The American Spectator

Washington Prowler

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"Half the time these guys can't run fast enough or far enough away from the president," said the former Clinton staffer about the photo-op request. "Now they practically want to climb into his hospital bed with him. But you know, Clinton is such a creature of politics, he would probably do it."

p> SHIP OF FOOLS br> On the Friday morning Kerry campaign surrogates conference call last week, it was business as usual, at least when it came to topics for discussion. /p>

New Kerry frontman Joe Lockhart found himself discussing Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, call them "pathological liars" and straw men that President Bush was controlling and hiding behind.

Rep. Dick Gephardt was snorting and slammed the president for talking about tax reform and for his creation of an economy that was squeezing the middle class, claiming the president had no standing to do so.

This from the man who believes that middle class families in America earning $25,000 a year in household income.

Both Gephardt and Lockhart glossed over the jobs report that showed more than 250,000 jobs added in the past three months, which was supposedly the topic of the call.

Perhaps folks in Kerry's campaign were too busy making other phone calls at the time to focus on the issues. Rumors inside the Kerry camp late last week had Lockhart and others talking to both James Carville and Paul Begala about coming on board the campaign for the next eight weeks, if not full-time then at least part-time. Both are employees of CNN, as well as other private clients.

Both donors and senior Democratic National Committee officials have been lobbying Kerry to bring the two former senior Clinton advisers on board in a more visible way, despite the fact that both men have been offering advice to Kerry privately for some time. Begala, especially, has been a name floated in recent days, though Begala's role would mean that either Lockhart of campaign spokesman Stephanie Cutter would have to adjust their duties.

"Kerry has probably done about as much as he can publicly do to his campaign," said a Kerry adviser. "Any more and it looks like you're rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, and it keeps the story alive. I guarantee you that within ten days, we are going to be reading stories in the New York Times about how well our campaign is running. It's just inevitable."

Maybe not. No sooner did they announce that they were getting tough on Bush than the Kerry campers began walking away from their own candidate's late night diatribe in Ohio on Thursday night/Friday morning. "That was a one-time thing, or maybe an occasional thing," said the Kerry adviser. "We aren't going to be that negative on the stump all the time. We couldn't be."

p>When asked why Kerry kept insisting that Republicans had directly challenged his patriotism, when in fact they had not, the adviser said, "We don't see it that way. Republicans took nuanced votes by Senator Kerry and out and out lied about them. We don't play that game. No sensible person with a brain could have looked at that orgy of hate in New York and not heard Kerry's patriotism challenged." br> /p>

topics:
Bill Clinton, Business, NATO