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Re lack of GOP response to forgeries: I agree it would be a huge mistake for the WH to become directly involved in the forgeries controversy, given how the story is playing out even without its involvement. I also think, however, that if the WH took the bait and declared the docs forgeries, that would be taken as some kind of evidence that Rove & Co. in fact had engineered a setup. Clearly, the Dems WANT the WH to come out on this; otherwise they wouldn't be trotting out this lame argument that "the docs must be real because the WH hasn't questioned their authenticity."

Re your "equation," while I agree JFK's Vietnam strategy hasn't worked, and perhaps has even backfired, let's not lose sight of the bigger picture. Kerry needed more than just a good campaign strategy to win this election. He needed events to cut against the president in a fairly dramatic way. A year or so ago, it looked like a reasonably good bet that the economic picture wasn't going to be so rosy by Election Day, and that bad news out of Iraq might continue to dominate the news. Fortunately, things have improved on both fronts. Bush has all but run out the clock on the economic front (with only one more jobs/GDP report to go before the election). Iraq remains a big trouble spot, but in the post-handover-of-sovereignty phase, there seems to be a more realistic acceptance of ongoing resistance to the new govt, and the press is no longer giving the same saturation coverage to the situation that we saw in the Spring. So while Kerry's campaign strategy will deservedly be condemned in the wake of Bush's reelection (knock wood!), the fact remains that the bad times the Dems were really counting on in order to defeat this president have simply not materialized.

All good points. But don't underestimate the fact that from the get-go, Kerry essentially campaigned on, well, VIETNAM. He didn't even try to formulate a WOT policy, because he knew it would cost him his base. My point is that the media uncritically (as it always does now) leaped on his bandwagon without even noticing it was headed for a cliff, and now even Kerry can't get off.