by JAMES TARANTO
Monday, October 4, 2004 3:19 P.M. EDT

The Wisdom of Simplicity
The New York Times talks to Gregory Craig, the Democratic lawyer who played President Bush in John Kerry's debate-preparation sessions:

In the process, Mr. Craig said, some of the president's well-worn phrases have entered the Craig family lexicon. Mr. Bush says this in nearly every speech: "If America shows uncertainty or weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch." When one of Mr. Craig's teenagers went out not long ago, Mr. Craig said: "You're going to tell us when you're coming home tonight. No permissiveness--not on my watch!"

Mr. Craig, a partner at the Washington law firm of Williams & Connolly, said his preparations had given him new insight into Mr. Bush, a man he has never met. "I've learned to admire, more than I would have, his compulsion for simplicity," Mr. Craig said. "I understand there's some content to it, and I understand the power of the simple phrase. Prior to this, I would have just shrugged it off as an empty slogan."

Intellectual vanity--the tendency to mistake simplicity for stupidity, and convolution for eloquence--is perhaps the greatest pitfall of today's Democrats. But who's actually more intelligent, someone who can simplify complicated matters, or someone who is compelled to complicate simple ones? (For an example of the latter, see the Times' own Frank Rich, who in the course of mocking President Bush's religious faith manages to scoff at the idea that Saddam Hussein was an evildoer.)

By coming to understand the wisdom of the president's simplicity, Greg Craig proved that he's smarter than the average Democrat. As we saw Thursday, Kerry was well served by Craig's insight.

Pole Favors Bush
John Kerry's globalist promises have drawn rebukes from two foreign capitals--one friend, one foe. Bloggers Malachy Joyce and Arthur Chrenkoff note that President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland, in a domestic press interview, had this to say about Kerry's pointed exclusion of Poland from his description of the alliance in Iraq (translated from Polish by Chrenkoff):

"It's sad that a Senator with twenty years of experience does not appreciate Polish sacrifice. . . . I don't think it's a question of ignorance. One thing has to be said very clearly: this Coalition is not just the United States, Great Britain and Australia, but there's also contribution of Polish, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and Spanish soldiers who died in Iraq. It's immoral to not see this involvement we undertook because we believe that we have to fight terrorism together, that we need to show international solidarity, that Saddam Hussein is a danger to the world.

"From such a perspective, you can say we are disappointed that our stance and the sacrifice of our soldiers is so marginalised. I blame it on electioneering--and a message, indirectly expressed by Senator Kerry--that he thinks more of a coalition that would put the United States together with France and Germany, that is those who in the matter of Iraq said 'no.'

"President Bush is behaving like a true Texan gentleman--he's fighting for the recognition of other countries' contribution in the Coalition."

Which reminds us: Kerry has denounced what he calls the "coalition of the bribed." Yet in the debate, he offered this criticism:

If the president had shown the patience to go through another round of resolution [meaning U.N. resolutions], to sit down with those leaders, say, "What do you need, what do you need now, how much more will it take to get you to join us?" we'd be in a stronger place today.

So now the problem is that Bush didn't bribe enough. But doesn't Kerry know that bribery is an impeachable offense?

Meanwhile, Reuters reports from Tehran that "Iran on Sunday rebuffed a proposal by U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry who has suggested supplying the Islamic state with nuclear fuel for power reactors if Tehran agrees to give up its own fuel-making capability":

Foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said it would be "irrational" for Iran to put its nuclear program in jeopardy by relying on supplies from abroad.

"We have the technology (to make nuclear fuel) and there is no need for us to beg from others," Asefi told a weekly news conference.

So this is what it means to be strongerathomerespectedintheworld. Is America ready for four years of it?

Write Early and Often
In the debate Thursday, John Kerry staked out a strong plan to bring peace to Iraq and to refocus our efforts to fight terrorists around the world. We know because we read it in the Bergen (N.J.) Record. Twice. Here's a letter to the editor from Kate Swan of Teaneck, which appeared in yesterday's Record:

In the first presidential debate, I was hoping to hear a good debate.

I wanted to hear John Kerry lay out his plans for Iraq and for winning the war on terror. I wasn't disappointed. Kerry staked out a strong plan to bring peace to Iraq and to refocus our efforts to fight terrorists around the world.

President Bush avoided the questions and issues presented him. He is a terrible speaker and a worse debater. His snide grin doesn't work on me. He's led us into danger, not toward safety.

This debate made it clear: Kerry is a leader we can trust to tell us the truth when it comes to our nation's security. Bush has had his chance.

And here's a letter from Norman Kailo of Wayne:

John Kerry staked out a strong plan to bring peace to Iraq and to refocus our efforts to fight terrorists around the world.

While his own intelligence services, military advisers, Republican colleagues, and even his secretary of state have said that Iraq is in chaos, President Bush still presents a version of Iraq seen through rose-colored glasses.

Here's the original, from the Democratic National Committee Web site:

In the first presidential debate, I was hoping to hear two things.

First, I wanted to hear John Kerry lay out his plans for Iraq and for winning the war on terror. I wasn't disappointed. Kerry staked out a strong plan to bring peace to Iraq and to refocus our efforts to fight terrorists around the world.

Second, I wanted to hear President Bush tell the truth about Iraq, but he refused. While his own intelligence services, military advisers, Republican colleagues, and even his Secretary of State have said that Iraq is in chaos, Bush still presents a version of Iraq seen through rose-colored glasses.

This debate made it clear: John Kerry is a leader we can trust to tell us the truth when it comes to our nation's security. George Bush has had his chance; I'm ready for a new direction.

Note the other similarities between the Record's letters and the DNC template. In Swan's letter, the first sentence is similar and the second paragraph is identical; and the second paragraph of Kailo's letter is identical to a sentence in the DNC version.

We at The Wall Street Journal got letters like these too, but it wasn't hard to figure out they were part of an orchestrated campaign. That's because they started flowing in before the debate! We even got one that was sent at 6:59 p.m. Eastern Time--just over two hours before the debate started--that used the DNC template but swapped Bush's and Kerry's names.

The folks at the Chicago Tribune not only noticed this but published a news story (second item) and an opinion column about it. The Dallas Morning News reports it "received more than 500 letters, and about four-fifths were deemed to be from an organized pro-Kerry source." The Morning News quotes Paul Hurley, opinion editor of the Visalia (Calif.) Times-Delta: "If your mother sends you an e-mail letter that says she loves you, check it out."

On the other hand, we found at least three newspapers and one TV station's Web site that published versions of the DNC's prefab letter: the Boston Globe (first letter), Honolulu Advertiser (first letter), Ventura County (Calif.) Star (fifth letter) and KTVO of Kirksville, Mo. (20th letter). Oh, and while we're at it, let's immortalize the "writers" of these letters. They are, respectively, the delightfully alliterative Mindy Mazur of Milton, Mass.; Dick R. Trahan of Kaimuki, Hawaii; Faith Morres of Oxnard, Calif.; and Richard Damm of Ottumwa, Iowa.

The Bergen Record, though, seems to be the only one that published two versions of the same missive on the same page. Who's in charge of letters over there, the Doublemint Twins?

The Global Test
Israel recently released a photo that appears to show Palestinian Arab terrorists using a United Nations vehicle to transport a rocket. The U.N. claims the picture is of a stretcher being loaded into an ambulance. But the Canadian network CBC reports Peter Hansen, who heads the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which is supposed to help Palestinian "refugees," acknowledges that he employs members of one of the most vicious terror groups:

Hansen said he believes there are Hamas members on UNRWA's payroll, but they have to follow UN rules on remaining neutral.

"Oh I am sure that there are Hamas members on the UNRWA payroll and I don't see that as a crime. Hamas as a political organization does not mean that every member is a militant and we do not do political vetting and exclude people from one persuasion as against another," Hanson told CBC TV.

And John Kerry wants to submit American national security to a global test?

A Hook to Hang an Antiwar Story On
Two guys brought clothes into Jerry Alexander's Oceanside, Calif., dry-cleaning shop in 2002--and haven't picked them up! This breathtaking story comes to us in today's New York Times.

Huh? Is this news? Well, not exactly. It's an example of the absurd lengths to which the Times will go in promoting its antiwar agenda. It turns out that the unclaimed garments are Marine uniforms:

Mr. Alexander does not know what happened to the men to whom the uniforms belong. Perhaps they abandoned the clothing. That sometimes happens, though rarely. Perhaps they forgot to get their laundry before they shipped out, but what were the odds? Two uniforms in a row, with an empty space between. Numbers 1781 and 1783.

There is a third, more malignant possibility: a dead man cannot claim a clean shirt.

So maybe these uniforms belonged to Marines who died in combat in Iraq. Then again, maybe not. There's no way of really knowing, right? Wrong:

There are names on the yellowing tickets affixed to the plastic that covers the camouflage fatigues, but Mr. Alexander has not read them or checked them against the list of the killed or wounded. His curiosity does not work that way, he said. Nor will he divulge the names to a stranger; that would be a dereliction of decency.

Boy, they've got some damn fine investigative reporters over at the Times, haven't they?

Remember the Alamo--II
In an item Friday, we disputed John Kerry's claim (echoing Richard Clarke) that "invading Iraq in response to 9/11 would be like Franklin Roosevelt invading Mexico in response to Pearl Harbor." A better analogy we (and a blogger called Steve) argued, was to what FDR actually did after Pearl Harbor, which is make victory in Europe the top priority, even though Nazi Germany had not attacked America.

Many readers wrote us to object on the ground that Germany declared war on the U.S. on Dec. 11, 1941, four days after Pearl Harbor. In their view, somehow the formality of a German declaration of war changes the analogy. But it does not.

For one thing, as we noted in January 2003, a state of war had existed between Saddam Hussein's Iraq on the one hand and the U.S. and the rest of the world on the other, and it had since 1991. There was no peace treaty ending the Gulf War, only a cease-fire, the terms of which Saddam was flouting. Further, there were actual hostilities between Iraq and the U.S., with Saddam's antiaircraft weapons routinely firing on American planes enforcing the no-fly zone (albeit to little effect).

What's more, the German declaration of war did not oblige America to wage war, much less to give the European theater priority over the Pacific. To do so was President Roosevelt's strategic decision, and he made it before Pearl Harbor. And do our critics mean to suggest that if Germany hadn't declared war, it would have been illegitimate for America to fight the Nazis?

Besides, John Kerry voted for the December 2002 resolution authorizing force against Iraq, effectively a redeclaration of war. If FDR had followed the Kerry Doctrine in 1941, he would have asked Congress to declare war on Germany, then refused to fire a shot until the French and Germans could be enlisted as allies.

Arms Are for Hugging
"How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence"--headline, New York Times, Oct. 3

Not Dead Yet
In an item Thursday, we noted a poll that showed President Bush gaining a big lead among disabled voters and speculated that they might have been put off by John Kerry's exploitation of triple amputee Max Cleland as a campaign prop. Blogger Ed Jordan has a different theory: that the disabled fear for their lives under a Kerry administration. He points to an article by Lucy Gwin, editor of Mouth, a disability-rights magazine, that appeared on Ragged Edge Online:

The single disability rights issue on the liberal agenda is our Right to Die. . . . Both parties seem to confuse the right to die with abortion rights--as if we are what Jerry Lewis called us, "half-a persons." But look what's ahead for that famous half-a person, Florida's Terri Schiavo. Her estranged husband seeks permission to disconnect the tube through which she receives food and water. . . .

Last November when Terri was news, [Kerry] begged the question, telling Tallahassee reporters, "These are some very thorny, legitimate issues." What's so "thorny" about some guy forcefully dehydrating the wife he's replaced?

Notes Jordan: "Between the two Harris Interactive polls in which the shift of disabled American voters to Bush occurred, Terri Schiavo has come back into the news. The Florida Supreme Court overturned 'Terri's Law,' and there is once again real danger that Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube will be removed. . . . Disabled Americans may or may not be sensitive to Kerry's cynical use of disabled veterans as campaign props. But there is good reason to believe they are sensitive to the fact that liberals like Senator Kerry want to give them the right to die, while conservatives like President Bush want to give them the right to live."

Crimson-Faced
The Harvard Crimson has issued a correction of its article on a speech by Justice Antonin Scalia, which was the basis for a London Guardian article we noted Friday:

The Sept. 29 news story "Scalia Describes 'Dangerous' Trend" misquoted Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as saying that "I even take the position that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged." In fact, Scalia said, "I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged."

Meanwhile, the Times of London offers this quote from "The Hornet's Nest," a new novel by Jimmy Carter (yes, that Jimmy Carter): "He was overwhelmed with a feeling of tenderness, and was also aroused sexually, which his tight trousers made obvious to both of them." Sounds like a real page-turner.

Food Fight!
"Wis. Town Plans Egg Battle Re-enactment"--headline, Associated Press, Oct. 1

What Would Ferrets Do Without Environmentalists?
"Environmentalists: Poisoning Would Hurt Ferrets"--headline, Casper (Wyo.) Star Tribune, Oct. 1

Dangerous Curves?
Randy Cohen writes the insufferable "Ethicist" column in the New York Times magazine, and recently a reader, Louise Dustrude of Friday Harbor, Wash., presented him with her dilemma:

I am in my month's trial membership at the fitness chain Curves, and I love it. I must decide whether to sign up for a year, and I've learned that the owner of the company financially supports pro-life efforts, whereas I am pro-choice. Do I have a duty to give up my Curves membership?

Cohen's answer: "It depends: Which do you value more, your reproductive rights or your figure?" That's pretty half-assed, Randy. The lady came to you seeking advice, and you're just restating her question.

The Ben & Jerry's Web site notes that among the causes the ice-cream maker supports is something called Working Assets, whose Web site in turn identifies it as a backer of Planned Parenthood. So if Louise Dustrude cares about her reproductive rights, she should bag the gym membership, stay home and eat lots of Ben & Jerry's.

A New Angle
Frank Sargeant, outdoors columnist for the Tampa Tribune, notes that the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals declared Sept. 25 "Turn In Your Tackle Day." Sargeant reports that he "forgot to get it done" and hints that the antifishing effort was a failure.

Sargeant notes that "PETA has one bureaucrat with what has to be the politically correct job title of the decade: fish empathy project manager." Probably a cold fish.

Kerfuffle Watch
The New York Post's Page Six reports that rock stars are now taking linguistic cues from our humble column:

Bono fronts one of the world's biggest rock bands, but he says his fame only gets him so far in The Post. "We don't get the paparazzi, we don't get all that kerfuffle," the U2 singer tells Vanity Fair.

The More-Than-Friendly Skies
"Virgin Atlantic is delighted to announce the introduction of double suites for passengers traveling in the award winning Upper Class Suite," according to a press release for the British airline. The statement quotes chairman Sir Richard Branson: "It has been one of my long held ambitions to have double beds onboard our aircraft."

If a couple want to share a bed, wouldn't they be better off flying United than Virgin?

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Michael Segal, Samuel Walker, Rob Kulak, G. Warchuk, Ed Lasky, Drew Anderson, Ethel Fenig, Jeffrey Shapiro, Doug Levene, Aaron Dickey, Milo Grummons, Henry Hanks, Leanne Shain, Rochi Ebner, Howard Weiser, Norman Spector, Mordecai Bobrowsky, Jonathan Kahan, Michael Siegel, Scott Offen, Monty Krieger, Gad Meir, S.E. Brenner, David Shapero, M. Gilbertson, Diane Ravitch, Sean O'Connor, Ted Clayton, Nathan Hellmers, Sam Callan, Bruce Bartlett, Michael Stevens, Peet Dwan, Jerry Skurnik, Jack Love, Steve Cohen, Neal Lang, Fred Danzig, C.E. Dobkin, David Greenstone, John Sanders, Ron Morris, David Anderson, Bill Sparks, Kevin Ford, Matt Raymond, W. O'Neill, Jeff Smith, Zeb Fuller, Christopher Minakowski, Matt Chadwick, Megan Farrell, Ken Lawrence and Ian Clark. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Eliot Cohen: The candidates faced off, but we didn't get a real debate on foreign policy.
• John Fund: Meet Mary Mapes, the crusading journalist behind CBS's current troubles.
• Richard Miniter: Sometimes, chasing faulty intelligence can pay dividends.