Circle the Wagons!

The NYTimes seems worried. Mickey Kaus interprets:

While the Times' Adam Nagourney conspired with The Note's Mark Halperin during a sinister Media Elite gathering at 'Cesca in New York, his eighth paragraph--the one in which he buried the big, unwanted news that Bush had gotten traction against Kerry-was predictably blossoming into the lead story in Saturday's paper. ... Jim Rutenberg's article limns the debate over whether Bush's effective early advertising will beat Kerry aide Bob Shrum's post-June campaigning. Note that this debate replays the post-1996 dispute over whether Dick Morris' early ads for Clinton won the election against Bob Dole--or whether, as Shrum contended at the time, they had little effect.

Kerry has lost 10 points in the polls, but it's kind of early to panic, which his supporters in the media are doing. Maybe they are realizing that his weaknesses as a candidate may not be things he can change easily, like his naive insistence that we need to rely more on the U.N., his voting record in the Senate and his record of anti-war activism and voting against national defense. His aristocratic arrogance was on display when he claimed, "I don't fall down!" and cursed one of his taxpayer-hired bodyguards for getting in his way. Personally, I don't think his ties to the French help him much here at home, either.