telling Tony ("What we need is a Karl Rove") Coelho to stuff it; and the enlistment of another grown-up, in the person of Mike McCurry. But while it lasted, it helped.

Why such delight in the travails of traveling colleagues? (They’ve at least got a seat on Mr. Kerry’s plane, unlike the correspondent of the nation’s newspaper of record, for whom there’s "no room" on Dick Cheney’s aircraft.)

Bunch of reasons, starting with Mr. Kerry’s previous press conference, which, you may recall, took place appropriately on the rim of the Grand Canyon back on Aug. 9. During that session, Mr. Kerry was asked whether he would have voted to authorize Mr. Bush’s taking the nation to war against Iraq, had he been aware that W.M.D.’s and fairy dust were not dissimilar. His response: "Yes, I would have voted for the authority. I believe it was the right authority for a President to have."

Nowhere, you’ll notice, did Mr. Kerry endorse Dubya’s actually going to war, much less say he would have done likewise, absent exhausting every option. Quite the contrary—as succeeding sentences made clear: "Why did we rush to war without a plan to win the peace? Why did you rush to war on faulty intelligence and not do the hard work necessary to give America the truth? Why did he mislead America about how he would go to war? Why has he not brought other countries to the table in order to support American troops in the way they deserve it and relieve the pressure on the American people?"

As usual, Mr. Kerry used a hundred words to convey what a savvier politician would in half a dozen. But his meaning was crystal: The authority backed was for use worst-case. Which at the time of the invasion was nowhere in sight.

That’s not how the press played it.

Virtually without exception, Mr. Kerry’s "Yes, I would have voted for the authority" was headlined as a belated endorsement of Dubya’s barging into Baghdad—and has been hung around his neck as Flip-Flop-in-Chief ever since. And the sentences that followed? What sentences?

The moral was clear: You don’t wanna be misconstrued, don’t answer questions.

So, John Kerry wasn’t—except from a handful of national reporters of high-odds reliability, and local clucks inquiring how he felt about being in Chillicotthe.

Who could blame him?

Television sandwiches 90 seconds of political coverage between footage of bent-over palm trees, ravaged beach houses and rowboats traversing main streets; Dan Rather’s boo-boos; and the latest Iraqi car bombing and/or hostage-beheading. Just where news of "the most important election in our lifetime" appears depends on the day’s accusation. But as a rule of thumb: the more outrageous, the higher up.

Without pictures that move (or nearly the number of people to address), print operates differently. At least from a distance. Iraq, health care and the economy get more space from the usual suspects ( The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times et al.), but by and large, both print and TV cover the election like the seventh race at Santa Anita: Who’s ahead going into the clubhouse turn? Ink-stained wretches also share their better-dressed network counterparts’ fascination with National Guard and naval records (cable, of course, outdoes them both); and with acres of column inches to fill, the scribblers are in a position to accord them greater—though not necessarily more searching—examination, complete with diagrams of problem spots and suspicious connections.

But in two respects, print stands unchallenged. No. 1: focus on nuts and bolts (who sits where on the plane; why so-and-so’s producing a commercial, not such-and-such), a phenomenon whose genesis lies in the sales of Theodore H. White’s The Making of the President, 1960. No. 2: composition of thumb-suckers listing moves Mr. Kerry should make, were he as smart as the composer—a pastime indulged in this weekend by no less a figure than William Safire, formerly of the Nixon White House.

To the obvious question—"Are we learning much that counts?"—the answer’s equally so: Puhleeze.

The more intriguing query—"Why’s John Kerry getting such lousy press?"—takes some sorting out.

Let’s start with the nose on your face: Mr. Kerry lacks, shall we say, je ne sais quoi in certain interpersonal relationships. He appears ill at ease with inquiring strangers (except David Letterman, an old pal after two minutes’ acquaintance Monday night); dislikes divulging private matters (eccentric Dave asked about war-and-peace stuff); conveys, overall, being programmed and stuck-up. In short, the entire package hated by reporters, who long to be stroked (not for nothing did Timothy Crouse call the Boys on the Bus "shy egomaniacs") and make their living getting sources to say things they shouldn’t. Michael Dukakis and Al Gore possessed many of Mr. Kerry’s quirks, and, you’ll note, aren’t burdened maintaining Presidential libraries. But, maybe because of all those years far from home at Swiss boarding school, John Kerry’s remoteness makes fellow Bay Stater John Adams a sport by comparison. Mr. Kerry pays for it, according to a normal person who emerged from the aluminum cocoon that transports the wandering circus, stupefied at the loathing of those in back for the guy in front. And the loathers are Democrats.

Strikes two and three against Mr. Kerry are his press operation, a.k.a. the reason the services of Messrs. Lockhart and McCurry were required. Reporters work on deadlines. Those who help meet them are adored; those who don’t, despised. The functioning of Mr. Kerry’s prior to the Clintonian duo’s employment? In his profile of beleaguered Bob Shrum in last week’s New Yorker, Ken Auletta quoted reporters describing it thus: "Like calling the DMV."

Before further enumeration of reportorial sins (a subject on which your correspondent is expert, having committed all of them covering campaigns too many decades), credit must be awarded Mr. Bush, whom even Mr. Kerry says is a "perfectly nice guy," and who employs press-handlers of positively Teutonic efficiency. Should that fail to warm hearts, Mr. Bush can call on supporters rather more direct in approach. Ask Judith Miller of The New York Times: She’s looking at jail for contesting a subpoena secured by a Bush-appointed U.S. attorney in connection with who blew Valerie Plame’s C.I.A. cover. The thing is, Ms. Miller never wrote about Ms. Plame. Meanwhile, the fella who did, Bush-backing Bob Novak, won’t say whether he’s blabbed to the grand jury. Before Dan Rather’s televised seppuku Monday evening, he was too busy demanding the CBS News anchor cough up his sources.

Add John Ashcroft’s regard for the First Amendment, and the radical curtailment of the Freedom of Information Act (undertaken in the name of national security, needless to say), and if you think that doesn’t send a message—well, you probably also think that House Speaker Denny Hastert had tongue in cheek when he told a Republican fund-raiser Saturday night that Al Qaeda would be happier with John Kerry in the White House.

But Dubya and friends can’t be blamed for every sparrow that tumbles—or even most. As the Swift boat swallowing demonstrated (and before that, the hoo-hah over S.U.V.’s owned, the intern not bedded, and innumerable, usually illusory molehills in between), the press is perfectly capable of cravenness sans prompting. Everybody has reasons: laziness, getting ahead, competitive pressure from the likes of Matt Drudge, what Eugene McCarthy called "blackbirds on a wire" coverage ("One flies off, they all fly off," observed Gene, who wasn’t a scribe favorite, either), and, not least, fear of seeming biased—a dread apparently confined to journalists of Democratic persuasion. (For proof, tune in Brit Hume, then call up Mickey Kaus’ column.)

To that roster, yours truly nominates a few others. Like the generation gap.

As with war, covering campaigns is a game for the youngish, which proved a boon to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, whose sun-rises-in-the-west charges seemed utterly plausible to reporters who spent Vietnam as a gleam in daddy’s eye. Only rarely does a codger come along like Joe Galloway, who was up close and personal with that war at its deadliest. Which gave Joe a best-selling book ( We Were Soldiers Once and Young); the kick of watching an actor play himself opposite Mel Gibson in the movie; and a good memory of "body-count" days. In his Knight-Ridder column, he recently exposed the absurdity of Mr. Bush’s Iraq bounciness with simple arithmetic: Subtract Pentagon claims of insurgents killed last month (2,500) from Central Command chief General John Abizaid’s estimate of total bad-guy strength (5,000), and what do you get? Answered Mr. Galloway: "Just one more month and the enemy will all be dead and we can go home."

Similar figuring elsewhere in the press? None.

Then there’s the not-invented-here syndrome, exemplified by the reception that met Kitty Kelley’s The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty. Exceeding small were the number of reviews whose first paragraph didn’t note Ms. Kelley’s "sensationalist" oeuvre or the "controversial" reporting methods of the "colonoscopist to the stars," as Slate called her (before serving up a five-page guide to the dish). Roundabout paragraph three or four, following expression of dismay over what the culture’s become (see Michiko Kakutani for the template), came news that the hottest item in the 736-pager—Dubya’s allegedly snorting blow whilst at Dad’s Camp David—has been denied in a sworn affidavit by Ms. Kelley’s rumor-confirming source, ex–Presidential sister-in-law Sharon Bush. At which point, you’re prepared for dismay-expressing of your own. Unless you know the part most left out. Namely, that Ms. Kelley harvested Ms. Bush’s recollections during a four-hour interview/lunch, nondigestible contents of which are attested to by contemporaneous notes and another reporter who was present in the capacity of Ms. Bush’s publicist. Further, that Ms. Kelley crossed her t’s and dotted her i’s the next day in a 90-minute phone follow-up with Ms. Bush, witnessed by Ms. Kelley’s editor, Random House vice president Peter Gethers, the author’s lawyer and the publisher’s lawyer. Funny how a few facts change things.

Next up: Linear thinking.

Campaign reporters are terrific tracking events point to point: Today, the candidate said this, the day before, that—a skill that has snared the ever-nuancing Mr. Kerry on more than one occasion. Trouble arises connecting more disparate dots, such as those revolving around the mysterious Internet poster "Buckhead," whose startlingly learned exegesis of the Killian documents 3:59 after Dan Rather aired them was the ensuing landslide’s first rock. Took some doing, but Peter Wallsten of the L.A. Times hunted him down. And wouldn’t you know who Buckhead (real name: Harry W. MacDougald) turns out to be? An Atlanta lawyer ("Buckhead" is the city’s most exclusive neighborhood) and Republican player whose c.v. includes membership in the arch-conservative Federalist Society, and helping draft a petition to the Arkansas Supreme Court urging the disbarment of William Jefferson Clinton. (The Court obliged for a term of five years.) Buckhead wouldn’t answer questions, least of all how he picked up his instant document-debunking hobby or found his way to the favorite Web site of the co-author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry. "I’m just going to stick to doing no interviews," he said.

The day after the L.A. Times broke that, The Washington Post was publishing a lengthy tick-tock of where Dan went wrong. All was lost, it develops, when CBS sought comment from White House communications director Dan Bartlett, who offered the usual: "dirty politics," the President was honorably discharged, etc. Mr. Bartlett had been given copies of the documents (indeed, had shown them to Mr. Bush prior to talking to CBS), and referred to them during the interview. Challenge their authenticity, however, he did not. CBS took that as oblique confirmation, abandoned further efforts at verification and went with the story eight hours later. Then the roof fell in.

In its autopsy querying of Mr. Bartlett, The Post asked why he hadn’t pooh-poohed the documents. Elicting this: "How am I supposed to verify something that came from a dead man in three hours?"

The well-connected Buckhead did the opposite in 59 minutes more. Any coincidence? You’ll never know from reading the papers.

Finally, the pitfall Mencken warned about: becoming august.

None are more so than the universally proclaimed "dean" of the political press, David S. Broder of The Washington Post. Mr. Broder—a decent soul if ever there were one—attained that position by dint of smarts and shoe leather, many pairs’ worth of which were worn out going door-to-door, town-to-town to discover what actual voters think. No one had ever heard of such a thing, and it made Dave Broder famous.

The first sign of possible attendant downside was Mr. Broder’s co-authoring with Bob Woodward of a Post series (later turned into a book) about Dan Quayle. In the midst of a boatload of encomiums, it reported that the then Vice President was "skillful [and] underestimated repeatedly "—a scoop not only about the I.Q. of Mr. Potato-with-an-"e", but the judgment of Mr. Broder. And today? Well, this Sunday Mr. Broder summed up his marvel at the recent swirl of happenings by writing: "This is one of those too-frequent moments of mental overload, when the best thing you can do is put some distance between yourself and the TV screen and not try to absorb it all at once."

Jim Lehrer couldn’t have said it better. Why else do you think Never-Offend Jim was selected to moderate the first Presidential debate?

Your correspondent could go on, but you get the idea. If you’re despairing, take heart from another press habit. Call it "A.C. Wave" reporting, so named after alternating current’s up-and-down behavior on an oscilloscope.

If there’s one thing that terrorizes political journalists almost as much as missing the plane, it’s being stuck with a loser campaign. That taints them as losers by association (how many Gore reporters you see on prime beats?), and, worse, kills suspense about the outcome, making an already tedious chore really numbing.

Here’s where A.C. Wave comes to the rescue.

Having earlier built up the candidate they’re condemned to (otherwise, he wouldn’t have the nomination), then torn him down (you gotta do something when you run out of superlatives), as day succeeds night, reporters will commence rebuilding when ballot-casting looms. Flaws formerly fatal magically vanish. Virtues not previously noted come to the fore. Phrases like "last-minute surge" and "astonishing comeback" are increasingly typed/uttered.

With 40 or so days till Nov. 2, John Kerry’s about to become the latest beneficiary. The worst is over; from here on, it’s upward.

Sound cynical? You don’t know the half of it.

And, oh yes: American deaths in Iraq passed the 1,000 mark. (Actually, this happened roundabout the time Mr. Bush was citing phony figures for Al Qaeda leadership killed or captured during his convention acceptance speech, but the Pentagon was late owning up.)

Small potatoes, in short. Bagatelles. Asterisks to the REALLY BIG story this week, which was exactly when Times New Roman showed up on typewriters.

Doubtless you're aware that this was the font employed in the composition of several three-decade-old documents that came into the possession of Dan Rather of CBS News. Their gist: George W. Bush was not recruiting-poster material while serving with the Texas Air National Guard. Such was the view of the documents' purported author, Mr. Bush's squadron commander, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, about whom one of the few items not in dispute is that he's been dead for 20 years. Pretty much everything else about the late colonel-including whether he could type-is jump ball. Ditto opinion on whether the documents are forgeries, and, if so, a clumsy scheme hatched by Democrats (the position of Fox News et al.), or a clever snare laid by Republicans (the hunch of-among Kerry-backing others-Terry McAuliffe, who's suggested the trap-setter may be Lord Vader himself, Karl Rove.)

What this has to do with who should be standing on the Capitol steps holding his right hand up Jan. 20 is beside the point, in media calculations. All focus now is on type fonts, graphology, the expertise of dueling experts and the history of typewriters, which is far more storied and studied than you might expect.

Before plunging in, an admission: Your correspondent doesn't have a clue whether the documents in question are genuine. And cares less-either about their authenticity, or what Dubya was up to when he was (or wasn't) serving with the Texas Air National Guard. What Mr. Bush has been up to the last four years, and will be for another four, given the chance-that's tastier fish to fry.

So what's the excuse for what follows? Well, maybe it's not as interesting as how the Vice President decided last week that trading on eBay could be a solution for unemployment, but it does offer a window on the press, the right, our politics in general, and why Ralph Waldo Emerson was no dope when he said, "When you strike at a king, you must kill him." Who knows? There may also be instruction on how John Kerry ought to handle himself as the days tick down.

With that preamble, here goes, starting with a tick-tock of the hoo-hah filched from ABC's "The Note" and the Los Angeles Times .

At 8 p.m. last Wednesday, 60 Minutes broadcast Mr. Rather's report, which centered on ex–Texas House Speaker and Democratic power Ben Barnes describing how he'd greased Mr. Bush's way into the Guard (putting the lie to the longstanding claim that Dubya had made it on his own hook), and now felt bad on account. Mr. Barnes' assistance wasn't exactly a scoop, though that's how Mr. Rather advertised it; in 1999, he'd told essentially the same story to the Dallas Morning News . All that was new was being on camera. Sandwiched between his recollections and White House communications director Dan Bartlett kicking them as "dirty politics," the documents appeared, accompanied by Mr. Rather saying they'd been verified by "a handwriting analyst and document expert." To bolster credence, there was an interview with a Texas Air Guard officer and friend of Killian's, Robert Strong, who said the papers were "compatible" with the fella he remembered Jerry Killian being.

Not the most ringing testimony. Nor was the word of a single, unidentified, off-camera "expert" exactly open-and-shut proof. But Mr. Barnes was emphatic and-better yet-truthful. And Ben Barnes, Dan Rather said, was what the story was all about.

That's not how it worked out.

Mr. Rather's report hadn't been over 10 minutes when a post appeared on the right-wing Web site FreeRepublic.com from "TankerKC," saying the documents were "not in the style that we used when I came into the USAF … can we get a copy of those memos?"

Three hours and a little later, fat met fire with another FreeRepublic posting, this one from a blogger named "Buckhead." He (or she-Buckhead won't reveal his identity outside cyberspace) wrote:

Every single one of these memos to file is in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman. In 1972 people used typewriters for this sort of thing, and typewriters used monospaced fonts. The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers. They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts. I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old …. This should be pursued aggressively.

Here the plot starts a-thickening.

First (leaving aside how suspiciously well Buckhead puts sentences together for a righty blogger), there's the extraordinary, yeah, boggling, knowledge of typewriting arcana. More remarkable still are the circumstances under which discernment occurred. Namely, viewing the document on a TV screen from a presumed distance of six to a dozen feet. Folks who make their living at this sort of thing rely on magnifying glasses, if not microscopes. And they don't venture opinions unless the document's in their puss.

Then there's the warp speed with which Buckhead discerned monkey business. The last big document mess was the trove that conned Seymour Hersh into believing Jack Kennedy signed a contract with Marilyn Monroe agreeing to pay a hundred grand in consideration of her shutting up about their adventures between the sheets, as well as his pillow talk of owing the 1960 election to the good offices of Chicago mob boss Sam (Momo) Giancana. Their exposure (in which your correspondent had a walk-on) took weeks. And those documents were nutso on their face.

Another timing oddity which may or may not be related to the mysterious Buckhead, depending on your choice of villain, is the Pentagon's release of allegedly newly-discovered records of Mr. Bush's flight hours and middling piloting abilities one day almost to the minute before Mr. Rather's report-following four months of insisting there were no more documents to disgorge. Second coincidence: The Pentagon release came hours after the Boston Globe , poring through yet other records, reported that Mr. Bush "fell well short of meeting his military obligation" by failing to report to a Boston-area Guard unit after he enrolled in the Harvard Business School, and by earlier ducking out on required training and drills for a total of nine months. Either could have landed Mr. Bush on full-time active duty for two years, potentially in Vietnam. But he received no punishment whatsoever.

Finally, there's a detail that appears to have escaped press notice: The Web site where Buckhead's posting appeared also happens to be the repository for anti-Jew, anti-Catholic, anti-homosexual, anti-John Kerry rants by Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D. And whom, you ask, is Dr. Corsi? Co-author of the best-selling Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry , that's who.

Anyhow, FreeRepublic devotees batted Buckhead's discovery around a bit, in fashion somewhat less refined than Oxford Union joustings. Sample: "KERRY IS A NARCISSISTIC LIAR, GOLDBRICKER, AND TRAITOR!"

Meanwhile, things were cooking at another right-wing site, littlegreenfootballs.com, which joined the party at 11:30 p.m. eastern time with its own take. By morning, other bloggers were twittering and alarums were issuing from the established right, including ( Salon reported) Cybercast News, part of veteran "liberal media" basher L. Brent Bozell's empire; and Creative Response Concepts, an Arlington, Va., P.R. emporium whose clients include the Republican National Committee, the Christian Coalition and a lengthy list of like-minded others. Its senior staff is heavy with Pat Robertson alumni, one of whom serves as official spokesman for-you guessed right again-Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

Bloggers were in a frenzy now, traffic so heavy that one site got knocked offline by the volume. But most stayed in the hunt, and at 2:41 Thursday afternoon, with the Rather story less than 19 hours old, a blogger reported consulting with a forensic expert who'd assessed the Killian documents as fishy, too. Soon thereafter, an uncharacteristically tardy Matt Drudge weighed in with his first "FLASH!" This led to Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard professing indignation at 5 p.m. An hour later, so did even huffier Fox, where Brit Hume reported that an office elf had created a Killian clone with Microsoft Word.

All that remained was for the allegedly nonpartisan mainstreammedia-"MSM," in blogspeak-to get into the act. They did so with relish, led by the A.P. and happy-to-pee-on-CBS-News ABC. The next day, the contretemps made The New York Times and The Washington Post , which played the story the same as they had the Swift Boat stuff: This guy says this, that guy says that, and even if we know who's full of it, our job ain't telling you.

Fresh from offering Bob Dole a platform to spread unchallenged slanders about John Kerry's war wounds, Wolf Blitzer chipped in by posting on CNN's Web site a 30-year old transcript of Dan Rather being unawed by Richard Nixon during a Watergate press conference. "Now," intoned Wolf, "the 72-year-old CBS News anchor finds himself in yet another confrontation with a Republican President." (For a hint of lupine motive, Google "Blitzer AIPAC").

From there it was off to the races, every furlong adding new typewriter experts offering this, that and the other opinion about Times New Roman, proportional spacing and "superscript," the gizmo that makes tiny "th's" after numbers. Demonstrating thoroughness (or need to fill airtime and column inches), the press also served up quotes from various and sundry friends and family members of the principals involved-including the daughter of Ben Barnes, who phoned up a Dallas talk-radio station to call her father a liar.

Poor Mr. Barnes. Even if he did condemn some other mother's son to Vietnam, you had to feel for him. On top of the Oedipal run-in with the kid (that'll be an interesting Thanksgiving dinner), the Republican National Committee, well-prepared for this moment, disgorged an encyclopedia of bile enumerating his "ethical mishaps."

Midst the hubbub, which Mr. Kerry passed assuring Time (which was about to report him 11 points down and sinking), "I think we are doing extraordinarily well"-the Boston Globe stepped forward with new, unflattering information on Mr. Bush's Guard tenure gathered from an officer in his unit, who identified himself as a non-Dubya-hating Republican lately gone over to the Dark Side. This elicited the following post on the conservative "News Forum": They are Hanoi Boi's kneepad-wearing, Kool-Aid drinking buttboys.

On it went, until Dan Rather got fed up a lot quicker than John Kerry did with the Swift Boat buccaneers, and-as they say down Sam Houston State way-stuck an apple in the pig's mouth.

Partly, at least.

Leading off his Friday newscast with the firestorm, Mr. Rather noted that "many" of those besieging him "are partisan political operatives" and stuck to his six-shooters about the Killian papers being on the up-and-up. For proof, he displayed a 1968 document about Mr. Bush's service released by the Pentagon using the superscript feature his critics claimed hadn't existed then, and quoted the owner of the company that distributes Times New Roman as saying it had been around since 1931. He also trotted out Robert Strong again and interviewed the previously unnamed document and handwriting expert, Marcel Matley, who'd done the verifying for 60 Minutes . Momentarily, that was good enough for Matt Drudge, who headlined: "KEY CHALLENGES TO NATIONAL GUARD DOCUMENTS ANSWERED."

Did that end it? Not on your life.

The furor's continued, as have the attacks on CBS News, whose reach the right has reason to loathe. The New York Post even thinks it's fingered the source of the Killian papers, an ex-Guardsman whose background couldn't be better for Mr. Bush's backers: illness acquired while on a Guard mission to Panama; lawsuit filed against the government; and-the really good part-two nervous breakdowns. Stand by for even grubbier tidbits, 'cause the Post 's on the case.

But a retired four-star who fought bravely in Vietnam pretty well settled one aspect of the debate in his autobiography some years back.

"I am angry that so many sons of the powerful and well-placed managed to wangle slots in Reserve and National Guard units," he wrote. "The policies determining who would be drafted and who would be deferred, who would serve and who would escape, who would die and who would live were an anti-democratic disgrace."

The book was called My American Journey ; the author was Colin Powell.

Is there a moral in any of this, save further confirmation how sordidly frivolous "the most important election in our lifetime" has become?

Only for John Kerry.

Until lately, he's had his finger in his ear, wondering how to stave off the looming prospect of losing Secret Service protection the morning after the election. The side that's been urging caution, according to The Times , is led by the odd couple of Joe Lockhart and Bob Shrum, who has apparently been tuning in to Dr. Phil . The forces urging flank-speed attack are commanded by David Thorne, Mr. Kerry's Yale roommate, former brother-in-law and still best friend.

Mr. Kerry's usual guides in tough spots-polls and focus groups-delivered a mixed message, so this time he was on his own. It's not yet certain where he'll come down. And whether (for a change), he'll stick to it when he does. But from what Mr. Kerry's been saying the last week or two-calling Iraq "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time" and the "W." in Mr. Bush's name standing for wrong on about everything else-it looks like he's got his flak jacket on, and is steering to the sound of the guns.

If the Killian papers are a set-up, meant to discredit, distract, deflect (all of which they've done splendidly, whoever's behind them), he knows who's waiting in the weeds around the bend: people who will stop at nothing.

John Kerry met an enemy like that a long time ago. He did all right, then. He might again.

The dads ran plants and offices; were doctors and lawyers and businessmen; belonged to Kiwanis and Rotary; groused about social programs and the taxes they had to pay to support them; played golf at nice country clubs and bought Buicks every other year.

The moms oversaw spotless suburban houses, wore gloves and went to teas; belonged to the P.T.A., the Ladies Auxiliary and the garden club; volunteered at the local hospital and mounted can drives for the underprivileged; and never, ever questioned that father really did know best.

They were salts-of-the earth who attended the Episcopal or Presbyterian church every Sunday; wanted a strong defense so the country would never have to go to war unless somebody bombed Pearl Harbor; and asked of government only that it leave them alone. Folks, in short, like Gerald and Betty Ford. A little dull, maybe, but O.K.

"Conservative" wasn't a word heard very often back then-and certainly not "right-wing," an appellation applied only to "kooks" such as the John Birch Society (it's still in business, by the by, battling to get the U.S. out of the U.N., and "Our Canal" back from Panama). Except about Communists and Franklin D. Roosevelt and unions, Republicans-even "rock-ribbed," the most demonstrative G.O.P.-registered ever got describing themselves-lacked rabidity in their DNA. That included feelings about "social issues." Because in the good old days, there weren't any. Everyone, including homosexuals and "Negroes," knew their place.

Somewhere along the line, all this got stood on its noggin, and on account of Playboy magazine and Vietnam and Betty Friedan and civil rights and a lot of other well-chronicled reasons (not least Jesus, who made a huge comeback), Republicans-those setting the party's course, anyway-became more Tom DeLay than Jerry Ford.

Which is why John Kerry suddenly finds himself trailing George W. Bush.

Candidate beau ideal, Mr. Kerry is not, as privately admitted by his ever-changing cast of handlers-which, with the recent addition of Joe Lockhart as press secretary, is looking more and more like Clinton Redux, less and less like Kennedy Restoration. Still, you'd think he'd be having a better time of it, given the shape the country's in. Take last week's Census Bureau report: It found 35.9 million Americans-12.9 million of them children-living in poverty (up four million from when Bill moved to Chappaqua); 45 million without health insurance (an increase of 1.5 million since the start of Dubya's "corner turn"); and average family income declining since the supposed end of the supposedly tax-cut-killed recession. The wealthiest Americans, however, have been doing swell; their income's gone up. As for the party registration of most of these fortunates, take a guess.

Add two million jobs lost during Mr. Bush's tenure (the first time that's happened since a Republican President named Hoover); an annual budget deficit running roundabout half a trillion; Iraq K.I.A.'s nearing the magic 1,000 mark; Osama still on the loose; the Bill of Rights going piecemeal into the toilet; and basically the whole world hating us-suck on that, and there seems ample cause for the squire of Crawford, Tex., to be preparing for brush-cutting full-time.

Instead, it's Democrats who are despairing.

Is Karl Rove really that smart?

John Kerry really that awful?

Or is something else at work-an X-factor that has to do with the nature of the two major political parties, and the differing lengths to which they will (and will not) go to win elections?

Your correspondent-who admits to secretly voting for Republicans now and again; regularly having them at his dinner table; and, in the event of desert-island stranding, vastly preferring the company of Pat Buchanan over Michael Moore-selects Door No. 3.

The evidence is a matter of public record, starting with Richard Nixon. He's the President, you'll recall, who thought it a fine idea to enhance his re-election chances by breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, and having his elves spread false stories to take his most dangerous opponent-reliable Ed Muskie of Maine-out of the race.

More recently, we've had a Republican Congress and a Republican "Independent" Prosecutor doing their utmost to remove from office the "illegitimate" Democratic President, Bill Clinton. Since details remain fresh, we'll skip that episode, save to note that when Bill was running in 1992, it was inside-the-Beltway common knowledge that, in the marital extracurriculars department, his opponent (Dubya's dad) inhabited a rather roomy glass house. Mention by Democrats of same: None.

Then we come to 2000, when Dubya-having attained the needed stepping stone with the assist of stories planted in East Texas that Ann Richards and some of her staff were gay (see Tim Grieve's account in Salon last week)-secured election to the Presidency in unusual fashion. Which is to say, dubious vote-counting in kid brother's Florida certified by the co-chair of his state campaign and, subsequently, five Republican-appointed members of the U.S. Supreme Court. And oh yes: systematic, massive disenfranchisement of minorities, en route.

This suggests that the folks currently gathered at Madison Square Garden play by, shall we say, different rules.

John Kerry is the latest to make that discovery. His encounter with the Republican-financed, -advised and God-knows-what-else "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" has holed his campaign beneath the waterline. Should the outcome gang agley in November, it may be remembered like Ed Muskie's crying in the snows of New Hampshire because of libels lodged against his wife-the moment that changed everything.

Needless to say, Mr. Kerry, rather than Mr. Bush, is catching most of the press blame. Had he not made such a big deal of his Vietnam service, it's been endlessly written, he wouldn't have set himself up for such attacks. Never mind that official naval records show the Swiftees' credibility on a par with the Flat Earth Society. And never mind-as John Podesta recently pointed out-that the only metal left in George Bush by his mysteriously truncated National Guard service (funny about those disappearing records) were a couple of fillings. The tall fella with the Silver Star, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts-he's the screw-up. Tim O'Brien, the best-selling novelist and Vietnam combat infantryman, came up with the perfect description of this state of affairs the other day on NPR: "Orwellian."

While we're on the subject of war records, how 'bout Bob Dole's? All that's widely known about his World War II service is that it concluded shortly before the end of European hostilities with a grievous wound that rendered his right arm useless, and was the foundation of a long, ferociously partisan political career. That, and its 1996 employment by Republicans as a cudgel against "draft-dodging" Bill. (Republicans merely have "other priorities.")

Mr. Dole was lauded for his service and suffering during that election-despite his contemptible branding of World Wars I, II, Korea and Vietnam as "Democrat wars." Today, John Kerry keeps mum about Mr. Dole's wartime exploits as well-despite the undermining of his own, considerably more decorated service by Mr. Dole, who's endorsed the Swiftees' discredited charges; trivialized Mr. Kerry's wounds as "superficial"; grotesquely misstated how he incurred them; and finished up by suggesting that the Democratic nominee owed an apology to his fellow 2.5 million Vietnam veterans for having the temerity to speak out against the war that killed 58,000 of them.

To judge from the polls, many took his word as gospel.

The Swiftees must be especially grateful. Awash with cash since Mr. Dole's appearance, they're launching a $400,000 TV buy in Florida, the New York Post gleefully reports; are going national with $800,000 worth of cable commercials; and have a brand-new ad-this one focusing on Mr. Kerry's 1971 medals toss-set to greet him in Nashville, where he's addressing the American Legion.

So, in the interests of equal time (the networks' excuse for spreading Swift Boat effluent), here's the skinny about Second Lieutenant Dole, courtesy of Robert B. Ellis, a former C.I.A. officer and Bronze Star–winning member of Mr. Dole's division (10th Mountain) during the thick of the Italian campaign. His report appeared in The Nation eight years ago.

For starters, Mr. Dole was Bill Clinton's near-equal at avoiding harm's way. This was initially accomplished by enrolling in the Army's Enlisted Reserve Corps-a move that allowed him to complete his sophomore year at Kansas. Then, after another year and a half of U.S.-based training, he arrived in Europe. There, according to a Nation report by David Corn and Paul Schemm, he tried to get himself assigned to an Army Sports unit based in Rome. Unsuccessful, he reported for duty as a replacement looie in a combat outfit in February 1945. Seven fairly uneventful weeks later, he sustained the wound that put him into a V.A. hospital for years of agonizing recuperation. For which the nation owes him unstinting sympathy and kudos.

Some of his decorations may engender different emotion, however.

According to G.O.P. campaign literature in 1996, Mr. Dole holds two Bronze Stars for heroism, one for the action that nearly killed him. The other? Campaign literature doesn't say how he acquired it, but apparently it came via a 1947 decision to award the Bronze Star to every G.I. who'd been in combat.

Mr. Dole also received two Purple Hearts. But on his official Web site, the circumstances and severity of the first is unmentioned. Understandably, it turns out.

For Mr. Dole suffered his first wound-from shrapnel, the same substance that wounded John Kerry on two, weeks-apart occasions-not from enemy fire (a Purple Heart pre-requisite), but from errantly tossing his own grenade, which apparently hit a tree. In any event, it bounced back, sending a sliver of metal into his leg (and dinging several of his buddies in the bargain). Described as "the sort of injury the Army patched up with Mercurochrome," the wounding kept Mr. Dole off the line exactly one day.

From whence did Mr. Ellis collect such embarrassing intelligence, including the "Mercurochrome" bit? Unlimited Partners (1988)-the joint autobiography of Bob and Elizabeth Dole.

But you can't blame Bob for selective memory while gut-shooting Mr. Kerry. He's only hewing to plans almost assuredly drafted by Karl Rove, who's also doubtless familiar with (if not the author of) First Brother Jeb's preparations for Florida: The Sequel. The installation in the state's most heavily Democratic counties of "touch-screen" voting machines (the gizmos that leave no paper trail and don't record 1 percent of ballots cast), Kerry Watch told you about a few weeks ago. Ditto, the "accident" that failed to cleanse the registration rolls of Republican-voting Cuban felons-but worked flawlessly getting rid of Democratic-voting black ones. Well, there've been further developments. Notably, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert wrote last month, officers of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement-an agency that reports to Jeb-going into the homes of elderly black voters in Orlando, supposedly to investigate allegations of voter fraud during the city's March mayoral election. Interviewed by Mr. Herbert, a spokesman for the younger Bush's cops refused to divulge what "criminal activity" bought on the intimidating visits to elderly African-Americans, and claimed that those grilled had merely been selected at "random."

Sure. And snow is in the forecast for Tallahassee next week.

Elsewhere, the tactics vary, but the intent's the same.

One of a ton of examples: For months, FactCheck.org has been looking into two messages circulating on the Internet. One claims that Mr. Kerry and his wife own 32 Heinz factories in Europe and 18 in Asia and the Pacific, which have cost "hundreds" of American jobs and brought "millions" to the Kerrys from cheap, overseas labor. "If you are reading [this] in English," it concludes, "thank a soldier."

The truth, according to the H.J. Heinz Company, is that neither John Kerry nor Teresa Heinz Kerry own any factories anywhere; do not sit on the company's board; and play zero role in its operations. All they know about ketchup and pickles, in other words, is how they taste.

The second serving of disinformation is even more toxic. It states that Teresa gave $4 million to a foundation, the Tides Center, which used it to finance "radical" groups, including one "whose leaders are known to have close ties to the terrorist group, Hamas," and another which "has offered to defend Saddam Hussein when he's tried." The Heinz Endowments deny such contributions, and are backed up by forms the law requires to be filed with the Internal Revenue Service. So where does the money funneled to the Tides Center actually go? To support projects like "bike-to-work week" in Pittsburgh.

What's intriguing about this message, apart from its utter scurrility, is the source that inspired it: an article in the right-wing Pittsburgh Tribune-Review . Sound familiar? That's the paper that employs the reporter Teresa told to "shove it" at the Democratic Convention. And whom, you may wonder, is the publisher of the Tribune-Review ? Richard Mellon Scaife-the Republican billionaire who financed David Brock's since-recanted smears of Bill Clinton and Anita Hill.

If you have stomach for more of this stuff, click the Web site of "Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry," whose leader, Ted Sampley, made a name for himself in 1992 by faking a photograph of Mr. Kerry shooting an American M.I.A. The VVAJK now serves up eye-widening items about "radical, hippie-like" John's early days. Such as his "betrayal of American prisoners of war" and his "organizing opposition in the United States against the efforts of his former buddies still ducking Communist bullets." He also "advocated the Communist line" while serving as a shill for the Viet Cong, in case you didn't know. That is, when he was not "rubbing shoulders with Hanoi Jane Fonda." Or helping cook up plots to assassinate U.S. Senators.

Should Vietnam weary you (as it does yours truly, who happened to be there, unlike most of Mr. Kerry's press critics), check out the right-wing Boston Herald for "steamy tales" of the "Senator's secret love"-when he was single-by ex-girlfriend Lee Whitnum, writer and former Harvard student. She'll tell you what a cad Kerry was. Wouldn't take her on a date. Not a single dinner or movie. Wouldn't be seen in public with her, matter of fact-much less marry her, which is why she finally dumped him, even though he whispered to her in French- French! -during "intimate nights" at his Back Bay pad. "That man broke my heart," says Ms. Whitnum, who told the BBC she'd hoped her novelized revelations ( Hedge Fund Mistress ) would enable her to "sell some books, buy a house, not have to spend the next 20 years living in a windowless cube … living paycheck-to-paycheck." But those aspirations, like dreams of being Mrs. Kerry, have come to naught, and Ms. Whitnum now lives in Indiana. (She's still going to vote for him, however.)

Or you can look up the transcript of a Bush/Cheney '04 press conference a few weeks back starring Senators Trent Lott and Gordon Smith, who denounced Mr. Kerry for supporting cloning. Thanks to Mr. Kerry, said Senator Smith, there is "little way to stop us from going down the path of creating laboratory body farms."

Only thing left out: Mr. Kerry supports the therapeutic cloning of stem-cell research-a position, Wired News notes, shared by such notorious organizations as the American Medical Association and the National Academy of Sciences.

So the Republican campaign goes these days, to the spinning of Ike and Ronnie in their tombs.

Don't misunderstand: It's not that the tyros of George W. Bush's re-cast of Abe Lincoln's party are against elections. (Not yet, at least.)

It's competing decently they can't abide.

You know, the guy from the Viagra commercials, who used to be U.S. Senator, and the Republicans thought would be just the ticket to keep Bill Clinton from a second term, because he had a gimp arm from World War II while Slick had done handstands not to serve? Wife named Liddy ring a bell? The Southern gal with the pasted-on smile who ran the Red Cross and wanted to be President, too, but settled for a Senate seat, and is apparently very understanding about erectile dysfunction? Oh, come on: You must remember Bob Dole. He's the Republican everybody likes because he's got such a great sense of humor.

Well, he was on TV this weekend, talking about "good guy, good friend" John Kerry, and this time he wasn't funny.

But then Vietnam never was, either.

That's what Bob was talking about-like everybody since a Republican-financed veterans group with more connections to the Bush White House than Karl Rove has fingers and toes published a best-seller and started running TV commercials in battleground states, charging that the service that made Lt. j.g. Kerry a hero and the Democratic nominee was, in fact, a construct of lies, cowardice and self-inflicted wounds cunningly erected to secure him the Presidency of the United States 35 years later.

The accusation seemed so from Mars no one much believed it, at first, except Fox News and Matt Drudge. Certainly, John Kerry didn't take it seriously. He said nothing about accusations that went to the heart of his integrity, until he looked around and saw that his standing among veterans-tied with Dubya at the time of the Democratic National Convention-was suddenly 18 points down. That got his attention-and everyone else's, too. All at once, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth-"SBVfT," in military-speak-was on well-informed lips. But there was still the puzzle: Did "Truth" belong in their moniker?

So, Saturday night, scads were tuning in to see what ol' Bob'd tell Wolf Blitzer on CNN's Late Edition . Because on the subject of wounds, decorations and conduct under fire, he's the authority-and has been since that April day in 1945, when he crawled out on an Italian hillside to retrieve a fatally hit buddy and had his right arm rendered ribbons by a Nazi machine gun. You want to know the whole story, check out his official Web site, which will tell you how he nearly died, endured agonizing years of operations and rehabilitations, despaired and wished for the worst, until one day lying in a V.A. hospital bed, "he realized through prayer and introspection, that God had a plan for him of faith, endurance and strength." When Bob Dole says something about war, in other words, you're hearing from the Almighty.

That's why his appearance was so devastating.

"What I will always quarrel about are the Purple Hearts," he said. "I mean, the first one, whether he ought to have a Purple Heart-he got two in one day, I think. And he was out of there in less than four months, because three Purple Hearts and you're out …. Three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of. I mean, they're all superficial wounds."

He also went after Mr. Kerry's subsequent involvement in the anti-war movement: "I mean, one day he's saying that we were shooting civilians, cutting off their ears, cutting off their heads, throwing away his medals or his ribbons. The next day he's standing there: 'I want to be President because I'm a Vietnam veteran,'" said Mr. Dole. "Maybe he should apologize to all the other 2.5 million veterans who served. He wasn't the only one in Vietnam."

The killer was his benediction of SBVfT: "Not every one of these people can be Republican liars. There's got to be some truth to the charges."

The expert had spoken. And John Kerry was in trouble. As a Democrat close to the Kerry campaign put it to The New York Times , "When you're basically running on your biography and there are ongoing attacks that are undermining the credibility of your biography, you have a really big problem."

Yes, friends, the other war-the one that happened a long time ago-is back, only with a twist. Instead of firing at peasants in black pajamas like in the old days, this time our boys are shooting at each other. The combat isn't fatal, but politically it's ruinous. And the stakes are higher than they ever were in that particular piece of Southeast Asian real estate. Who cares whether a row of make-believe dominoes topple? This is fate-of-the-world stuff.

By now, you doubtless know the backstory of how events 9000 miles and three and a half decades distant have come to dominate the 2004 election. A book called Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry kicked off the fuss. The television commercials that followed it were created by the same outfit who produced the doofus-in-a-tank-helmet ad that helped doom Michael Dukakis when he was running against Dubya's dad. The most effective publicity, however, derives from SBVfT members (they number roughly 250, 0.0001 percent of those who served in Vietnam) working the radio and television talk-show circuit and, lately, the major network news programs as well.

Financing for the organization derives in large part from a Texas fat cat who's an old, close pal of Karl Rove. The White House, needless to say, disavows any connection, stating that Mr. Bush never has and never will say anything to dishonor Mr. Kerry's service.

You're doubtless also aware that since waking up to the knife at his jugular, Mr. Kerry has called on the publisher of Unfit for Command (Regnery, home to Laura Ingraham and William F. Buckley Jr.) to pull the book from the shelves, and on the F.E.C. to look into Bush links to the TV commercials-chances of which are as likely as Ho Chi Minh City changing its name back to Saigon. Mr. Kerry has also accused Mr. Bush of having the SBVfT "do his dirty work for him," and demanded that the President denounce the group's activities. Mr. Bush predictably has declined to cooperate, artfully saying that he wants all soft-money "527 Committee" ads off the air, not just those of SBVfT-a prescription that would hurt Democrats far more than Republicans. So that's not going to happen, either. A spokesman for Mr. Bush, meanwhile, has suggested that Mr. Kerry's unpunctual lather may be a sign of mental unbalance-precisely what another spokesman hinted about John McCain when he exploded over Bush-supporting ads questioning his patriotism during the 2000 South Carolina primary. In between hugging Commander-in-Chief Bush and being bussed on the forehead by him, Mr. McCain himself has likened the SBVfT's campaign to what was done to him when he ran for President (so has Vietnam triple-amputee Max Cleland, who was defeated for re-election to the Senate from Georgia under similar circumstances). Mr. McCain branded the SBVfT charges "dishonest and dishonorable" and echoed Mr. Kerry's recommendation to Mr. Bush-to zero effect.

Finally, if you read The New York Times , The Washington Post , The Boston Globe or the Los Angeles Times (unlike, oh, 99 percent or so of the voting public), you're cognizant, too, that exhaustive investigation of official U.S. Naval records fails to substantiate a single one of the SBVfT's major charges. Instead, the commendations and "after-action reports" in Pentagon archives contradict them-sometimes in words written by those presently doing the accusing. Ten of the 11 men who sailed in the two boats Mr. Kerry commanded also back their former skipper. The eleventh, a laid-off "home inspection field manager" named Steven Michael Gardner, is an SBVfT member who accuses Mr. Kerry of repeatedly shying from engaging the enemy. "He wouldn't go in there and search," Mr. Gardner told The Boston Globe in March. "That is why I have a negative viewpoint of John Kerry."

What amounts to cowardice in wartime is a damning charge. But there's one little catch. By Mr. Gardner's own admission, then-Lt. Kerry threatened to court-martial him for machine-gunning a sampan from which he thought fire was coming. When the shooting stopped, Mr. Kerry-who'd been in the wheel house when Mr. Gardner, then others opened up without order-personally inspected the flimsy native craft. No weapons were found, just a woman and the body of a little boy. "[Mr. Kerry was] screaming at the top of his lungs," Mr. Gardner told The Globe . "'What the hell do you think you're doing?'"

Green Beret Lt. Jim Rassman didn't think he was being fired at when a mine explosion blew him off Mr. Kerry's Swift boat; he knew the splashes all around him were being made by real ammo. "I was sure I was going to die," he said. Then, above him, a long right arm reached out to pull him to safety; it belonged to John Kerry, who'd been thrown against the wheel house by the blast, which wounded Mr. Kerry's left arm, according to the citation that accompanied his Bronze Star. Said Mr. Rassmann: "He saved my life."

Not according to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. They say no one was firing anywhere near Lts. Rassmann and Kerry that day.

SBVfT has also been challenging Mr. Kerry's Silver Star, claiming, among other things, that a Viet Cong guerrilla he leapt out of the boat to pursue and kill during the encounter that led to the award of the second-highest decoration for gallantry the Navy bestows, was unarmed, clad in a loincloth, only a boy and-to top it off-shot in the back. Mr. Kerry's crewmates that day have repeatedly said otherwise, stating that the V.C. was gunned down only after he'd come close to blowing up the boat and all aboard with a B-40 rocket, and appeared set to fire another. Despite their testimony, and Naval records backing Mr. Kerry, the SBVfT's tale was gaining traction.

Then last weekend an officer of unassailable reputation stepped forward. Breaking a 35-year silence, Chicago Tribune editor William Rood-the only other surviving commander of the three-boat engagement (Lt. j.g. Donald Droz, the third and Mr. Kerry's best friend in Vietnam, was later killed in action)-wrote a front-page, 1,700-word account that left SBVfT's claims dead in the water. For starters, Mr. Rood reported that there was not just a single Viet Cong but two (both fully clothed); that one was armed with a rocket-launcher; and that when he returned from dispatching him, Mr. Kerry had the weapon in tow. To prove it, The Trib published a snap of a grinning Mr. Rood and a somber John Kerry, a loaded rocket-launcher slung over his shoulder.

Mr. Rood's story also demolished Mr. Gardner's claims of Mr. Kerry's timidity in the face of the enemy.

Before the boats set out, Mr. Kerry-in operational command that day-took Droz and Mr. Rood aside and laid out a plan "about not responding the way boats usually did in an ambush." Instead of gunning it for safety, they'd head directly at their attackers, beach the boats and fight them toe-to-toe. Said Mr. Rood: "It worked."

But Mr. Rood was at his most powerful explaining his motives. "Many of us wanted to put it all behind us-the rivers, the ambushes, the killings," he wrote. "But Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown …. Their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there …. My intent is to tell the story here and to never again talk publicly about it."

And the vets private detectives ferreted out to destroy Mr. Kerry? This much is clear: None come remotely close to being as decorated as the man they vilify; some appear to lead postwar lives that haven't quite worked out; and the highest-ranking SBVfTer-retired Rear Admiral Roy Hoffmann-has trouble keeping his story straight. In May, he told a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter that he didn't know Mr. Kerry personally (though Mr. Kerry served under his command) and had "no first-hand knowledge to discredit Kerry's claims to valor." Earlier this month, he was telling Sean Hannity the opposite. Not only did he now know Mr. Kerry "well," but had "operated very closely with him"-newfound intimacy that led him to conclude that Mr. Kerry was, as the admiral puts it on SBVfT's Web site, "vain and prone to impulsive judgment ... a 'loose cannon.'"

Former Lieutenant Commander George Elliott is even more scrambled. He started off as a Kerry supporter, coming to Boston during Mr. Kerry's close electoral call with William Weld in 1996 to counter press reports questioning Mr. Kerry's Silver Star-which Mr. Elliott had approved. Since running into SBVfT, though, Mr. Elliott has suffered multiple changes of heart. In the group's initial TV ad, he says, "John Kerry has not been honest about what happened in Vietnam." But when contacted by The Boston Globe , which had in hand his glowingly written commendation papers for both Mr. Kerry's Silver Star and his Bronze Star, Mr. Elliott recanted. "I knew it was wrong," he said. "It was a terrible mistake .... It makes me look kind of silly, to be perfectly honest." He looked sillier later, signing a sworn affidavit recanting his recantation.

Van Odell-who accused Mr. Kerry of "fabricating" an after-action report about a March 13, 1969, engagement that wounded Mr. Kerry and brought him his Bronze Star-is certain only about his certainty. This weekend, on Fox News Sunday , he admitted he had no evidence to back up his charges, not even "a single document." Why, then, does he say in SBVfT ad: "John Kerry lied to get his Bronze Star …. I know, I was there, I saw what happened"? Mr. Odell's answer: If there were as much fire, how come he wasn't wounded, too?

Larry Thurlow-in command of another Swift boat when John Kerry pulled Jim Rassmann from the drink-is the principal source of there being no fire during the rescue. "I never heard a shot," he swore in a SBVfT affidavit. But Mr. Thurlow's story has a hook, too; several, in fact. When The Washington Post learned he'd also received a Bronze Star for nearby action that night and asked what the accompanying citation described, Mr. Thurlow said he'd lost it 20 years before-and refused to authorize the paper to retrieve a copy from the Navy. After The Post secured his military records anyway, via FOIA request, and told Mr. Thurlow that all the boats on the river that night, Mr. Kerry's and his own included, were under "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire," and that he was portrayed acting heroically "despite enemy bullets flying around him," Mr. Thurlow said that was news to him. Mr. Kerry, he guessed, must have cooked up another lie. When Chris Matthews asked for proof during a Hardball appearance, Mr. Thurlow said Mr. Gardner told him so.

Louis Letson seems a simpler case. He says in the SBVfT commercial, "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury." Maybe he did. But the actual medical records are signed by corpsman J.C. Carreon. Mr. Letson's further claim-that Mr. Kerry slightly wounded himself while firing an M-79 grenade launcher-is where it gets complicated. In an interview with the L.A. Times , Mr. Letson said he gleaned the information from "some medical corpsmen," who, in turn, had picked it up from crewmen that there'd been no incoming fire, and that Mr. Kerry had accidentally dinged himself. Were the crewmen on Mr. Kerry's boat? That Mr. Letson didn't know.

Now we get to the main actors, starting with John O'Neill, co-author of Unfit For Command . His animus against Mr. Kerry goes back to 1971, when convicted Watergate felon Chuck Colson recruited him to dig up dirt on VVAW star Kerry, who was perceived as a threat to the war's continuation. According to Mr. Colson, Mr. O'Neill failed to come up with "anything negative," but did get an invitation to debate Mr. Kerry on The Dick Cavett Show . Prior to that appearance, Mr. O'Neill had a one-hour, Oval Office sit-down with Mr. Colson's boss, Richard Milhous Nixon.

Jerome R. Corsi, Mr. O'Neill's co-author, passes spare moments posting thoughts on FreeRepublic.com, a righter-than-thou Web site. They range from "buggering" Catholics to "worthless, dangerous, Satanic" Islam to Democratic politicians such as "lesbo ... FAT HOG ... HELLary," "anti-American Communist" Bill, and "Mullah Ali'Gore." Mr. Corsi also has views on his book's subject:

"Kerry offers a clear choice. Anti-American hatred."

"JohnF-ing Commie Kerry and Commie Ted discuss their plans to hand America over to our nation's enemies."

"First let's undermine the U.S. in Vietnam. Then we can go for gay marriage. When you get to be Pres, JFK-lite, there will be no end to how much of America we can destroy."

"Just don't let anybody put a tablet with the Ten Commandments in front of the school where that girl who wants to wear a Muslim scarf-OH, no-then the RATS would complain. Anti-Christian, Anti-America-just like their Presidential candidate-Jean Francois Kerrie."

"After he married TerRAHsa, didn't John Kerry begin practicing Judaism? He has paternal grandparents that were Jewish. What religion is John Kerry?"

When Media Matters for America tumbled to his scribblings, Mr. Corsi said, "I always considered them a joke."

Which brings us back to rollicking Bob Dole, arbiter of Purple Hearts. He has two of his own, though his Web site doesn't describe how, when and on account of what severity the first was attained. In any event, he's wrong about the Purple Hearts given to Mr. Kerry (who never claimed they were awarded for anything more than "walking-wounded" injuries). Each of Mr. Kerry's three Purple Hearts were the result of separate actions weeks apart; the last left pain in his arm for years and shrapnel in his leg he still carries.

"I wasn't trying to be mean-spirited," said Mr. Dole when informed of his mistake.

He's nourished the cause, nonetheless-and set the table for second helpings. For, in one of those coincidences that so often happen when Karl Rove's on the prowl, as Mr. Dole was finishing up his assault on Mr. Kerry's anti-war activities, wouldn't you know that SBVfT was readying the release of a second television commercial centered on that very theme? This one includes snippets of Mr. Kerry's most incendiary testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971, and features a former P.O.W. named Paul Galanti, who was shot down over North Vietnam in 1966. "If you ever talk to Vietnam War veterans about Jane Fonda, you hear the anger," says Mr. Galanti, who chaired John McCain's Virginia Presidential campaign. "Well, when it comes to John Kerry, take that anger and double it."

The spot barely had an initial airing when it emerged that another featured player, retired Air Force Colonel Ken Cordier, was a member of the Bush campaign's veterans steering committee. That revelation brought his abrupt resignation, but collateral damage is part of war, and Colonel Cordier had served his purpose: A second front was open.

It'll be the scene of shock and awe aplenty in the days ahead, because at bottom, the bitterness of SBVfT and their sympathizers in the V.F.W. and the American Legion is not over what transpired when a single lieutenant j.g. was cruising the Mekong Delta. No, the grit in the craw is being the only Americans to lose a war.

You can see it in the black P.O.W. flags that proclaim "You Are Not Forgotten"-though countless Defense Department and Congressional investigations (one led by Mr. Kerry, which maddens many veterans no end) have established beyond reasonable doubt that no one's left to remember. It's present as well in the unshakable belief that G.I.'s were spat on when they came home-despite the lack of a single verified instance of that odious insult ever occurring. Wherever veterans gather and gab, it's the same. Be it the conviction that atrocities were never committed, or at least only rarely (forget the front-page color photographs of the heaps of My Lai corpses, or the confirmation of Mr. Kerry's claims before Congress in 1971 by General Tommy Franks). Or the certainty that valor was stolen not by a peasant army more motivated and disciplined-flat better-than our own, but by a media-politician-protester cabal. John Kerry-the man who threw his ribbons onto the Capitol steps-is that cabal's perfect embodiment: Eastern, Ivy-educated, liberal, anti-war, rich.

What all this will mean for an election three months off, only a fool would hazard to guess. But for Mr. Kerry, the signs are ominous. The most recent CBS News poll-conducted late last week, after he finally began returning fire-showed him leading the President by exactly one percentage point. The last CBS poll, taken at the onset of the SBVfT controversy, had his margin at five points. In a race this tight, the difference is enormous.

Unless the backlash Mr. Kerry's handlers are saying novenas for sets in, things stand to get worse. Mr. Bush will almost certainly be enjoying a post-convention "bounce," and we can look forward to more ads and media sideshows, more frequent references to Mr. Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony, and perhaps even pictures of young John communing with Jane Fonda-if Karl Rove's elves can ever master PhotoShop.

Add that to Mr. Kerry's story of ferrying C.I.A. spooks to Cambodia on Christmas Eve 1968, when he says Richard Nixon was President (L.B.J. was, and, however devoted, Mr. Kerry's shipmates won't swear to that trip); his proposal to cut $6 billion from the intelligence budget; his non-attendance at three-quarters of the Senate Intelligence Committee's hearings (a couple of Mr. Kerry's press releases had him listed as "vice-chairman"; another Vietnam vet named Bob Kerrey was); and the $87 billion Iraq appropriation he memorably voted for, then against-tote that all up, and you might start thinking Canada wouldn't be a bad place to hide out till 2008.

Mr. Kerry's sins are venial compared to the trespasses against him, which his partisans are already likening to McCarthyism in combat fatigues. But when Uncle Joe was operating, at least there were a few Communists to hunt; SBVfT's bogeymen exist in the imagination.

Which makes them so deadly. Facts, you can fight. How do you defeat phantoms?

So welcome to New York, Republicans.

You've got a lot to be proud of.