JUST KEEP TELLING THEM IT'S THE GREAT DEPRESSION ALL OVER AGAIN, WORKED FOR ME:

Kerry Enlisting Clinton Aides in Effort to Refocus Campaign (ADAM NAGOURNEY and DAVID M. HALBFINGER. 9/06/04, NY Times)

Former President Bill Clinton, in a 90-minute telephone conversation from his hospital room, offered John Kerry detailed advice on Saturday night on how to reinvigorate his candidacy, as Mr. Kerry enlisted more Clinton advisers to help shape his strategy and message for the remainder of the campaign.

In an expansive conversation, Mr. Clinton, who is awaiting heart surgery, told Mr. Kerry that he should move away from talking about Vietnam, which had been the central theme of his candidacy, and focus instead on drawing contrasts with President Bush on job creation and health care policies, officials with knowledge of the conversation said. [...]

The installation of former Clinton lieutenants is creating two distinct camps at Mr. Kerry's campaign headquarters on McPherson Square in downtown Washington.

The first is the existing Kerry high command, which includes Mary Beth Cahill, the campaign manager; Bob Shrum, a senior adviser; Tad Devine, a senior adviser; and Stephanie Cutter, the communications director. The second is the Clinton camp, which includes Joe Lockhart, a former White House press secretary; Joel Johnson, a former senior White House aide; and Doug Sosnik, a former Clinton political director. And Howard Wolfson, a former chief of staff to Hillary Rodham Clinton, joined the campaign yesterday.

Members of both camps played down any suggestion of a Clinton takeover of a troubled campaign and insisted there was no tension between the two groups. Still, these days, Mr. Lockhart is stationed in an office on one side of the campaign war room; Mr. Shrum's office is on the opposite side.

If Mr. Kerry and his horde of flaks go three whole days without responding to the charges that he was such an anti-war extremist as to have been anti-American and that his attacks on the nation continued in his Senate voting record we'll believe that this chat worked. Then we just have to figure out whether Mr. Clinton, who built his own '92 campaign around responding to every single attack on his own record, was trying to help or sink the Kerry candidacy.

BTW: Mr. Clinton once again gave us an unintentional lesson about American democracy this week. Just as the legal system refused to allow him to escape a law suit just because he was president so too the medical system told him his operation could wait until after the weekend. What a country.

MORE:
Did Kerry pull a Dukakis? (CRAIG GORDON, September 5, 2004, Newsday)

It is the cardinal rule of modern American politics, and one John Kerry should know well, because he served with its namesake in Massachusetts - don't pull a Dukakis. Let no political charge sit unanswered, lest it take root.

Michael Dukakis was slow to respond to Republican attacks in 1988 and got crushed by George Bush the father. Some Democrats fret John Kerry now has made the same mistake against Bush the son - letting attacks on his Vietnam record and fitness to serve go unanswered too long - and fear that Kerry is slipping badly in the face of new polls showing a Bush lead.

"Time is running out . . . to turn this around," said Tony Coelho, a former manager for Al Gore's campaign, who believes Kerry didn't respond forcefully enough. "It's not hard, and he did not do a good job on that."

Can't do both.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 6, 2004 7:42 AM