I am reluctant to admit this, but both Kerry and Bush are right about each other. Bush says that Kerry's a flip flopper. Bingo. He is. His unwise statement two weeks ago at the Grand Canyon that he would have voted in favor of the Iraq resolution even knowing that Saddam did not possess WMD is proof that he lacks political guts. On Iraq he has been wobbly, to borrow Thatcher's phrase. He should have the courage of his convictions. Or does he not know what his convictions are? I am afraid that 20 years in the Senate may have ruined him, as the institution has ruined other senators who contracted Potomac fever.

As for Bush, well, Kerry's right about him. He is an unwise leader who plunged us into a disaster in Iraq. He is macho. He is a unilateralist. He has alienated the rest of the world.

Both should listen hard to what the other side is saying. They might learn something. One of these gentlemen is going to be our next president. Better that they know their own weaknesses than not. The election is giving them that golden opportunity.

The Internet is alive with stories about the mistakes Arnold made in his speech at the convention. The Associated Press has reported (http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/7156.html) that he couldn't possibly have seen Soviet tanks in the streets of Austria as a boy. He was born in 1947. By then he was living in the sector of the country controlled by the British. The Soviets left the area in 1945.

He made another mistake in claiming that he grew up under socialism. Not true. "Between 1945 and 1970, all the nation's chancellors were conservatives -- not Socialists."

So far, so good. But other stories claim he also made an error in referring to the 1968 election debate between Nixon and Humphrey.

See, for instance, this article by Michel Chossudovsky (http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO409A.html):

"In the 1968 presidential campaign, Hubert Humphrey and Ed Muskie ran against Richard Nixon and Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew. Richard Nixon did not want to repeat his 1960 experience with JFK. He refused to debate his Democratic opponent Hubert Humphrey. Although Humphrey challenged Nixon to a debate, there was no debate between Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon in 1968. Arnold Scharzenegger could not have seen it on TV, because it never took place. In fact, there were no presidential debates between 1960 and 1976."

Tucker Carlson on CNN even apologized for Arnold when Larry King noted that Nixon-Humphrey never debated: "Well, I don't think Schwarzenegger even spoke English at the time. So he could be, you know, forgiven for making that mistake it seems to me."

As the editor of HNN I was ready to include Arnold's error in GOTCHA! But then I took a closer look at Arnold's speech. He never said they debated. He said this:

"I finally arrived here in 1968.I had empty pockets, but I was full of dreams. The presidential campaign was in full swing. I remember watching the Nixon and Humphrey presidential race on TV. A friend who spoke German and English, translated for me. I heard Humphrey saying things that sounded like socialism which is what I had just left. But then I heard Nixon speak. He was talking about free enterprise, getting government off your back, lowering taxes, and strengthening the military. Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air."

Any fair reading of this paragraph has to be that Arnold got his history right. Humphrey and Nixon were on TV in 1968 and often popped up in the same news show. So could he have seen them on TV talking about their philosophy? Sure.

Busy hiring new interns and new editors this week I only now got the chance finally to blog about the convention.

As a Democrat, of course, it was an ordeal. Like going to the dentist. I could feel the drill burrowing deep. I'm sure I would have felt better if I had just ignored the thing (like my mother and many friends did).

As a citizen it was an even worse ordeal. Like open heart surgery. If democracy were a patient, this was the week the patient took to his bed complaining of ulcers, headaches, and heart strain.

While the Republicans celebrated their commander in chief the soldiers he commanded to Iraq were dying in a murky cause in a country he doesn't understand for an unlimited length of time. And yet he had the gall to pretend all is well. And he still insisted, against the facts, that his invasion would result in a democratic Iraq. I had thought it was a sign of realism a few months ago when the administration dropped the claim that Iraq would become a democracy but here was the president reviving his wholly improbable rhetoric of a year ago.

Ronald Reagan was condemned for getting some anecdotes wrong, and mangling facts. President Bush has managed to misconstrue an entire country's prospects.

In an interview with the Today Show's Matt Lauer, the president almost seemed ready to embrace a realistic understanding of the"war on terrorism," explaining that it can't be won. By the next day, after the Democrats had seized on his admission, he had backed down, claiming it can be won. Can you spell f-l-i-p f-l-o-p-p-e-r?

Candidate John Kerry immediately went on TV to say that the war on terrorism can be won. Another low moment in American democracy. Shouldn't he have said that he was happy to learn that the president had finally abandoned the apocalyptic rhetoric of a good versus evil, war on terrorism? Instead, preferring to score some meaningless political points, Kerry passed up the opportunity to inject a note of realism into the national debate and tried to out-Bush Bush. Note to Kerry: You can't out Bush Bush. If this is a contest between candidates who take a simple view of the world Bush will win that fight. He's been doing simple for years and knows how to pull it off.

Max Boot observed that Bush's admission to Matt Lauer was a classic example of the Washington gaffe. Inadvertently, Bush had let the truth slip out.

So both parties let us down last week. I don't see much reason to think the remaining 8 weeks of the campaign will go much better.

Compared with George H.W. Bush, or W., Bill Clinton grew up poor. But the evidence he provides in his memoir suggests the story he peddled as a politician about his hardscrabble youth was exaggerated.

I am just getting into his memoir. In the first 100 pages or so two things stand out.

1. The time his father shot off a gun in the direction of Bill and his mother.

2. How well-off Bill Clinton was as a youth. He didn't exactly have to beg. His step-father, Roger Clinton, he tells us on page 17, owned the local Buick dealership in Hope. Roger's brother Raymond owned a Buick dealership in Hot Springs. Roger's two best friends also were owners. One owned the local Coca-Cola bottling plant. The other owned a string of drugstores. Bill's best friend was Mack McLarty, son of the owner of the local Ford dealership.

His family moved around. First he lived in a small house. Then they moved to a 400 acre farm. Then they moved into a two-story five bedroom house.

In 1956 his family got a television set--this at a time when most Americans didn't have one. In the summers he attended band camp to hone his music skills. "I went there every summer for seven years." (page 40.)

Throughout his childhood Bill Clinton was tended to by nannies. First there was Cora Walters. She took care of him while his folks were away at work for eleven years. After she left the Clintons, "her daughter Mary Hightower came to work for Mother and stayed thirty more years until Mother died." (p. 23.)

If you are ready to fall out of your chair you really shouldn't be. Bill Clinton, like most presidents, according to a fine study published 20 years ago by Edward Pessen, The Log Cabin Myth, grew up in better economic circumstances than his contemporaries. That you think otherwise is a tribute to the power of the log cabin mythology spun by his media manipulators.

Is President Bush a leader?

At dinner with friends last night in Seattle we got into an argument about this. My friend argued that Bush is a leader, whatever you think of his policies. In 6 months, he pointed out in defense of his position, President Bush succeeded in staging a war against Iraq that virtually no other leader in the world had pressed for. Didn't that make Bush a leader?

I objected that leadership implies wisdom. What Bush did in Iraq demonstrated that he lacks wisdom. He operated as president from his gut without taking into consideration the many problems his policies would aggravate or lead to. There are many ways to define leadership. Princeton’s Fred Greenstein in a recent book listed half a dozen qualities presidents need: emotional intelligence, the ability to understand complex events, political skills, communication skills, organizational abilities, policy vision. Hans Morgenthau, the University of Chicago political scientist, argued that one mark of a leader was the ability to handle complexity, particularly in the making of foreign policy, an ability, he noted, that the masses lack:

The statesman must think in terms of the national interest, conceived as power among other powers. The popular mind, unaware of the fine distinctions of the statesman's thinking, reasons more often than not in the simple moralistic and legalistic terms of absolute good and absolute evil. The statesman must take the long view, proceeding slowly and by detours, paying with small losses for great advantage; he must be able to temporize, to compromise, to bide his time. The popular mind wants quick results; it will sacrifice tomorrow's real benefit for today's apparent advantage.

Now who does Bush remind you of? The reflective, strategizing leader or the impulsive, unthinking masses?

But my friend had a point. Bush is no Jimmy Carter. Unlike a Jimmy Carter, for instance, Bush knows how to use power. Democrats who think of him as a dolt miss this aspect of his presidency. And they do it at their political peril. Underestimate Bush and you got whacked good.

But is there a name for someone who lacks the qualities of the leader but who nonetheless understands the uses of power? There must be some word that fits this but I don't know it. Any experts in Latinisms are welcome to enlighten me.

The latest polls this week show Kerry slipping. Among vets he has gone from the mid 40s to the mid 30s, mainly apparently in response to the contretemps over his medals. This is a serious development, though I doubt it's a tipping point, as historian Larry Schweikart contends.

Kerry finally has begun to go on the offense, criticizing President Bush for failing to denounce the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who have promulgated the stories about Kerry's medals. Kathleen Hall Jamieson says flatly in the NYT today that it was a mistake for the campaign to wait so long. I agree. And it's not as if the Kerry campaign was caught by surprise. Conservatives have been railing on his military medals for months, as can be seen in this exchange which took place on HNN in April.

Two quick observations and one long one. One, Vietnam has once again roiled presidential politics. (Won't this ever end?) This is the 4th election in which Vietnam has played a central role. In 1964 the Tonkin Gulf resolution gave LBJ a decisive advantage over Goldwater (would anyone want Goldwater at the helm if we were about to get into a shooting war with Vietnam?) In 1968 Nixon beat Humphry because of Vietnam. In 1992 Bush I almost beat the"draft-dodging" Clinton because of Vietnam (ironic because Bush I was supposed to have put the ghost of Vietnam to rest with our victory in the Gulf War). And now we have this. What? A fourth election turning into a referendum on Vietnam, 30 years after American participation in the war came to an end? Ah, but we lost. That's hard for the country to accept. Not even victory in the Cold War has succeeded in wiping away the stain.

Two, Bush is trying by his manipulation of this issue to turn the election into a referendum on Kerry's character rather than his own handling of the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq. Kerry loses if Bush succeeds in this attempt.

Three, a little historical context. Bush is not reinventing the wheel of politics. Attacking the war record of presidential candidates is an old and vibrant tradition in American politics. In some cases elections have turned on these attacks.

In 1960 Kennedy and Humphry were battling in the West Virginia primary for the Democratic nomination. JFK won in the end, perhaps, because he had had the wisdom to bring in Franklin Roosevelt, Jr. to reassure Protestant voters that Catholic Kennedy could be trusted with power. One of FDR Jr.'s most effective attacks was to smear Humphry as a draft dodger."There's another candidate in your primary," said Roosevelt,"but I don't know where he was in World War II." Bobby Kennedy apparently orchestrated the attacks. Asked to denounce them, Kennedy refused. (Humphry in fact had tried to get into the service, but failed because he could not pass the physical).

In the general election Kennedy ran as a war hero. This was ironic. Though he deserved praise for his courage in the aftermath of the attack on PT 109, it had apparently sunk because he had been inattentive as a commander, as Garry Wills long ago pointed out. JFK himself worried that the events could justify either a medal or a court martial. In the end he got the medal--after his father used his influence.

Kennedy as president tried to get his friend Ben Bradlee to do a story on Nelson Rockefeller's military record--or lack of one."Where was old Nels when you and I were dodging bullets in the Solomon Islands?" he asked one day.

I have drawn these examples of Kennedy's perfidy from It Didn't Start with Watergate, a book written by a rightwing journalist whose goal was to show that long before Nixon politicians played dirty.

Playing dirty--an American tradition. Unfortunately.

Should you pay any attention to the new book, Bush on the Couch, by Dr. Justin Frank?

Frank, a professor of psychiatry at GWU Medical Center, offers a diagnosis so harsh it makes Eric Alterman's book on Bush look tame. I lost count of the psychoses and other ailments Bush is said to be afflicted with, but they include: thought disorder, megalomania, possible dyslexia, ADHD, and even possibly Tourette's syndrome (Bush is said to twitch).

Psychological diagnoses have a bad reputation. Freud, in a book co-authored with the diplomat William C. Bullitt, put Woodrow Wilson on the couch and concluded that because he had a problem with authority derived from mixed emotions toward his father he was fated to sabotage the passage of the Treaty of Versailles in the Senate:

The great streams of libido which sprang from his infantile desires with regard to his father were, indeed, once again in conflict. Because of his reaction-formation against his passivity to his father it was impossible for him, by compromising with [Sen. Henry Cabot] Lodge, to obtain the ratification of the treaty which his passivity to his father demanded. His psychic needs left but one course of action open to him: he had to obtain ratification by crushing Lodge.

Few historians have paid much attention to Freud's analysis. It has seemed to them that the diagnosis was reductive. Might there not have been other reasons for Wilson's approach? He was exhausted. He had been accustomed to getting his way with Congress owing to overwhelming majorities and found it difficult to adjust to the new political realities when his party lost seats at the midterm elections in 1918. He had let the crowds go to his head in Europe.

Frank's account of Bush suffers from similar reductive analysis. He says that Bush was fated to go to war with Iraq to avenge Saddam's attempt on his father's life and simulatneously to best his father, who had failed to remove Saddam. The problem with the analysis is that it may be right or it may be wrong; there's no way to tell.

But several of Frank's main diagnoses seem sound. Bush, despite appearances, is a complicated fellow. He had a difficult relationship with both his mother and father. Both were emotionally absent during his childhood (his father was both emotionally and physically absent; brother Jeb said that they were raised by his mother in a home that was essentially a matriarchy). Barbara Bush, herself the victim of a distant relationship with her own mother, found it difficult to acknowledge pain. She did not attend her own mother's funeral. The day after her six year old child Robin died she and her husband went golfing. After 41 lost the presidency Barbara, the very next day, said, well, that's that, let's move on. Frank suggests that W. suffered intense feelings of remorse and guilt from his sister's death, whom he had not even been told was ill. Unable to openly reveal his emotions he tried, but failed, to ignore them.

His relationship with his father posed different challenges. Following in his father's footsteps he went to Andover and Yale and then plunged headlong into the Texas oil business. But at each stage he demonstrated lesser gifts than his father. His father at Andover had been a star of the baseball team; W became the commissioner of stickball. His father at Yale had studied hard; W became a fraternity cut-up. His father made millions in the oil business; W lost millions of other peoples' money. W's first and only real success prior to his election as governor was his management of the Texas Rangers, which finally gave him, Frank notes in an insightful passage, the right to claim a baseball success larger than his father's.

Affected deeply by his sister's death, resentful toward his unfeeling mother and both in awe of his father and oppressed by his example, Bush took to alcohol to medicate himself.

This has the ring of truth to it. And Frank's diagnosis is even more layered than I am suggesting. Where he goes wrong is in linking specific Bush policies to his childhood experiences and emotional needs. Frank, a medical doctor, seems woefully naive about politics. He can think of no political reason for Bush's embrace of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Instead, he confidently asserts, Bush evidently fears homosexuals because of a latent desire for his father's penis.

I have asked Frank to write an op ed summarizing his analysis of President Bush. I hope he will say yes. We should be encouraged to consider the formative emotional experiences of a president's childhood even if we cannot link those experiences directly to policies they advance in office.

Unfortunately, psychiatrists have so often offered reductive analyses of presidents that their approach has been largely discredited. This is a mistake. One thinks of Edmund Morris's biography of Ronald Reagan. The fundamental fact of Reagan's childhood was his father's alcoholism. Morris barely mentions it and doesn't even bother telling us that Reagan's withdrawal into a dreamy world of myth is characteristic of the children of alcoholics. (In contrast Bill Clinton in his memoir acknowledges the effect of alcohol on his family and suggests how it led him to create a parallel universe. The difference between Reagan and Clinton would seem to be, in part, that one took refuge in a world of myths while the other created two worlds.)

My advice: Go ahead and read Justin Frank; just don't take him too literally.

The latest example of Bush administration myopia is its announcement that it will insist that a new treaty banning the production of weaponized plutonium and uranium be unverifiable.

As the NYT editorialized today:

With talks on the new treaty set to begin later this year, the administration suddenly announced last week that it would insist that no provisions for inspections or verification be included.

Officials claim that they want to prevent other nations from using inspections to nose around American nuclear installations. We want to be able to nose around theirs, of course (vide Iraq, North Korea, etc.), but not the other way around.

This is a betrayal of the spirit of Dwight Eisenhower's Open Skies initiative. In 1954 at a meeting with the Soviets in Geneva Ike stunned the world with a proposal to require the USSR and the US to allow flights overhead so each nation could keep an eye on the other's military build-ups. Historians still debate Ike's motives. Some think it was a PR ploy to show the world amidst the Cold War that the US was sincere about easing tensions; when the USSR turned down the proposal the US gained in the Cold War propaganda war. Other historians insist that Ike was sincere, even though they acknowledge that he had already approved the plan for U2 spy flights over the USSR. His main concern, they argue, was to prevent a nuclear Pearl Harbor. The only way to do that would be to know in advance that the other side was preparing for a nuclear attack. As advisors to the president noted, there were only so many defensive measures that a nation could undertake to protect itself.

Either way, Ike publicly identified the US with an arms control position that celebrated openness as its key characteristic. In the 1980s Ronald Reagan reiterated our commitment to openness by agreeing to inspections of our secret military facilities in Utah and other places. Every so often Soviet inspectors would show up in Salt Lake City to find out if we were abiding by our commitment to destroy certain weapons.

The Bush administration has now rejected this tradition of openness. This is disconcerting. Imagine if the Cold War were still on and the Soviets took the position the US is now taking. We'd be furious and we wouldn't be shy about letting the world know.

We would have been right then. We are wrong now.

Bob Herbert in today's NYT professes to be shocked that it appears that "candidates can't tell voters the truth and still win."

Is he kidding? Did he miss the 1984 election? Dick Cheney says Reagan proved that deficits don't matter. What Reagan really proved was that facts don't matter and that voters don't want the facts, particularly unpleasant facts. Mondale told them taxes would have to go up. They gave him the boot.

I saw Mondale the other day on TV. A reporter asked him if he considered his promise to raise taxes a mistake. Mondale, appearing a bit incensed--he obviously has heard this question before--stood his ground and insisted he was proud of his promise. It was the truth.

After 1984 there's no excuse for any politician or pundit thinking the American people want the truth.

I give a lecture devoted to this theme and it can't be summarized in a short blog entry. But the gist of my comments is that Americans are beholden to myths about themselves and their place in the world for the simple reason that myths are what define who we are and the values we cherish. Unlike the French or the Germans we are not united by a common ancestry. So we huddle around the fireplace at night and tell each other stories: that all men are created equal, that America is a shining city on a hill, and on and on.

The stories are inspirational. I wouldn't want us to give them up in favor of a hard-nosed cynical approach to life. But a little appreciation of the truth would be helpful. But truth is hardly high on the list of national values, despite what Republicans said during the Lewinsky affair when they were shocked--shocked!--that a president would lie to them.

Presidents tell us what they think we want to hear. When they tell us the harsh truths we recoil.

Bob Herbert -- where have you been all these years?