ELEVATE YOUR TONE, YOUNG MAN
An exchange between John Kerry and Mark Racicot of the RNC:

Responding Sunday to a letter in which Kerry accused Bush of using surrogates to attack his military service in Vietnam and his subsequent opposition to the war, Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign chairman Marc Racicot told Kerry that the campaign “does not condone” any effort to impugn his patriotism but considers his voting record on national security and defense issues as a valid target of political scrutiny.

“I ask you to elevate the remarkably negative tone of your campaign and your party over the past year,” Racicot said.

Amen to that.

However, the headlines about Bush's speech-- "Bush attacks Kerry"-- may undermine the claims to be the more elevated of the two parties. Reading the speech, I felt a sinking feeling that Bush was turning negative and would hurt himself by lowering himself to Kerry's level.

And then I realized the problem the Bush campaign has: it's hard not to sound negative when talking about Kerry. All Bush did was describe Kerry's voting record, and that sounds pretty negative. It's hard to keep the campaign positive when one's opponent has so few positive attributes. Meanwhile, Kerry's only defense is to complain, for no reason, about attacks on his patriotism. Will the Democrats please see through this guy and give us a real nominee?