Fortunately for Bush, he has Cheney, who is very good at snarling.

The Democratic campaign team is not complete yet. An entire campaign is not the essence of a handful of speeches before the convention, unless they are very memorable indeed.

A while back, I referred to the remarks of a theater director/professor who told us all at rehearsal that, if your ending is weak, it doesn't matter if you have a glorious first act, because "if the last ten minutes stink, that's all they'll remember." Campaigns are like theater. Kerry hasn't had his last ten minutes yet. Bush would have been better off to get these hearings going and out of the way before the year of the election, to get them off the national stage, but that would have flown in the face of this Administration's secrecy code. They apparently thought they could put the yelling off until after November. Now the hearings threaten to be part of the last ten minutes of their campaign.

As for Miss Condi, she has been typecast by her bosses, and by her willingness to take on the role assigned to her. Gone is the provost of Stanford University. Some public figures manage to outgrow that kind of typecasting. (Richard Nixon, in his twilight years, managed miraculously to become a kind of elder statesman, which I chalk up to his political genius. It was a darkened and flawed genius, but it was there.) Ms. Rice has been sent out to defend behaviors and policies that a sizable chunk of the American public find, to put it mildly, unacceptable. This has been her job. There are those in her own party who will not thank her for this, let alone those who are not.

President Rice? I would have given her good odds of getting the nod in 2008 even 18 months ago just because of the novelty factor, in spite of the fact that she has never held an elected office. Now? Maybe in 15 years when she's 65, and an "elder statesman". If she runs for, and wins, at least one major elected office. If she has, yet to be demonstrated, political genius as opposed to a talent for ladder-climbing. If we all live that long.