At a private reception on Monday, Senator John Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, welcomed a select group of donors and fund-raisers to this year’s convention, while offering up a notably raw retrospective of the campaign they lost. Or maybe, the way they see it, the one they didn’t actually lose after all.

This convention, Ms. Heinz Kerry said, is “full of meaning and full of opportunity, and if you, as I, believe, and I know a lot of you do, we did not lose the last election, nor did Al Gore lose his last election. We won it.” The crowd, which included a number of Massachusetts politicos, as well as the white-haired comedian Chevy Chase, loudly applauded. “I know that all the work that people across this country did for us, all the things that we espoused, all the hopes we had, they were right then,” Ms. Heinz Kerry went on. “And they are right now, and so whatever it is we did then, we just have to make sure that it’s not taken away again.”

Mr. Kerry, who preceded his wife to the stage, was somewhat more diplomatic, but struck a similarly melancholy note as he talked about the 2004 election. “It amazes me that you even have enough money left to come to Denver—we did an amazing job,” he told the donors. “We came unbelievably close in ’04. I guarantee you we’re not going to be close this time. We’re going to win.”

Mr. Kerry turned to his wife. Ms. Heinz Kerry, he said, “never got to be properly known by this country—a woman who could speak five languages and lead a major [philanthropic organization], one of the largest in America and do good the way she has done … ought to be better understood in a nation that prides itself on meritocracy. I love her for who she is and for our relationship. I also love her for her courage and for what she did in ’04 to help set this country on a better path.

“Those of you who know me,” Mr. Kerry told the audience, “well know that no matter how searing the outcome on that Wednesday afternoon was, and despite the unbelievable energy we all committed all across this country, Teresa and I proudly never stopped working for one day in an effort to continue what we started in ’04.” He credited his own fund-raising efforts—“I gave and raised $14 million to 260 candidates and committees”—with helping to turn the tide for the Democrats in 2006, though most people better remember his “botched joke” about getting stuck in Iraq.

“Now we all know how these guys are playing,” Mr. Kerry continued, turning to the subject of Barack Obama—by way of his own experience. “They’ve already started. The same authors who wrote that scurrilous scumbag book about our crew and service in Vietnam have already written a book about Barack Obama. The difference is, this time we are unconstrained thanks to many of you, and millions of people across the country, in terms of the money we can spend and the way we can target. We don’t have to pull out of states this time, ahead of time. We can go into states. We will be able to organize on the ground stronger than ever before in the Democratic Party, and I’m convinced that we’re going to win at least five seats in the United States Senate, we’re going to win a stronger House and we’re going to win the presidency of the United States.”

arice@observer.com

He was wrapping up yet another interview about his and his wife’s new global-warming book, This Moment on Earth, by talking about the “scientific community,” how toxins were “threatening species and threatening air quality,” and how the “grassroots are changing things.” A camera flash lit the room as Mr. Kerry drummed his hands on his knees. He looked bored.

It was around 6 p.m. on the evening of April 16. He finished his interview in one room of the 57th Street headquarters of the PublicAffairs publishing house and was walking down a long corridor to conduct another, with The Observer.

Dressed in a dark blue suit and green silk tie mottled with motorcycles, he passed a filing cabinet adorned with magnets of old Newsweek covers. One featured his own hangdog face beside his 2004 battle cry of “Bring It On.”

Mr. Kerry didn’t notice it.

He was asked what lessons his ill-fated run in 2004 held for the current crop of Democratic candidates.

“The most important thing—in any issue, and everything—is, given the nature of today’s media and the scurrilousness of the other side’s advertising, that you can’t overstate how important it is to have a dollar-for-dollar match on any issue that arises,” he said.

The Democratic candidates are now out-raising the Republicans by significant margins, in no small part because many of them attribute Mr. Kerry’s defeat to his failure to respond in kind to the less-than-truthful attacks on his military record by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

“They spent a lot of money telling a lie,” Mr. Kerry said.

Is that it, as far as the lessons go?

“It’s not just responding right away; it’s a broader thing than just responding,” said Mr. Kerry, as he accepted a cup of coffee and a plate with two brownies and a chocolate-chip cookie from a publicist. “It’s commanding the definition.”

Of?

“Everything,” he said. “Who you are, what you say and what it’s about. And they are all part and parcel of the same thing.”

In terms of actual substance, Mr. Kerry doesn’t see much difference between his 2004 candidacy and those of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and the rest.

“I am very, very proud of what we did on issues,” he said. “Every issue I talked about, if you go look at what they are talking about today, there isn’t one thing that they are saying that is fundamentally different.”

Leaning back in a black swivel chair in the art director’s corner office, Mr. Kerry boasted about his health-care plan, which “Time magazine judged to be the best new idea of the campaign”—he was referring to a 2003 article by Michael Kinsley saying that the plan “may be the first significant new idea of this political season”—and about his own foretelling of the chaos in Iraq, which was “exactly as it has now come to be seen.”

He did indeed get ahead of the Democratic curve on Iraq—eventually.

Although his revelation came far too late to save his 2004 campaign, Mr. Kerry did arrive at a position in 2006 that was far ahead of much of his party in first setting a deadline for bringing the troops home. He then co-authored a proposal that mandated the withdrawal of American combat troops by July 2007. Only 12 other members of the Senate Democratic caucus voted for his legislation at the time, though combat-troop withdrawal has now become the party’s default position on Iraq.

Mr. Kerry—whose campaign suffered after his straight-faced pronouncement that he had voted for a measure to provide money to the troops in Iraq before he voted against it—said he had no advice to offer his Democratic colleagues this year about the danger of a convoluted message. “Our plan was a real plan,” he said. “It wasn’t complicated.”

He explained further. “You’ve got to have a clarity, and all three are critical components of the clarity: the persona, the issues, the message and the way it is played. I now know how to do that with much greater effect than then, and have a much greater sense of it.”

Mr. Kerry said that he plans to go after his friend and fellow Vietnam veteran John McCain on the floor of the Senate next week.

“I’m going to show how, when McCain says there is no option B—that all there is an option A, and that’s escalating—that he is absolutely dead wrong,” Mr. Kerry said, lowering his voice. “There is an option B.” Mr. Kerry rejected the notion suggested by Mr. McCain, that option B—which calls for the imminent withdrawal of American combat forces and a regional political conference—is tantamount to admitting defeat.

“That’s not where I would go—‘Have we lost the war, won the war?’—because the resolution of this is going to be in the diplomacy,” he said. “The war is not what this is about. This is about the civil struggle in Iraq.”

On the issue of Iran’s nuclear program—which the major Democratic Presidential contenders, like their Republican counterparts, have suggested might be dealt with through the use of force—Mr. Kerry suggested that his party’s approach was distinct in a procedural way.

“The difference is significantly in all the in-between—how you get from here to there,” said Mr. Kerry. “What the Republicans have is a rhetorical policy, which in fact widens the divide. What we have is two end posts, if you will, to a policy, with a lot of in between from how you get from here to there.”

When asked whether there were any issues at all that the Democrats should emphasize in 2008 that he didn’t stress enough in 2004, Mr. Kerry said, in essence, no.

“I talked about them everywhere I went,” he said of the key issues of 2008. “There is not one speech I gave, not one sub-speech I gave—not my acceptance speech at the convention, nothing—where I didn’t talk about the basics of the war in Iraq, America’s foreign policy, re-establishing our credibility in the world, energy independence, global climate change, alternative renewable fuels.”

It wasn’t the issues, Mr. Kerry re-emphasized.

“I learned after the campaign that, in the last week of the campaign, the lying advertisers in Ohio spent $4 million, and we spent 50,000 or something,” he said. “That was the imbalance. I think we laid out, everywhere we went, a vision for America’s role in the world. One of the reasons I feel that is that when I travel abroad, I get an extraordinary welcome from these countries, because they understood.”

He looked up at his daughter Alexandra, who appeared leaning against the office’s door frame wearing dark pants tucked into her black boots and her brown hair pulled back.

“These candidates are going to have to pick their own road,” he said. “I’m not going to sit here and tell them what to do.”

Vincent Morris, Mr. Kerry’s communications director, said that the interview was over. Mr. Kerry rose to greet his daughter. Josh Marshall and a couple of editors from Talking Points Memo waited in yet another nearby room to accompany him to the studio of Comedy Central, where he was to be a guest on The Colbert Report.

But there was one more question.

In an interview a day earl
ier with a Denver NBC affiliate that had been picked up by the Drudge Report, Mr. Kerry appeared to reopen the door to a Presidential bid in 2008—a possibility he had foreclosed this year in an emotional speech on the Senate floor.

On his way out the door, Mr. Kerry answered.

“Someday, I may wind up making the choice to run again,” he said.

In time for the 2008 election?

“No,” said Mr. Kerry. “I am not talking about this election.”

Then which one?

“Who knows? I am just speaking philosophically,” he said. “If I said no to whatever possibility, I don’t know what those possibilities will be.”

A few minutes later, Mr. Kerry stepped out of the PublicAffairs offices and into the hallway. He was holding a key to the floor’s restroom. He inserted it into the door handles of several offices before Mr. Morris pointed him towards the men’s room by the elevators. Mr. Kerry waved goodbye and went in.

Then Mr. Morris explained what his boss had really meant.

“He said, ‘Right now, I am not running for re-election,’” he explained. “You can never say never.”

Anderson had her hands full as Teresa Heinz Kerry's spokeswoman on that campaign and then, for a time, as the spokeswoman for the Democrats' legal operation in the tense run-up to the election. She also did time at NYC2012.

I met Anderson at a Starbucks in Fort Lauderdale, where she came to yell at me after she learned I was staking out the strip mall containing the Democrats office from another (slightly nicer) strip mall down the road. She wound up, grudgingly, giving me a tour, which wound up in this story.

All their hard-work, skill -- a number of partners at top New York firms, among many others, flew south to watch the polls -- and secrecy, of course, were in vain, as Bush wiped Kerry out in Florida. But at the time it felt vital.

Other trivia: Anderson is married to Bill Clinton's last White House press secretary, Jake Siewert.

In turn, the election has also been responsible for everything that's happened since-marital spats, low productivity at work, a bicoastal crash in self-esteem amongst liberal power brokers, P. Diddy's newfound modesty and, if you listen to the executives at Paramount Pictures, the bad box office for Alfie . (Skirt-chasers are washed up! We're all conservatives now.)

But apparently, what Americans still want to see onscreen, and to see in themselves, are witty, paunchy, dysfunctional superheroes, if The Incredibles -which swallowed and spit out Alfie at the box office this post-election week-is any indication.

The first hit of the Bush II years, The Incredibles pulled in $70.5 million in its first few days. The movie is about a family of superheroes forced by the government to go into a superhero-relocation program, suppress their awesome powers and hide out in the beaten-down, charmless miseries of suburbia-among tract homes, leftovers, cubicles, commutes, and dreary elementary-school commencement ceremonies in which every kid is celebrated for being "special."

Eventually, of course, the superheroes-up against it in a dangerous world-release their superpowers, break free of Anytown, U.S.A., and explode with enough personal initiative to make The Fountainhead look like a bedtime story. They're superheroes! The film is inspirational, a hopeful jolt for anyone feeling like they've buried their own superpowers, like they're losing in this big, crushing society. But the funny thing is that even though the film's primary target seems to be suppressed America and its credo pure libertarian, among the joyful recipients of its message are New Yorkers-and all blue staters-who, God knows, feel like losers these days.

But it's hard not to be suspicious of the winners. Any winners, for that matter, and that includes The Incredibles . While The Incredibles ' battle against conformity and mediocrity screams anti-oppression to some, it's obviously Randian to others. In that sense, the film is being touted as the latest proof that, on top of everything else , the right wing has even wit and creativity on its side these days: This is a world turned upside-down!

And even as James Carville threw in the white towel in The New York Times on Nov. 9, admitting that he'd finally got the message that the Democrats were nothing but an opposition party, the conservatives were raking in millions of potential philosophical converts at the movies, the way the liberals used to during the Easy Rider–Graduate days of the 1960's, when the right wing couldn't catch a break in the culture. The message of The Incredibles -reported everywhere!-was that the chosen few should have the right to exercise their powers over a wide, bland majority of fans and mediocrity-worshippers, and save the world from a bitter, deadly evil.

It's very much in the eye of the beholder, but at the moment, to the butt-kicked, discouraged liberal team, the Pixar-built shiny, muscle-bound cartoon characters seem to come very much from the other team.

"And what is The Incredibles ?" said Richard Goldstein, author of The Attack Queers: Liberal Society and the Gay Right. "It's really a movie about people sort of bursting out of this model of decency and concern for others, and all of those values that now get labeled politically correct, and bursting forth with their true strength and power, like an animated Hobbes. I guess the bet is that the rest of the world, looking at this spectacle, will actually just say, 'Holy cow-we'd better do what they say!' And this Hobbesian idea will be proven correct."

"It's kind of ironic that superheroes now have these fascist, right-wing connotations," said Ted Rall, the editorial cartoonist for United Press Syndicate and author of Wake Up, You're Liberal! How We Can Take America Back From the Right . "The right has stolen the flag and our superheroes, too."

Is it simply that, after four years of being beaten up with good-versus-evil rhetoric and post-9/11 fear, somehow all superheroes seem vaguely Republican to us? It's back to Nietzsche for one more shot.

What is a liberal superhero? The last time anyone looked, superheroes were serving the weak and the helpless, not themselves.

According to Chip Kidd, the co-author of The Golden Age of DC Comics: 365 Days, Superman-created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1938, during the Great Depression-was a liberal hero in his original incarnation, shy about his abilities and eager to do social good during the New Deal, when the general ethic sought a strong man willing to protect the weak, not so much to show off his powers as to serve the general welfare.

"The charming thing about the basic superhero myth, as it was conceived during the Depression, was if you're an omni-powerful being or something like it, your responsibility is to serve the world, not to rule it," said Mr. Kidd. "The United States, as Bush runs it-he probably thinks he's doing that, but he's not. He is trying to rule it, in a way. And that's where it differs from what I would call a superhero ideal."

Mr. Kidd may be partisan, but he's not wrong in the sense that it's almost impossible to image Superman as a Republican in the 1930's or 1940's. Superman was definitely a Roosevelt man. Batman may have been more up for grabs; it's possible Commissioner Gordon was in close contact with gangbusting D.A. Tom Dewey.

But generally, superheroes have been very strong social workers. That ethic stretched from the 30's to the 40's through the 50's, when comic books got in hot water with the right-wing psychiatrist Dr. Fredric Wertham, whose 1954 study, The Seduction of the Innocent -published the same year as the Army-McCarthy hearings-saw comic books as vehicles for spreading dissolute values throughout American society, even suggesting that Batman and Robin, as Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson, had a homosexual arrangement. As if that was a bad thing. The comic-book industry collapsed into acquiescence, adopting the Comics Code Authority, a self-policing censorship arrangement that turned the dangerous territory the superheroes patrolled into an Ozzie-and-Harriet society of well-lit frames and middle-class non-danger. By the 1960's, the biggest danger in Superman's life was whether he was really going to marry Lois Lane and answer Jimmy Olsen's super-signal watch. Zee-zee-zee!

By the 1960's, Spider-Man showed up, "a poor schlub from a lower middle-class background who has these powers he doesn't really want. He's called to duty; he doesn't really want to go, but he doesn't have a choice," according to Neal Pollack, comics enthusiast, humorist and author of Never Mind the Pollacks: A Rock and Roll Novel .

"That's how a lot of liberals feel," Mr. Pollack explained. "A lot of those are archetypes that came out of the 60's: the Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four, the X-Men. Things have changed a lot in comics. Spider-Man is a good archetype for a liberal hero-he wants to give up his powers, he wants them back, he's conflicted, he's trying to hold down a job, he wants the girl. Whereas a conservative superhero just wants to fight evil."

And show his own super strength.

The Incredibles ' storyline, not unlike most current superhero storylines, will warm the hearts of the Republican elite, and also the scared, ordinary moviegoing folks emboldened by America's long-time military prowess. Mr. Incredible could be Dick Cheney himself, or Donald Rumsfeld, big-bellied and in mothballs during the Clinton years, watching the world go to hell while nobody needed them, tortured and beat up by the little people and the bureaucrats all around them.

And The Incredibles aren't the only superheroes at the multiplex who creepily (and not so subtly) resemble Team Bush these days. Liberals who-especially now-can't laugh at themselves, still feel miffed about the pro-right leanings of Team America: World Police , which, as you must know by now, taps into the conservative mind from a different angle, blowing up what it describes as the liberal narcissists and phonies inflated by Hollywood. It could be following the same exact script as President Bush did in his acceptance speech at Madison Square Garden in September, right in enemy territory, when he declared: "If you say the heart and soul of America is found in Hollywood, I'm afraid you're not the candidate of conservative values."

The film is ultimately nihilistic, but in its skewering and gross annihilation of Hollywood left-wing celebrities, Team America exults in destroying another kind of elite from the kind that The Incredibles exalts; in effect, the film appeals to the very common man that The Incredibles disavows.

Then again, that's the genius of the Bush administration's brand of conservatism. By cornering the market on strength and religion and good vs. evil, they've managed to be both the party of the elites and the party of the little guy, seducing one side with tax breaks and the other with the idolization of the traditional family, and both with the good fight against evil.

"What Bush is able to provide people with is an edge of sadism, an edge of cruelty," said Mr. Goldstein. "It was very evident at the convention and in the way they dealt with Kerry. It was this incredibly virulent and relentless attack, some of it encompassing Kerry's masculinity. There's a great pleasure in that for people. It's in the way they've approached everything, from France to domestic issues, to unleash in people a sort of enjoyment of the spectacle of aggression and cruelty, and a belief in it and its effectiveness. Liberalism has trouble with that, because it stands for an alternative of that."

The simple message that President Bush managed to dumbly repeat until it seemed true for so many can find itself illustrated in diverse places because it sticks so easily. Team America and The Incredibles are different films that arrive at the same conclusion: At some point the Evil Ones must die, and at some point a special, chosen, brave and happy few will vanquish them; it's up to the rest of us to sit by and trust them to take care of it, without questioning their methods. In The Incredibles , Mrs. Incredible-voiced by Holly Hunter-lectures her children pointedly: These people will kill you, she says, unless you use your superpowers .

And in Team America , the horny marionettes save the world by seconds from the frenzied, foaming narcissism of the Hollywood appeasers, who would, similarly, have superheroes lay down their arms in the service of Kim Jong Il, the mad and childish dictator of North Korea.

And like The Incredibles , Team America unleashes its fury at mediocrity. One of its greatest moments comes when director Trey Parker has his hero sing:

I miss you more than Michael Bay missed the mark

When he made Pearl Harbor .

I miss you more than that movie missed the point,

And that's an awful lot, girl.

Both movies are brutally funny, with the self-righteousness of suppressed truth on their sides.

Trey Parker and Matt Stone also have an idea of who the left's superheroes are, and it isn't Noam Chomsky or Howard Zinn, Al Sharpton or liberal magazine editors. Instead, it's the beautiful-it's actors and celebrities. We're celebrities, and so our job is to read the newspaper every day and say what we read on TV , says a Janeane Garofalo marionette in Team America , stunningly showing the wires and stagecraft, the not-so-smooth tricksmanship behind liberal showbiz intellectuality. Alec Baldwin waddles around muttering about hybrid cars; Matt Damon pipes in with "Matt Damon," as if all he needs to do to represent his faction is announce that he's a movie star whose name you recognize.

And Mr. Parker didn't choose Howard Dean or Al Gore or Bill Clinton for the lefty side of things, either. It's Danny Glover, Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins. It's Sean Penn. One big, roiling, phony superhero alliance of self-inflated good intentions and inevitable self-righteousness-they're actors, after all, and plain-spoken sincerity isn't their strong suit-and this time, in Team America , they have the guns, too.

Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone queasily call the group F.A.G., the Film Actors Guild, a team that's colluding with a nerdy, Chucky-faced Kim Jong Il. The North Korean wackjob, however, in Mr. Parker's rendering, seems woefully inadequate to the task of defeating Team America, even with his sharks and weapons of mass destruction and sad musical numbers. It's the actors that seem downright scary, just as the Team America patriots seem downright idiotic. But perhaps there's something else to it: What the writers might be suggesting is that the real threat the actors pose is not to the world, but to the party they support.

But if all the celebrities disappeared, who would the Democrats have left? Who would their spokespersons be? In the past year, the left had the Dixie Chicks telling Brits they were embarrassed to be from Texas; P. Diddy's bizarre "Vote or Die" campaign; Michael Moore decrying American stupidity; Bruce Springsteen singing on the campaign trail; Paul Newman slumming it, knocking on doors.

What kind of heroic, larger-than-life figure could occupy that Hollywood void? If Republican hero Curt Schilling, brave, bloody-ankled, faith-based athlete, challenged a liberal to fight, who could match him? A George Soros?

"I would be in favor of Empathy Man," said Mr. Rall. "The man who plants the seeds of empathy into the cold, stony heart of the average red-state American."

According to Mr. Pollack, one thing's for sure: "A liberal superhero would not move to Canada. Don't abandon the ship. Canada is already a country full of liberal superheroes. Who are impervious to cold."

Superman, where are you? Zee-zee-zeeeee! There are only seconds left before … Doctor Karl Rove fixes Social Security!

-with additional reporting by Jake Brooks

On Monday the 11th, the Senate showed that, no matter what the public thinks, Cheneyworld still calls the shots. It legitimated a raid on the Public Capital, embracing subsidies, buyouts, tax breaks, preferences and so on that will add up to $140 billion over the next 10 years. The bill passed the upper house 69-17.

Not voting were Senators Kerry and Edwards. The excuse lamely given in The Times —or perhaps it should be the lame excuse given in The Times —was that the two were busy campaigning.

I don’t understand that. This bill, economically spurious and socially indefensible, is redolent in every stinking pore and orifice of attitudes toward public money and the public purse that we might collectively call "The Halliburton Syndrome." Halliburton and all that it entails are something Senator Kerry and his party have had in their sights since Day 1.

What an opportunity this bill presented for John Kerry to break off campaigning, fly to Washington, stride onto the Senate floor and vote loudly, massive chin held high, against a bill that "represents everything that I and my ticket stand against, and everything this administration stands for!" What a chance to display a profile in courage, if you will.

But he didn’t do that. Instead he stayed away, blathering on in some swing state or another about health insurance and continuing, in a hard-edged, bitter, few-holds-barred campaign, to indulge in utterances like his terrorism/nuisance trope, which invariably boomerang because they lend themselves to calculated misquotation in the best tradition of Fox News. Watching the Kerry campaign makes one bless the sweet Lord that the venues in which he appears don’t accommodate themselves to PowerPoint.

But back to the main issue. Where was you, Johnny, you man of principle, on the Big Giveaway? As the King of Siam notably mused: "Is a puzzlement."

The suspicion has to be, well, if Lyndon Johnson could boast that he had an opponent’s "pecker in my pocket," perhaps Teresa Heinz Kerry can say that she has her husband’s in her pocketbook.

For a more benign view, let me recommend Daniel Gross on Slate (10/12; http://slate.msn.com/id/2108136/), who points out that really rich people like Teresa Heinz Kerry don’t care about such things, any more than they care about two- or three-point bumps in the income-tax rate—which they don’t pay anyway. The Kerrys only paid an effective rate of 12 percent on their 2003 income of nearly $7 million, of which a small fraction is attributable to the Senator. His contribution reminds me of an anecdote involving Nick Etten, a good hit/no-field Yankee first baseman of long ago. Around 1944, he signed a contract for $15,015, whereupon a New York sportswriter opined: "The fifteen bucks is for fielding." So doth the Senator’s take-home relate to the whole.

The giveaway bill was for people and companies that need to cheat to build wealth, because wealth is the key. What people don’t understand is that you need capital to cut your effective tax rate, capital with which to buy tax-exempts or put up the money for non-suspect tax fiddles (you should see what accountants can do with private-jet ownership). Capital-poor wage slaves can’t play this game. Thus do the rich get richer.

So where are we now? It is clear that the President thinks he was picked by the deity to lead us against the heathen and is instructed by divine voices (God’s mouth to his ear)—we might as well call him "George of Arc." It is evident that Dick Cheney is a thug, albeit possessed of the cunning one frequently encounters in not-all-that-bright (look at his record at Halliburton) people who have an instinctive feel for how to game the system. Still, many of us who dread another four years of George Bush fear four years of John Kerry only slightly less and still need convincing. Web sites like www.Kerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com don’t quite do the job.

We need a non-rhetorical rating system. I’ve got one.

Years ago on Wall Street, I absorbed a great truth: Every number exists in two dimensions, the absolute and the proportionate—and you use whichever best supports the lie you are about to tell. I have applied that to the present campaign and evaluated the two candidacies in terms of absolute and relative negatives. In this race, there are no positives—none.

Here’s how my rating system works. I’ve broken the campaign down into five essential categories: Bush vs. Kerry personally; Bush vs. Kerry in terms of policy substance and realism; Cheney vs. Edwards; Kerry-knockers vs. Bush-haters; Fox vs. CNN (media slant and performance). I then rate each in terms of relative and absolute awfulness (a term that encompasses every negative and minus I can think of, of every kind) on a scale of 1 to 10, the latter being the absolute worst. High score loses, which is in keeping with the spirit of the campaign.

Here’s where I come out. George W. Bush a 9, John Kerry a 9 personally. On policy, both get a 10. Dick Cheney is, of course, a 10 on every count, but John Edwards gets off with an 8. I find Bush-haters unacceptably shrill and obtuse: 10 for the pack of them. The Kerry-knockers come across a shade less mindlessly hysterical, so say 9. As for the media, each polarity of the commentariat gets a 10: a plague on them both!

Now add it up. The Bush side: 9+10+10+9+10 = 48. The Kerry side: 9+10+8+10+10 = 47. John Kerry by the thickness of a hair on Pinocchio’s nose. With two weeks to go, he’s my man. But that could change.

Chances are, though, that Teresa Heinz Kerry, 65, of Pennsylvania, second wife to the Democratic nominee for President, who is himself her second husband-a romantic mid-life merger made by two public figures in mid-career-doesn't remind Ms. Chesler, or almost anybody except Chris Heinz, of their mom.

But Ms. Heinz Kerry has become the first national female figure since Hillary Rodham Clinton to be a dividing point in American politics, a celebrity who effortlessly polarizes and allows men and women to declare themselves helplessly, reflexively, almost completely on the basis of their response to her.

Last Thursday, the final evening of the Republican convention, about 30 career women-hard-working, ambitious liberal types-gathered at a Chelsea bar to watch George Bush finish off the Republicans' week-long siege of New York. And to observe, critically, his leading ladies.

"You hos!" yelled a tiny, wire-rimmed woman when the Bush twins appeared on TV.

"You're a traitor to our gender!" another woman shouted when Laura Bush showed up.

The women, successful, politically attuned twenty- and thirtysomethings, were leaning against the bar, intent on catching Mr. Bush in bald-faced lies, gleefully mouthing off when he did. They cursed and flipped the bird, releasing four years of pent-up anger and frustration at not only the anti-feminist Bush Presidency but, quite obviously, the Bush women themselves. The convention's neat, throwback images-the wise matron Barbara Bush, the Queen Consort Laura Bush, and the First Twits, Jenna and Barbara-represented an ideal most New York women don't recognize in themselves.

The feelings aired that Thursday evening at the bar-and the impulsive, loud manner in which they were expressed-in fact recalled the devil-may-care Teresa Heinz Kerry. It's easy, pleasurable, to imagine sexy Ms. Heinz Kerry screaming at the TV, too. Except, of course, she would do it on camera, to boot. Call her "crazy" (whatever that means), but to many women, Teresa is rather gloriously unhinged.

"There's the feeling that you never know what's gonna happen with Teresa," Alice Bradley, a Park Slope writer and mother, told me. "Like at any moment a catfight could break out and there she'd be, pulling Maria Shriver's hair."

Too bad she wasn't around last week to take out the Twits. Ms. Heinz Kerry, we now know, was hospitalized shortly after the Republicans pulled out of town with mysterious stomach pains. She joined another Democratic icon in distress, Bill Clinton, now recovering from quadruple bypass surgery, who also went to the hospital hours after chants of "Four more years!" filled the Garden. Bad diet, recklessness, age-forget all that. Immediately, our minds found a morbid poetry in Mr. Clinton's illness: That big old heart, the one that felt so much of our pain, almost gave out after watching four straight nights of smug white men claiming they know what it means to be an American. Similarly, perhaps Ms. Heinz Kerry suffered not from a routine tummy ache, but from witnessing, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger imply that her husband's sense of realism is a symptom of being a girlie-man.

And girlie-men, the Republicans made clear during the convention, have no business running the country. Neither do women who let on that they have more on their minds than their husbands' election. Republican First Ladies simper for their husbands; their First Daughters titteringly confess to having no ambition. In their America, the men are men and the women are women; hence, a country that needs the guidance of a President who believes marriage is only for straight people with no confusion about gender roles.

The Republicans deify ex-bodybuilders who idolize John Wayne, and a President who proudly owns up to swaggering and doesn't waste time prettying up his speeches. (Talking is for wimps, after all.)

"What you see in Bush is an embodiment of a fairly persistent belief in American pop culture that truth tellers are people who are not particularly resourceful in their use of language," said Maria DiBattista, Ph.D., an English professor at Princeton and the author of the book Fast-Talking Dames . "There's a real showdown mentality now, and you can see this in Schwarzenegger too, where primacy is placed on drop dead one-liners that kill off honest discussion."

John Kerry for now is, maybe distressingly for voters, languishing between gender stereotypes. He's not tough enough and not sappy enough. He's a ponderer, an agonizer, a man who believes in oratory-often to his own detriment. A man who is burdened by what he witnessed in Vietnam, and the fact that his second wife seems to forget that her first husband died in a plane crash in 1991.

But Mr. Kerry can be said to cherish the ladies. He took pains to point out in his D.N.C. speech that he worked for women's rights as a Massachusetts D.A. His daughters clearly love him; they've waxed poetic about his support of their very unfeminine passion for ice hockey and how he taught them to argue at the dinner table.

"It speaks well of John Kerry that he married Teresa-it means he's not intimidated by other people's intelligence," said 28-year-old Anna Wahrman, the copy chief at Stuff magazine. "As opposed to a certain lying imbecile who needs his wife to be seen and not heard."

Mr. Kerry and Ms. Heinz Kerry resemble something out of Henry James-a complicated tangle of lives on multiple continents that won't easily be adapted for the cameras. Instead of doing what most men do when they marry for the second time-marry someone young, malleable and financially needy-Mr. Kerry married a woman who was older, uncontrollable and rich. This, of course, makes him suspect among our middle-aged dads, our heartland lawn-mower men, our Promise Keepers and Donald Trump wannabes. Why on earth did he marry that woman? Could it be, men across America may wonder, that Mr. Kerry is our First Trophy Husband?

As Manhattan writer, Mei Chin, told me, Ms. Heinz Kerry is "a bit Zsa Zsa-you could see her slapping a cop. She's a real old-fashioned broad with lots of money and wit, and she's not afraid to flaunt it."

The Democrats have long recognized Teresa's habit of flaunting her history and experience as some sort of liability, and lately, it seems as though she's disappeared from the public eye. But that doesn't mean that she's being kept under wraps. When, a few days ago, the Los Angeles Times reported that Ms. Heinz Kerry said the Christian Right "appeals to the dark corners of the human soul" in a 1994 speech, the Kerry campaign proudly defended her. Last week, Ms. Heinz Kerry loyally laid low with her husband in Nantucket, waiting out the convention, and since then she's been in Iowa and her home state of Pennsylvania, stumping for her husband.

If some time between now and Nov. 2 Ms. Heinz Kerry is sidelined for more than stomach trouble, Mr. Kerry has another helpmeet by his side warming him up for voters: John Edwards, the boy wonder from North Carolina who hides his ruthless lawyer persona behind toothy smiles and tender Southern cadences, supplying the populist touch that Mr. Kerry can't or won't. He also supplies the adoring deference, gazing up at Mr. Kerry, that Ms. Heinz Kerry can't or won't. Mr. Edwards' D.N.C. speech did what many thought his wife would do, explaining Mr. Kerry's stand on kitchen-table issues and taking pains to invoke Mr. Kerry's name. Ms. Heinz Kerry, on the other hand, seemed to throw her husband in as an afterthought.

Mr. Edwards was meant to inject the campaign with the charisma of a Clinton; instead, he injected it with the soft-focused glow of a Laura Bush. But the Democrats have charisma with Ms. Heinz Kerry-and all the pitfalls that entails. She, too, has the potential to bring her party down, because of her inability to rein in her impulses. And she too, is reviled by the right-Fox News, for one, spoofed her queenly airs at the D.N.C. by likening her to Evita Peron, and some recent polls have Laura Bush beating her in a landslide-as well as by some Democrats who are afraid that she might be too foreign, too smart, too much fun for Middle America.

How is it that, in the midst of a manly-man onslaught from the right, the Democrats managed to find themselves, again, with a potential First Lady full of so many contradictions? Shouldn't we be used to this yet-that powerful women are going to be complicated from here on in?

Of course, New York's single women-a demographic that is said to be the largest block of swing voters in this election-love such contradictions. It's not surprising that New York women, who grew up with feminism as a birthright but still get a chill from the leading ladies at the podium, would find their hearts warmed by an environmentally conscious billionaire philanthropist with a penchant for mouthing off.

Yet they are savvy culture consumers who believe, first of all, that the media needs to get over its irrational obsession with potential First Ladies. They cop to the conservatives' claim that Teresa's outspokenness probably has a lot to do with being an aristocrat. Women chide Teresa for claiming her Mozambique-to-Pittsburgh journey qualifies her for African-American status. They are well aware she is just lately a Democrat.

Cynical as they may be, it gives them a little joy to think that there is, if only for the duration of her husband's political campaign, someone around who maybe-just maybe-could help take back the White House from the isolationist philistines who are holding it hostage.

"Teresa seems to have a genuine curiosity about the world," said Deborah Orr, a 35-year-old music publicist. "That's in complete contrast to the sort of suspicion with which the current administration views so many other nations. Or New Yorkers who don't for a minute believe that the war in Iraq, or domestic anti-terrorism money distributed pork-barrel style, is really and truly all for the sake of our safety."

For those who feel hopelessly trapped by this administration, Ms. Heinz Kerry seems like the only one ballsy enough to take things in a whole new direction. A Hillary wouldn't be enough. Many women expressed admiration for Mrs. Clinton but qualified it: They felt somehow put off by her stridency, her lack of warmth, and felt a little apologetic about not being able to relate fully to someone who, in theory, they should hold in high regard. They also felt sorry for Mrs. Clinton-for the fact that she has had to compromise so much to get to where she is, that she's had to muffle her feminism and highlight her hair. Unlike Hillary Clinton, Ms. Heinz Kerry, who claims she has no political aspirations of her own, can afford to shake things up in a way that most female leaders have not and can not.

"She's out there looking like herself, talking about what interests her, talking about what has been an interesting and unpredictable life," said Democratic political consultant Jen Bluestein. "And you think, 'Well, thank you!' It's like watching TV and flipping through 65 channels of banal made-for-TV movies and finally finding The African Queen on."

Speaking of Katharine Hepburn: They're not making movie stars like they used to, and they're not making rock stars like they used to. Teresa's inimitable stately-but-psycho vibe fills both voids at once. The terms "dame" and "broad" were floated frequently by these women, and they were used as terms of endearment. Women seem nostalgic for stars who had guts, style and sex appeal, wisecracks spilling out of their mouths like ticker tape-weathering as we are the storm of plastic blonde skanks and ditzes like Paris, Jessica and Britney.

"When women speak, especially in politics, they have to disarm, to charm," Ms. DiBattista said. "We're missing the element of directness. And so I think that there's a secret need and real hunger for women who are direct."

We used to make icons of messy female rock stars who mouthed off and who were sexually intimidating-think Janis Joplin, Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Debbie Harry. These days, we have Courtney Love leaving a trail of bodily fluids at every photo shoot and court date she shows up to, and Liz Phair intent on impressing little girls who wear wife beaters and neckties. Ms. Heinz Kerry is a real old-school celebrity, and it may be that women could do with a little inspiration when it comes to talking tough and walking tall.

"Teresa's taking palpable pleasure in the campaign process," said Anna Fels, a psychiatrist and the author of Necessary Dreams , in which she explored women's conflicted relationship to ambition. "She's clearly enjoying the recognition and having influence, which are feelings that women are taught to hide, and so it's refreshing to see a woman not pretend to be modest."

Ms. Heinz Kerry's largely uncensored persona can be interpreted, then, as one big "shove it" to sacred notions of womanhood-enacting a secret revenge fantasy of women confronted by magazines fixated on weddings and pregnancies, their hysterical headlines castigating Kate Hudson for her inability to drop her baby weight and Mary-Kate for not being able to pack some on. Ms. Heinz Kerry stands in opposition to all this: a 65-year-old woman who has popped out all the kids she's ever going to have and who doesn't care what you think about her hair, her Botox use, her accent, her loopy locutions-and who may not love him as much as the one who came before him.

"We all go through the day trying to do right by our jobs and do right by our homes and our partners and family, and one of the things, like it or not, that we're all aware of is thinking, 'Do I look sloppy, do I look tidy, do I look nice?'" Ms. Bluestein said. "People find it compelling to recognize in someone a similar struggle to prioritize and be true to your own aesthetic and own goals, and to refuse to make it a priority to look like everyone else."

Betty Houchin Winfield, a professor of journalism at the University of Missouri who is an expert on First Ladies, said that Ms. Heinz Kerry is "feminist but feminine-and that's an interesting combination. She gave more of a feminist speech at the convention than I had ever heard anyone give. I was blown away when I heard it-but her voice is such that you're not threatened. Whereas if Hillary gave that speech, she would have been stoned."

Elaine Lafferty, editor in chief of Ms. magazine agreed. "First of all," said Ms. Lafferty, "[Hillary's] not asked to speak at the convention. Then some ruckus goes on and she is asked to speak. This is a sitting Senator from a large state, and her job is still to introduce her husband. And she agrees to do it. I don't think that's insignificant."

Ms. Heinz Kerry may serve as some small reprieve from all the Stepford Wivery that is exacted from female politicians and the female relations of politicians-and from the women of our current administration specifically. Laura Bush took pains in her R.N.C. speech to invoke the living room and dining room, making it clear that her influence went no further than that. Mrs. Bush could only mention women's rights in the context of an Afghan Olympian finally being able to wear pants to compete in the Games. Other Bushies, such as Karen Hughes and Condoleezza Rice, possess a tenacity and ambition that would be inspiring but for the fact that you like to imagine they're whispering "Not my will, Bush, but thine, be done" in their evening prayers.

They're traitors, essentially, and so must be killed.

Or so Paige Arthur, a New Yorker who's working on a Ph.D. in French intellectual history, likes to imagine. She admits she "sometimes likes to daydream about Teresa stabbing Laura Bush in the stomach to find out that she's a robot and Teresa is the last human woman in town, and maybe the real Laura Bush is shackled somewhere in a creepy house, just waiting to be liberated."

But are Americans ready for our First Ladies to be liberated ladies, considering that they function as sort of an official Mom? Might we, in fact, be better served by a Ms. Heinz Kerry type, who believes small children should learn early on the value of being presentable? Who jerks thumbs out of toddlers' mouths for photo ops and who tells gays and lesbian voters that if her husband's elected, they'll have a surrogate mother in the White House? Who could talk to you about renewable energy sources, or chat knowledgeably with foreign dignitaries in foreign languages?

Americans, by and large, are squeamish teenagers who would probably feel safer with a mom who didn't run around engaging in repartee with 60 Minutes anchors about how she's "cheeky, sexy, whatever." Cheeky, sexy-O.K. It's the "whatever" that remains a little scary for the kids at home.

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.

In order to cover Teresa Heinz Kerry, The New York Times comes up with some polite ways to say "plumb crazy":

"flair"; "unpredictability"; "off-the-cuff"; "lively" (Jim Rutenberg, July 27)

"forthright"; "imperious" (Alessandra Stanley, July 28)

"quirky"; "outspoken" (Joyce Purnick, July 29)

"a centimillionaire heiress to a ketchup-and-pickle fortune" (Todd S. Purdum and David M. Halbfinger, July

29)

"dressed in bridal white" (Alessandra Stanley, July 30)

"penchant for free association" (Damien Cave, Aug. 1)

"a multilingual free spirit" (Ginia Bellafante, Aug. 3)

White Collar Beggar

It was 6:10 p.m. on a recent Thursday, and Jayson Littman was panhandling for a job on the S train.

Dressed in a white-and-orange-striped J. Crew dress shirt and

black Calvin Klein pants, the 27-year-old faced the carload of passengers-their

faces soured by the workday-and gamely launched into a loud speech.

"Ladies and gentleman, my name is Jayson, and I'm not here to ask

you for money or sell you fake batteries for a dollar," he said. "I am looking

for a job. Currently, I work in corporate finance, but am looking to move into

a marketing, advertising or P.R. position. If you are, or are in touch with, a

hiring manager at your company, please take a copy of my résumé. Thank you and

enjoy your day."

Mr. Littman makes $40,000 to $60,000 a year working as a

credit-risk analyst for a major investment bank he declines to name. As he

snaked his way down the crowded subway car, passengers obligingly moved out of

the way, most staring with amusement.

"Any takers?" asked Mr. Littman, holding out a stack of thin

envelopes with his résumé tucked inside. His voice now was lowered and polite,

as if he were passing out smoked salmon hors d'oeuvres. "Any takers?"

"I like your approach," a woman with pink-tinted glasses and

curly hair told him as he passed.

Lydia Schinasi, 39, a

saleswoman at Self magazine, was

sitting wedged between two passengers. She waved him down. "I'll pass it on to

H.R.," she told Mr. Littman, taking a copy of his résumé.

"Condé Nast," Mr. Littman told me with some satisfaction, but he

didn't have time to gloat. Ignoring the "Riding Between Cars Is Dangerous"

sign, he swung open the car door and started his speech again.

Mr. Littman described himself as "very unhappy" with his current

employer. So every day except Fridays, he stumps for a job on the rails. In the

morning, he catches the No. 1/9 train at 96th Street and works it down to 42nd

Street, where he rides the Grand Central shuttle back and forth for about a

half hour. Then it's back on the 1/9 down to his office.

In the evenings it's the same deal, except in the opposite

direction. He varies his schedule by about 10 minutes each day to avoid hitting

the same crowd.

Mr. Littman has television good looks: a wide smile, warm brown

eyes and a neat, cropped haircut. He said he's passed out over 700 résumés in

the one month he's been working the rails. He's landed five interviews, as well

as two job offers, including one from Thomson Media, publisher of American Banker and The Bond Buyer . James MacDonald, a publisher at Thomson, was

riding the 1/9 a couple of weeks ago. Mr. Littman began his speech and Mr.

MacDonald, who was reading The Wall Street Journal , told him to shut up.

People often tell Mr. Littman to shut up.

"I'd kind of had enough of it on the subways," Mr. MacDonald, 56,

recalled. "But then he went on with his speech in kind of a charming fashion

and I thought, 'He's got a good presentation.'"

Mr. Littman went in for an interview but declined the job.

"Cold-call sales," he told me, wrinkling his nose.

We were standing on a platform, taking a break. Mr. Littman had

pulled me off the train after he spotted Steve, who sells the Street News , a

newspaper covering homeless issues.

"I don't want to impede on what he's doing," Mr. Littman said.

"It's just a courtesy."

Mr. Littman grew up in New York near 193rd Street and attended

Brooklyn College, where he majored in psychology and minored in marketing.

Since graduating, he's worked in finance-a career, he said, "that is completely

not my personality."

The idea to look for a job on the M.T.A. came after he watched a

homeless man collect money after performing "Under the Boardwalk" on the 1/9.

"He sang it on key," said Mr. Littman, smiling.

Mr. Littman smiles a lot. Last April, he started a small company

called Free Hugs. Every Sunday he runs a booth in Washington Square Park, where

he gives out free hugs to strangers.

The train pulled in and we got back on. Mr. Littman started up

again. A tall, tired-looking man leaning against the door introduced himself.

He worked at Bloomberg L.P., he said, and asked for Mr. Littman's e-mail

address. Two blond women from Revlon also offered to take his résumé, as did a

young woman in a silver spaghetti top who worked at Trent & Co., a P.R.

firm.

All told, almost 40 people had taken his resume in 45 minutes.

"Anyone who has the balls to do this deserves a job," said Leslie

Biddle, 35, an executive assistant in public relations at designer Carlos

Falchi, tucking Mr. Littman's résumé in her purse.

A heavy-set woman in a wrinkled T-shirt stopped him and asked him

for a résumé. Mr. Littman paused. "What's the company?" he asked. She said it

involved housing. "Thanks, but that's O.K.," he said politely.

Mr. Littman's face was shiny and flushed by now. He gave his

speech a half dozen more times, at one point straining to be heard over a

screeching toddler.

We emerged at 96th Street, and Mr. Littman checked his cell

phone. There was a message from the recruitment advertising agency McFrank

& Williams.

He said he believes he will land a job soon, though he may be

forced to take one he isn't wild about: Things at his present job are getting a

little dicey.

A few weeks ago, he was in the middle of his spiel when he felt

someone kick his leg. It was one of his co-workers, 23-year-old Tara Pullen, a

fellow credit-risk analyst.

"She was like, 'What are you doing, Jayson?'" said Mr. Littman.

"I told her to wait a minute and I continued my speech."

He swore Ms. Pullen to secrecy, but another co-worker spotted him

on the subway and ratted him out to his office manager.

"My manager called me into her office and said, 'Jayson, I know

you are actively looking for another job,'" he said. "I told her I was

passively looking for a new job."

-Dakota Smith

Oh, Daddy !

On Thursday, July 29, Vanessa Kerry strode onto the stage of the

Fleet Center in Boston and, with a sparkle in her eye and a slight toss of her

wavy blond hair, proceeded to deliver one of the raciest public displays of

affection ever to cross the lips of a candidate's daughter.

"As someone who knows all 6-foot-4 inches of my dad best-6-foot-6

if you count the hair-I'm here to share some secrets," Ms. Kerry began, with

words that all but silenced the raucous hall and which, had Chelsea Clinton

ever uttered them, would surely have drawn gasps across the globe. "Over the

years, I've come to know him in many ways," said the 27-year-old Ms. Kerry.

"Through the silly moments, when he laughs with his head thrown back and his

shoulders rocking, and through sad moments, such as when my grandmother lay

dying, and also through warm moments when he enveloped me in that dad hug that

overwhelmed me with a feeling of safety." Later, Ms. Kerry told how her father

fashioned a tiny tree for his mother using fall foliage and "teasing out" the branches

from copper wire.

You don't need to be a Freudian to comprehend what Ms. Kerry's

speech was about: not death and taxes, but sex and death. Consider the choice

of words: sharing secrets. Shoulders rocking. Lay dying. Warm moments.

Enveloped. Overwhelmed. Teasing out. In a one-page speech, Ms. Kerry mentioned

her father's 6-foot-4 height twice, used the word "love" seven times and "gut"

two. What became apparent on Thursday was that Vanessa Kerry's role in this

campaign is to lend a sexual dimension to her cold, New England patrician

father, to make it clear that Dad wears the pants, no matter how brash or

ballsy his billionaire wife happens to be. Even her name, Vanessa, with its

seductive hiss of S's, helps.

Women on the Upper West Side are already sporting buttons that

say "Shove It"-Ms. Heinz Kerry's instructions to a journalist last week-but in

many other parts of the country, Ms. Heinz Kerry's nonscheduled persona isn't

exactly seen as a virtue. Laura Bush, meanwhile, comes across as completely

nonthreatening, almost medicated. Then again, any woman who claims her favorite

book is Dostoyevsky's The Brothers

Karamazov is sure to have a dark side. Lurking in the background, of

course, is the specter of Al Gore's sloppy lip lock with Tipper before his

speech at the 2000 convention, and no one wants to repeat that.

And so it's up to the Kerry daughters to toughen-yet also

soften-their father, to make him seem manly when their stepmother makes him

seem cowed.

It's an act that requires careful costuming and scripting.

Whereas Ms. Heinz Kerry favors dark pants suits and spread collars, for her

convention speech Vanessa Kerry-who took time off from Harvard Medical School

to campaign for her father-was dressed in a powder blue silk dress.

Knee-length, sleeveless and tasteful, it had one twist: An ever-so-tiny slit

ran from a hidden clasp at her high neckline to the top of her cleavage,

revealing one thin, suggestive slice of skin. The effect weirdly echoed an evening

when another blonde introduced another politician with a breathy "Happy

birthday, Mr. President, happy birthday … to … you."

Alexandra, the more tempered brunette older sister, was no less

striking in her form-fitting, long-sleeved, high-necked red dress. After

recounting the surreal and much-puzzled-over anecdote of how their father

administered CPR to a drowning pet hamster, Alexandra, a filmmaker, painted a

picture of Mr. Kerry as a thoughtful, loving dad, one who put things in perspective

when she was a brooding 19-year-old. "Ali, this is a beautiful day. Feel the

sun. Look at the country you live in," she recounted him saying.

Meanwhile, the Bush campaign has begun to make use of the

President's 22-year-old twin daughters-Jenna, the frolicsome blonde, and

Barbara, the sensible brunette and designated driver-who posed wearing couture in this month's Vogue . At the G.O.P. convention this month, one can hardly imagine what they'll have to say about their father-all

six feet of him.

-Rachel Donadio

Post declared last Friday, over a front-page photo of a beaming John Kerry.

The message worked nicely in two senses: The candidate had just called out his

opponent in bold terms-"Kerry bashes Bush in prez race kickoff"-and he had done

it while wrapping himself in the bullet-shredded flag of his Vietnam swift

boat.

But there was the third sense: the Post 's own war, waged during the Democratic National Convention as

at no other time yet in the campaign. It was a noisy conflict, but a subtle and

indirect one-the target was John Kerry, but the real foe was the rest of the

press.

Mr. Kerry's faults have been openly denounced in the pages of the

Post : He flip-flops, he's

hoity-toity, he acts French. The sins of the Fourth Estate, though, the Post seeks to attack by example. Other

papers don't tell the story straight. Politeness and self-importance prevent

them from having the obvious, visceral, personal reaction that the Post believes the Democratic leadership

deserves. They don't write what they see; They write what they think they're

supposed to see, what they're told to see, what the Kerry folks want them to

see.

By Friday, though the newspaper reeked of gun smoke and hot iron,

the nominee stood in his Mary Beth Cahill armor, showing barely a chink. On

television, even the Post 's frequent

sympathizers couldn't muster any horror at Bush bashing

The clatter had cleared off, the battle was over, and wan

affirmations that Mr. Kerry had seemed to stay on message had been the main

report from the field, the one America saw on television.

The Post had poured its

150-proof outrage into the punchbowl at the media party that was the Democratic

National Convention, but nobody else seemed to feel it.

Plenty of dangers had lurked for Mr. Kerry, and the Post had helpfully (or hopefully) noted

them all: The candidate could have seen Bill Clinton upstage him with a reprise

of his "endless scene-stealing Elvis Presley entry at the 2000 convention." He

could have been undermined by Hillary Clinton, who was secretly "looking ahead

to 2008." He could have been dragged into a divisive discussion of "gay nups"

or humiliated by his "wacky wife" and "party-hearty daughters."

But he wasn't. Party discipline held, as most other media outlets

had predicted it would. Mr. Kerry's perils bounced harmlessly off him like so

many red, white, and blue balloons. By week's end, the Post was running a two-page headline to trumpet the news that Rudy

Giuliani doesn't agree with Michael Moore.

In Tuesday's early editions, the Post had devoted the front page to an image of Mr. Kerry looking

goofy in a hooded, pale-blue NASA clean suit. "BOSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM," the

headline gloated. And while the rest of the press struggled to come up with a

proper analogy for Mr. Kerry's getup, the Post

found the precise reference: a photo of Woody Allen in his sperm costume from Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex but

Were Afraid to Ask .

But before the night was over, the convention's planned agenda

had won out. By the final edition, the Post

yanked the silly-Kerry picture off the front to make room for a photo of Mr.

Clinton taken at his speech. "IT'S MY PARTY," the new headline said.

It took some courage for the Post

to have made fun of anyone at all. Around the press tent in Boston, there were

more opportunities to laugh at the paper than to laugh with it-thanks to last

month's ill-fated vice-presidential exclusive.

"[T]he Democrats will formally nominate their official 2004

ticket: John 'John' Kerry and John 'John' Edwards," syndicated humor columnist

Dave Barry wrote in his first convention coverage piece. "(Or, for you readers

of the New York Post , Dick 'Dick'

Gephardt.)"

The Miami-based Mr. Barry, who said he generally doesn't keep up

with the Post , returned to variations

on the punch line all week: "Teresa Heinz Kerry (or, for you readers of the New York Post , Dick Gephardt)"; "The New York Post is predicting Walter

Mondale [will be the nominee]."

"People kept saying, 'Boy, I really like the New York Post joke,'" Mr. Barry said. "So I kept making it."

Mocking the Post , Mr. Barry said, was

"kind of like a Leno joke" the first time he did it, but with repetition "it

becomes more like a Letterman joke"-an in-joke with readers about how far he

could drag the cliché. Like Ted Kennedy's weight or Dan Quayle's spelling, the Post 's failure was something that Mr.

Barry's readers in Biloxi, Miss., or Tulsa, Okla., could recognize. Mr. Barry

could have been describing the M.O. of the New

York Post .

But somehow, the tin can the Post

tied to Kerry's tail-"Boston, We Have a Problem"-didn't seem to be clanging

very loudly by Tuesday.

The banner on the convention package, previously "DEMS' BIG

WEEK," became "DEMS' LOVE-IN," accompanied by repeating photos of Mr. Kerry's

and Mr. Edwards' heads pressed close together, with Mr. Edwards puckering up.

"SHHH! KEEP IT IN THE CLOSET," the headline on the gay-nups story below said,

in case the subtlety had been lost on anyone.

The rest of the section was a grab-bag of outrages by the

Democrats: a "Bush-Bashing Meter" (set at a tepid 4 out of 10); a follow-up

piece about Teresa Heinz Kerry's "shove it" remark (accompanied by eye-rolling,

slack-mouthed photo); a bulletin noting that Ms. Heinz Kerry had once called

Ted Kennedy worse than Nixon ("[i]n a 1971 interview with The Washington Post ").

The feistiest entry came from columnist Andrea Peyser, under the

headline "Bill 'n' Hill out of lip synch as the party's odd couple." Having

observed Mr. Clinton's failed attempt to kiss his wife at a party, Ms. Peyser

concluded that the couple is completely and awkwardly estranged.

Ms. Peyser came away with the impression that Mr. Clinton would

rather have been, well, making time with a New

York Post columnist: "At one point, he placed his hand on my bare

shoulder."

In a brief phone conversation, Ms. Peyser announced that her

reporting had no agenda, personal or institutional, behind it. She declined to

discuss her approach to convention coverage in any detail. "I only write what I

see, the way I see it," Ms. Peyser said. That's become a sort of war cry for

the Post .

Through a spokesperson, Post

editor Col Allan and president Lachlan Murdoch declined to comment on any

aspect of the paper's convention coverage. But as the days of anodyne events

trickled by, reporters found less and less to complain about. Wednesday, Mr.

Morris and Kenneth Lovett reported that the G.O.P.'s reaction team had found

Mr. Clinton's speech "clever-but often wrong on facts" and Washington bureau

chief Deborah Orin quoted an anonymous Republican operative as saying Ms. Heinz

Kerry's subdued convention address had been "bizarre."

By Thursday, describing Mr. Kerry's arrival in Boston,

correspondent Stefan C. Friedman was seeing much what the rest of the media

saw, to judge from the coverage: "Like a conquering hero, John Kerry returned

home yesterday standing at the bow of a harbor cruise boat surrounded by more

than a dozen of his Vietnam War crew mates." But as if to remind readers that

not all is well in Democrat-land, Post

editors tucked a completely unrelated story, about the Democratic National

Committee's entanglement with "disgraced developer" Charles Kushner, in the

middle of the boat story.

And confronted with a well-behaved Ms. Heinz Kerry, Ms. Peyser

had to criticize her for not being out of control-for being "a sonorous,

facially expressionless, peace-sign-flashing, purposefully maternal zombie."

The Bush meter hovered in the mild middle of the scale.

So when the war came Friday, the Post 's troops were spent. Mr. Kerry "touched all the right bases in

a well-received speech," David Seifman wrote in an analysis piece. Ms. Orin

wrote that Mr. Kerry "gave what some analysts rated the speech of his

life"-though she also noted that the candidate "ignored virtually his entire

19-year Senate record, which got him the rating as its No. 1 most liberal

member." (In fact, National Journal ,

which issued Mr. Kerry's No. 1 liberal rating for 2003, had only rated him No.

11 for his entire career.)

It remains to be seen whether the Post 's coverage of the D.N.C. will seep into the bloodstream:

Already, People magazine's profile of

the extended Kerry campaign, a favorable treatment with a posed photograph,

bore the headline "Trail Mix," suggesting an assortment of nuts. By the time of

the Republican convention at the end of the month, it will perhaps be clear who

else follows the lead.

Ms. Peyser, like the last Japanese soldier in the jungle, refused

to give out at the end of the week, accusing Mr. Kerry of saying "absolutely

zilch of substance."

Even the clever layout items took it easy on the nominee. Lou

Lumenick gave Mr. Kerry's campaign film short, A Remarkable Promise , three stars. A report card graded Mr. Kerry's

speech out at a B-plus.

And the Bush-Bashing Meter, redubbed the Bush-O-Meter, rose to a

modest "8 out of 10."

In drawing the needle, though, someone had pinned it clear to the

top of the scale.

The

New York Times has a new czar, and he hails from the provinces. Tuesday

afternoon, editor Bill Keller announced that the paper will be elevating

Washington editor Richard L. Berke to a newly created position, tentatively

called associate managing editor for news.

Mr. Keller's memo describes the job as being to "propel the daily

news coverage, the way Jon Landman (before detouring to Culture) was driving

enterprise, or Adam Moss (before defecting) was driving features." That means

duties ranging from "harvesting ideas" to focusing coverage of "big breaking or

running stories," according to the memo.

Mr. Berke, currently the No. 2 person in the Washington bureau,

said that he had been talking with Times

brass about moving to some other job for a while, but the czarship offer

"happened pretty quickly."

One thing Mr. Berke won't bring to the position is much firsthand

experience of life on West 43rd Street. "There's a lot I need to learn about

the New York operations," he said. His last prolonged exposure to New York, he

said, came when he went to journalism school at Columbia. "I haven't lived

there since '81," he said.

The Times has not yet

chosen a replacement for Mr. Berke, who will be moving to New York in

January-assuming that the election is over by then. And if this contest spills

over into 2005? "If that were to happen, I'm sure we'd have to adjust," Mr.

Berke said.

This is a rigged journalistic game, played most ferociously by reporters and pundits who are adhering studiously to their own predetermined narratives.

In the case of Teresa Heinz Kerry, many in the media determined that she was trouble long before they even had a glimpse of her. Smart and dedicated, wealthy and opinionated, globally conscious and foreign-born, Ms. Heinz Kerry isn't the typical political spouse our parochial press is accustomed to covering. So they were waiting for her to say something like what she said on July 25, after a reception for Democratic delegates from her home state of Pennsylvania.

That was when she told an editorial writer for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review to "shove it."

Now the use of such direct language by a politician's wife is no doubt shocking to the sensibilities of most journalists, especially the older male contingent. It's one thing for the Republican Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates to berate a reporter as an "asshole" when they think nobody is listening, as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney did four years ago, or for the Vice President to growl "Go fuck yourself" on the Senate floor, as Mr. Cheney did a few weeks ago. Boys will be boys, even into late middle age, but girls must ever remain passive and demure.

"Who's in charge of keeping her on message?" demanded David Broder of The Washington Post. Surely that's a fair question for a campaign that doesn't want the spouse creating distractions for the candidate. But it is also fair to ask why she rounded on the man from the Tribune-Review.

The innocuously named newspaper has long served as the weapon of Richard Mellon Scaife, its founder and publisher. His name is now synonymous with the campaign of hate and calumny focused on the Clintons during the 1990's, but to Ms. Heinz Kerry, his methods were familiar long before he achieved any national notoriety. During the decades of her marriage to the late Senator H. John Heinz III, she knew Mr. Scaife as part of the rarefied circle of very rich local families whose names adorn museum galleries and university buildings.

Although both men were Republicans, Heinz tended to be moderate and occasionally even liberal, while Mr. Scaife was increasingly conservative, attracted to conspiracy theories and aggressive extremism. Years before her first husband's death in 1991, Teresa Heinz came to feel that Mr. Scaife had misused his newspaper to punish her and her husband for dissenting from right-wing Republican orthodoxy. Since her marriage to John Kerry in 1995, the hostility of the Scaife press and the outfits funded by Scaife foundations toward her has been nothing short of vicious.

A few days after the Massachusetts Senator and his wife celebrated their second Christmas together, the Tribune-Review ran a column suggesting that Mr. Kerry had been enjoying a "very private" relationship with another woman. There was no byline on the story and no evidence to support the salacious insinuation. There was nothing to it, in fact, except pure malice.

When fresh accusations about her husband's fidelity erupted earlier this year in the right-wing press, Ms. Heinz Kerry could scarcely have been surprised that the smear's most eager purveyors included Internet sites financed by Mr. Scaife and his family foundations. Those "news sources" have also impugned Mr. Kerry's patriotism, maligned his military service and distorted his voting record. They happen to be operated by the same discredited scribblers who once tried to convince America that Bill and Hillary Clinton were murderers and drug smugglers.

Meanwhile, Ms. Kerry herself is hardly exempt from the angry fantasies emanating from Mr. Scaife's strange universe. Last spring, a Scaife-funded "research group" sent out a study that accused her of covertly financing violent radicals of various kinds, including Islamists, through the straitlaced Heinz foundations that she controls. There was absolutely no basis for that tale-as the right-wing sleuths could have learned by making a single phone call. The Heinz money they had "traced" through a San Francisco group had actually gone in its entirety to support anti-pollution projects in Pennsylvania.

Those are only a few brief examples among dozens. The Scaife disinformation conglomerate has churned out nastiness about Ms. Heinz Kerry by the carload for years, and finally she talked back. The guy she scorched last Sunday was meant to take that message back to his boss in Pittsburgh-a man who has deserved the brunt of such refreshing candor for a long, long time.