Shelby Steele, a fellow of the Hoover Institution, and author of A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America (Harper Collins, 1998), in the WSJ (March 18, 2004):

It is always both a little flattering and more than a little annoying to blacks when other groups glibly invoke the civil rights movement and all its iconic imagery to justify their agendas for social change. I will never forget, nor forgive, the feminist rallying cry of the early '70s:"Woman as nigger." Here upper-middle-class white women -- out of what must have been an impenetrable conviction in their own innocence -- made an entire race into a metaphor for wretchedness in order to steal its thunder.

And now gay marriage is everywhere being defined as a civil rights issue. In San Francisco, gay couples on the steps of city hall cast themselves as victims of bigotry who must now be given the"right" to legally marry in the name of"equality" and"social justice." In the media, these couples have been likened to the early civil rights heroes whose bravery against police dogs and water hoses pushed America into becoming a better country."I don't want to be on the wrong side of history," a San Francisco radio host said about gay marriage."Maybe we're looking at thousands of Rosa Parks over at city hall."

So, dressing gay marriage in a suit of civil rights has become the standard way of selling it to the broader public. Here is an extremely awkward issue having to do with the compatibility of homosexuality and the institution of marriage. But once this issue is buttoned into a suit of civil rights, neither homosexuality nor marriage need be discussed. Suddenly only equity and fairness matter. And this turns gay marriage into an ersatz civil rights struggle so that dissenters are seen as Neanderthals standing in the schoolhouse door, fighting off equality itself. Yet all this civil rights camouflage is, finally, a bait-and-switch: When you agree to support fairness, you end up supporting gay marriage.

But gay marriage is simply not a civil rights issue. It is not a struggle for freedom. It is a struggle of already free people for complete social acceptance and the sense of normalcy that follows thereof -- a struggle for the eradication of the homosexual stigma. Marriage is a goal because, once open to gays, it would establish the fundamental innocuousness of homosexuality itself. Marriage can say like nothing else that sexual orientation is an utterly neutral human characteristic, like eye-color. Thus, it can go far in diffusing the homosexual stigma.

Thomas H. Lipscomb, in Oregon Magazine (March 15, 2004):

The anti-war group that John Kerry was the principal spokesman for debated and voted on a plot to assassinate politicians who supported the Vietnam War. 

    Mr. Kerry denies being present at the November 12-15, 1971, meeting in Kansas City of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and says he quit the group before the meeting. But according to the current head of Missouri Veterans for Kerry, Randy Barnes, Mr. Kerry,who was then 27,was at the meeting, voted against the plot, and then orally resigned from the organization. 

    Mr. Barnes was present as part of the Kansas City host chapter for the 1971 meeting and recounted the incident in a phone interview with The New York Sun this week. In addition to Mr. Barnes's recollection placing Mr. Kerry at the Kansas City meeting, another Vietnam veteran who attended the meeting, Terry Du-Bose, said that Mr. Kerry was there. 

    There are at least two other independent corroborations that the antiwar group Vietnam Veterans Against the War, of which Mr. Kerry was the most prominent national spokesman, considered assassinating American political leaders who favored the war. 

    Gerald Nicosia's 2001 book “Home To War” reports that one of the key leaders of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Scott Camil,“proposed the assassination of the most hard-core conservative members of Congress,as well as any other powerful, intractable opponents of the antiwar movement.”The book reports on the Kansas City meeting at which Mr.Camil's plan was debated and then voted down. 

    Mr. Nicosia's book was widely praised by reviewers as varied as General Harold Moore, author of “We Were Soldiers”; Gloria Emerson, who had been a New YorkTimes reporter during the Vietnam War, and leftist Howard Zinn. Mr. Kerry himself stated in a blurb on the cover that the book “ties together the many threads of a difficult period.” Mr. Kerry hosted a party for the book in the Hart Senate Office Building that was televised on C-SPAN. 

    Another source is an October 20,1992, oral history interview of Scott Camil on file at the University of Florida Oral History Archive. In it,Mr.Camil speaks of his plan for an alternative to Mr.Kerry's idea of symbolically throwing veterans' medals over the fence onto the steps of the Capitol during the Dewey Canyon III demonstration in Washington in April of 1971. 

    “My plan was that, on the last day we would go into the [congressional] offices we would schedule the most hardcore hawks for last — and we would shoot them all,” Mr. Camil told the Oral History interviewer. “I was serious.” 

    In a phone interview with the Sun this week, Mr. Camil did not dispute either the account in the Nicosia book or in the oral history.He said he plans to accept an offer by the Florida Kerry organization to become active in Mr. Kerry's presidential campaign. Campaign aides to Mr. Kerry invited Mr.Camil to a meeting for the senator in Orlando last week, but they did not meet directly. 

    Mr. Camil was known to colleagues in the anti-war movement as “Scott the Assassin.” Mr. Camil told The New York Sun he got the name in Vietnam for “sneaking down to the Vietnamese villages at night and killing people.” 

Crystia Freeland, writing for the Financial Times (London) (March 13, 2004)

According to a popular Russian saying,"eating increases the appetite". This aphorism is being often applied these days to President Vladimir Putin, who faces tomorrow's ballot more like a monarch approaching a coronation than an incumbent facing the polls. In 1999, when Mr Putin emerged as the Yeltsin clan's chosen successor, he was a relatively obscure apparatchik, whose primary qualification for office, as far as his patrons were concerned, was his demonstrated loyalty to previous masters, even after they had left office.

But his political vision was a mystery. As Sergei Parkhomenko, a leading Russian journalist, put it ahead of Mr Putin's first test at the ballot box in 2000, the candidate was like an Asian bride, whose face would be revealed to her bridegroom only after the wedding. When the veil was lifted, Russia discovered a leader whose essential political beliefs were the exact opposite of his predecessor's. Whereas Boris Yeltsin's impulse was to free things, Mr Putin's is to bring things back under control. He has re-established the Kremlin's grip over national television, brought elected regional governors firmly to heel and decimated organised political opposition.

As he has devoured each additional morsel of freedom from the Yeltsin years, Mr Putin's appetite has increased. One stimulus has been his discovery that the forces that might have chilled Russia's flirtation with authoritarianism - western governments, foreign investors, liberal Moscow elites - have been quiescent or even supportive.

A turning point was this autumn's imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian oil baron. In the tense months ahead of his arrest, many wondered whether the president would dare seize Russia's richest businessman. Mr Khodorkovsky believed - and even told me - it would not be easy for Mr Putin to take that final step; even some of his fiercest critics agreed, warning the Kremlin to be wary of alienating the western investors Mr Khodorkovsky had courted and the Russian intellectuals he had financed. But Mr Putin dared - and discovered that both opponents were illusory...

...Many western investors, too, have sympathy with Mr Putin. The Russian stock market is buoyant and western fund managers have assiduously promoted the argument that a strong populist government, untroubled by the niceties of democracy, might be just what Russia needs to reform its economy further .

The problem is that there is no guarantee that authoritarianism, particularly Mr Putin's brand of it, will be any better for Russia than the riotous pluralism that preceded it. Yegor Gaidar, Russia's pre-eminent economist, points out that privatised sectors of the economy, like the oil business, have far outstripped industries such as Gazprom, the state-controlled gas giant, which remain firmly under the Kremlin's control. Privatisation was ugly and unfair, he concedes, but private property does actually work.

And while Mr Putin clearly understands power, he shows few signs of creating an impartial, rules-based structure to enable the economy to develop freely. Indeed, Mr Putin's tools for reasserting authority depend on the economy remaining corrupt and subject to the arbitrary application of the law. Mr Putin inherited a country with a contradictory and incomplete legal framework, a crazy-quilt of Soviet-era and free-market legislation in which every businessman is a potential criminal. That sounds like a bad thing - and, for the economy, it is. But for Mr Putin, it is a vital instrument of control.

Mikhail Fridman, the oligarch who brokered Russia's biggest foreign investment project - BP's Dollars 6.75bn (Pounds 3.7bn) oil deal - and an adept navigator of this perilous environment, told me this was the traditional relationship between the state and the individual dating back to the tsarist era:"Karamzin (the 18th-century Russian historian) said the severity of Russian laws is compensated by the fact that it is not obligatory to follow them. The state establishes rules of the game according to which it is impossible to live. But somehow, everyone lives - but by breaking the rules. And so everyone feels himself to be a criminal. For that reason, it is always easy for the state." Mr Putin likes to talk about the need to restore law and order in Russia. It is the sort of milk and motherhood promise that - obviously - must be a good thing. But in a land where everyone is a criminal in waiting, the"order" thus imposed may well be less just and less prosperous than the chaos it replaces.

Paula Span, in the Washington Post (March 11, 2004):

The number of military families that oppose Operation Iraqi Freedom, though never measured, is probably small. But a nascent antiwar movement has begun to find a toehold among parents, spouses and other relatives of active-duty, reserve and National Guard troops.

A group called Military Families Speak Out -- which will figure prominently in marches and vigils at Dover Air Force Base, Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the White House next week -- says more than 1,000 families have signed up online and notes that new members join daily. ...

Of course, most people with relatives in wartime service, a group historically more likely to express approval than distrust, don't feel the same way. Though public support for the war was found to have declined in the most recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, most military families say their support for the action and the president remains unwavering....

Yet even if the opponents represent only a sliver of military families, the emergence of organized antiwar opinion among this traditionally conservative group is something the country hasn't seen before, several historians and political scientists believe.

During the Vietnam War, a handful of Gold Star Mothers who had lost sons in the war marched with Vietnam Vets Against the War and other antiwar groups, says David Cline, now president of Veterans for Peace and an early member of Vietnam Vets. But there were only at most a couple of dozen such mothers, by his recollection, and they never created a nationwide network. The National League of Families, formed to bring political attention to prisoners of war and troops missing in action, had considerable influence but was not critical of the war itself.

And those activists, like Vietnam Vets Against the War as a national group, arose years after the first American losses in Vietnam , by which point a considerable part of the public had already lost faith in the war. For military families to organize against the Iraq war beforehand and during its first year, Cline observes, is like " Vietnam on speed."

"This is unprecedented," says Ronald H. Spector, a military historian at George Washington University . "If military families are having serious doubts about the war and don't see a reason for their relatives to go over there, that's quite significant."

Jonathan Freedland, writing for the Guardian (London) (March 10, 2004)

Perhaps we shouldn't read too much into the slogans emblazoned on high-street leisurewear, but the social historians of the future might unearth some interesting nuggets if they try. The FCUK brand will tell its own story of loosening mores and the enduring British tradition of sniggering at rude words. Duffer will intrigue: what kind of people were happy to walk around with the equivalent of dimwit written across their chests? And finally there will be great interest in the T-shirts and tracksuit tops whose backs bore the letters CCCP. What exactly did this invocation of the Soviet past signify?

The answer will be that it declared the Soviet Union deader than dead; so over that its motifs and iconography were reduced to the"ironic" or kitsch. Mention Red Square and, according to one survey, 92% of British 18- to 24-year-olds will recognise it - as the brand-name of a vodka-based alcopop.

These words used to scare. For the decades of the cold war, merely to mention Russia was to conjure fears of the superpower enemy, its nuclear arsenal aimed at us. From 1945 anxious western eyes stared at Moscow, watching its every move. The fear lasted for decades and sank deep into the culture: in the mid-1980s, Sting sang earnestly of his hope that"the Russians love their children too".

It's a different world now. On Sunday, Russians will vote in a presidential election that has received less media attention in Britain than the first round of Democratic voting in the hog-state of Iowa. The incumbent, Vladimir Putin, sacked his whole cabinet last month - and barely made a dent on the front pages.

Maybe that's because this is hardly a close contest. Putin polls close to 80%, while none of his rivals breaks out of single digits. He controls state television, whose criticism-free news bulletins are a Soviet throwback:"Today the president met with the defence minister of Kazakhstan. . ."A Putin cult of personality is building, with all-girl pop groups singing odes to his manhood and even manufacturers of toothpicks decorating their product with his face.

"It's wrong to call it an election," says Boris Berezovsky, one of the clutch of Yeltsin-era billionaire oligarchs who made a fortune from the great sell-off of Russian national assets, now living in exile in London."It's an election in the Soviet sense: the Russian people have no choice."

Berezovksky himself is following the election closely, of course. From his swanky office in Mayfair, he watches the Russian news on satellite TV, doubtless dreaming of the day he will overcome his enemies back home - those who say he fleeced the state and ran - and returns to Moscow as president. Yet even he seems to accept that Russia is not what it was. The boardroom corridor is lined with pictures of Russian faces from the past: Lenin, Yeltsin, even Yuri Andropov. But they, like those CCCP shirts, give off the whiff of nostalgia and irony - as if the expected response is a chuckle.

The implication is that Russia may still matter intensely to Russians, but the rest of us have gently forgotten about it. We cared when the world was divided between two superpowers, but now Russia has plunged to the middle of the global league-table and only specialists need pay attention. Is this judgment fair, if harsh - or are we making a mistake we may live to regret?

The arguments for apathy are strong. Russia is certainly a punier force than it was: its empire has shrunk to both the west and the south. In one direction, it has seen former satellite nations -Hungary, Poland and what used to be East Germany and Czechoslovakia - swallowed up into the European Union. From the other, it can only watch as the central Asian republics - Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and the rest of the"stans" - fall under US influence. Since 9/11, and in return for a free hand in Chechnya, Putin has acquiesced in America's installation of military bases in a region that was once an integral part of the USSR and an undisputed part of Moscow's sphere.

In tune with this changing geography, Russia has accepted a diminished role for itself. It has given up the peacekeeping role it fought so hard to acquire in the Balkans, has no role in Iraq and has let China take the lead on North Korea while the Europeans deal with Iran. It all smacks of a nation in retreat.

Economically it does not pack much of a punch either. The Putin years have seen growth, but the numbers are artificial - pumped up by the high price of oil which accounts for up to a quarter of the Russian economy. The country is depopulating, which dampens its future prospects. Even if Russia doubled its GDP over the next decade it would still reach no higher than the present-day level of Portugal.

Politically, too, those who had high hopes for post-Communist Russia could be forgiven for walking away now. Russians seem to have accepted what one analyst calls"authoritarian modernisation", a trade-off of democratic rights and civil liberties in return for prosperity, trusting the all-powerful leader to drive through the changes that Russia needs.

Despite all this, it would be a mistake to change channels and tune out of what is happening in Moscow. For Russia still holds some pretty serious cards. It retains the nuclear armoury of the bygone era. Berezovsky jokes that even if not all of the weapons work - to Putin's great embarrassment, at a recent military display two ballistic missiles failed to launch and another went wildly off course - some do, and it only takes one to bring Armageddon. A reckless future president could trigger disaster; more likely, a disenchanted soldier or scientist could sell the nukes on his watch.

Russia has a permanent seat on the UN security council, which counts for something; and, inflated prices aside, it also sits on vast oil and gas reserves which Europe, especially, badly needs. As America's own supply of fossil fuels runs dry, Moscow will look ever stronger.

The country's mineral wealth, coupled with its educated population, means Russia could yet break out as an economic power; a Slavic tiger, enjoying the blend of liberal economics and strict politics that has worked wonders for South Korea and China.

Above all, there is the geography. Look at the map, advises Berezovsky:"Russia is at the intersection of west and east, and east and south." It squats over the frontline in the putative clash of civilisations; and it looks out on the region where the"war on terror" could be decided - Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan.

What if Russia was to lease to China part of the Siberian border region, much as China leased Hong Kong to Britain, wonders Berezovsky? That would change everything. As he puts it, rather in the manner of a Bond villain:"Whoever controls Eurasia controls the world."

Russia's past may be high-street kitsch and its present may be strictly for the inside pages, but that cannot be true forever. Russia is too big to disappear from view. We need to keep watch.

Patrick J. Kiger, writing for the Los Angeles Times (March 7, 2004)

English writer W. Somerset Maugham published a 1949 essay in which he pondered whether Dostoevski or El Greco was the greater artistic genius. He reluctantly came down on the side of El Greco after deciding that 16th century Spain was a more fertile environment for the flowering of inspiration than czarist Russia. One can only speculate about the precise number of revolutions per minute that Maugham could achieve in his crypt were he somehow to gaze upon the cover of the July 24, 2003, issue of Rolling Stone magazine that proclaimed"The Genius of Eminem."...

...We ought to consider ourselves blessed. Forget about ancient Athens, China during the Tang dynasty, Florence during the Renaissance, Paris in the 1920s and Greenwich Village in the 1950s. We live in an age peopled by more artistic geniuses than in any other moment in history, though the bar is set considerably lower than in the past.

As recently as the mid-20th century, qualifying as an artistic genius meant belonging to a rarified elite--Picasso, Hemingway, Stravinsky, Pollock, Frank Lloyd Wright, Miles Davis, et al.--who created masterpieces that changed the way people thought about the world, and in the process lived existences infused with drama. But that sort of resume is no longer necessary, thanks to the evolution of pop culture and the explosive growth of media hype...

...AThough we have more supposed artistic geniuses than ever, their output, oddly, is increasingly middling. What's happened in the last couple of decades is that puffery seems to have surpassed prodigy. Here's a test: Try to think of a recently produced book, movie, poem, pop song or artwork that you could imagine being appreciated 50 or 100 years from now, the way we still gravitate to"The Starry Night,""Citizen Kane" or"Kind of Blue.".../p>

...The result is a world in which you don't have to dare to be great, in which a swath of humanity, wide enough to stretch from Frank Gehry to Britney Spears, shares the lofty mantle of genius. Gehry, the architect known for playfully unconventional designs, at least approximates the old-fashioned concept of genius-hood. But Spears? The barely clad, histrionic ex-teen diva whose voice is so thin that some speculate she even lip-syncs interviews? All the same, she's also a genius, according to a concert reviewer from the New York Times, who observed in 2001 that Spears was"an artist whose genius is not for singing--indeed, this performance did not suffer at all from the music's being its least important element--but for teasing out the cravings and fears that haunt the modern world." (If that makes her sound a bit like Edvard Munch with decolletage, remember that it probably was written on deadline.)...

...Humans have always argued about what constitutes artistic greatness, and the source of genius. The Romans believed artistic ability came from a supernatural being, the"genius," that guarded each man. The 18th century essayist Joseph Addison decided that there were two sorts of geniuses--those who'd diligently worked to learn their art, such as English poet John Milton, and the natural, untutored, compulsive virtuosity of a William Shakespeare, the sort of savant who created great art as easily as other men breathed.

More recently, developmental psychologist William Therivel, author of the three-volume treatise"The GAM/DP Theory of Personality and Creativity," has argued that genius is a combination of genetics and assistance (i.e., educational opportunities, supportive families and intellectual mentors). There's also the unexpected dash of misfortune or trauma that forces the budding wunderkind to forsake conventional beliefs, taboos and methods of problem-solving that inhibit most of us but allows him or her to see the world in a startlingly different way. The final ingredient is a social milieu in which power is divided rather than absolute, so the artist can play the iconoclast without being crushed like a bug. It results in what is called a" challenged personality," an artistically gifted person who pursues that vision with a single-minded aggressiveness that borders on antagonism.

Therivel cites Mozart, whose talented but unsuccessful musician father made sure that his son had opportunities to study in Venice and Vienna, as an example of a genius who scored high in all GAM/DP categories. In contrast, rival 18th century composer Antonio Salieri came from an apparently less talented gene pool and had fewer educational opportunities, which may be why he's remembered mostly as the jealous, vengeful schmo in the film"Amadeus."

Nevertheless, the concept of the innate, unfettered artistic genius persists, perhaps because it has given generations of writers, painters and musicians an excuse to frequent brothels, smoke opium and wreck hotel rooms in pursuit of their muse. ...

Mark Trahant, in the Seattle Times (Feb. 22, 2004):

It's about a war president who went too far. He divided the country between those who favored military engagement and those who thought the president had been dishonest about his very reason for war.

One member of Congress was particularly troubled. The Illinois member, soon to become a Republican, rose on the House floor to express his displeasure; the president should not have the power to invade a country based on something that might happen or be allowed"to make war at pleasure."

The country was divided ideologically, too. When the war was first explained, Congress voted to support the president. But as time went on, Congress was more and more divided. One resolution, passing by a single vote, denounced the conflict as"a war unnecessarily and unconstitutionally begun by the President of the United States." Outside of Washington, D.C., the country was stuck in division between what we now call the red and the blue states.

The year was 1848. The war was against Mexico. The president was James K. Polk. And the dissenting member of Congress was one Abraham Lincoln. His stand in Illinois was so unpopular that it was said to have"retired Lincoln to private life."

A couple of weeks ago, I picked up a new biography,"James K. Polk," by John Seigenthaler.

Over the years, John and I have had great conversations about Polk's mentor, Andrew Jackson."Old Hickory" was, in many ways, the first"American" president (before that, presidents were more European), whose confiscation of Americans Indian homelands is unequaled. It was also an era when politics was particularly passionate and nasty.

So I was looking forward to reading about the politician they called"Young Hickory." But as I read more about the war against Mexico -- and the divisions it caused -- my mind kept seeing today's headlines.

I know history never offers perfect parallels, but the stories told do help us understand our national character.

Ours is not the only generation divided by war. Some memories are still fresh, such as Vietnam, while others are deeply planted, rarely part of our national discourse.

Yet it was the Mexican War -- and the divisions it exacerbated -- that inspired the dissent of Abraham Lincoln, Henry David Thoreau's"Civil Disobedience" and Ralph Waldo Emerson. ...

Delia M. Rios, for the Newhouse News Service (March 5, 2004):

Is he "presidential" or isn't he?

In important ways, the campaign for the White House -- the debates, the ads, the machinations of the Republican and Democratic parties, the millions of dollars -- all come down to that question....

Only 42 men have held the nation's highest office. To be mentioned in the same company as the four enshrined on Mount Rushmore -- Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and T.R., the first Roosevelt called by his initials -- is intoxicating indeed. But what is it that gives Kerry, in the eyes of some Americans, that presidential aura?

What, for that matter, gives it to George Bush? The current commander in chief won the Oval Office in 2000 with only 48 percent of the popular vote. But whatever happens in November, history will record that after Sept. 11, Bush sustained Dwight Eisenhower-like approval ratings longer than Eisenhower himself.

Lyndon Johnson, as beleaguered a leader as any, said outright what the others in his exclusive club must have felt: "The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was; and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands."

The history of the office weighs on them, as do their own expectations of being the right kind of president. "They carry this vision with them; they're not outside of it," said Harry Rubenstein, curator of the Smithsonian exhibit "The American Presidency: A Glorious Burden."

Every four years, the voters make their judgments: Is he or isn't he? The standards are not immutable.

Edmund Muskie's 1972 bid faltered after he appeared to shed a single tear in public. But when Bush choked back tears in the Oval Office after terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a remote Pennsylvania field, no one questioned his manliness.

Elizabeth Dole's run in 2000 and the tireless speculation about Hillary Rodham Clinton's ambitions have broadened the gender parameters.

All those "Deaniacs" saw something presidential in Howard Dean. However, when the former Vermont governor wanted to take his disintegrating campaign on to Wisconsin after his screeching concession speech in Iowa, which even Dean conceded was not presidential, labor leader Gerald McEntee called him "nuts."

Today's candidates engage in salesmanship that would have appalled earlier presidents. Kerry was photographed bowling with oranges on his campaign plane, a way of humanizing himself for voters. George Washington, on the other hand, "icily removed" an associate's arm from his shoulder after he "greeted Washington like an old drinking partner," historian H.W. Brands wrote.

"Every conceivable kind of man has been president," said David McCullough, author of "Truman" and "John Adams." The presidency is so impossibly complex that perhaps no one is of the right caliber, he said.

So how have we done in matching candidate to job?

"I'd say the batting average is well over .500," McCullough said. "But it's not a foolproof intuition."

Herbert Hoover, as McCullough noted, was "a five-star success" in all he did. But he failed a country beset by the Great Depression. Harry Truman, in his loud Hawaiian shirts, was roundly thought to be too small for the job, even vulgar. But he surprised America.

Calvin Coolidge, sporting a 10-gallon hat, rode horseback up Mount Rushmore in August 1927 to dedicate "a cornerstone laid by the hand of the Almighty." But the presidents immortalized there were not gods.

"Because they were human," McCullough said, "they had the capacity to do the unselfish thing, to do the noble thing, to rise to the occasion under extreme adversity and to think of the best interests of the nation."

Whether a candidate is presidential mirrors the debate over presidential greatness: One concerns hopes, the other a job completed.

Lou Cannon's biography of Ronald Reagan is subtitled "The Role of a Lifetime," alluding to Reagan's Hollywood career. But the analogy offers a helpful framework for considering other presidents, too.

"It was commonly said that he looked and acted like a president," presidential scholar Fred Greenstein said of the 40th president. "He came in after the public was underwhelmed by Jimmy Carter and Gerry Ford, and had bottomed out on the Nixon and Johnson presidencies."

Reagan's early political idol, Franklin Roosevelt, also looked the part. So did Woodrow Wilson; his closet, still immaculately kept in his S Street house in Washington, testifies to that. The 6-foot-tall, perfect size 42 president was pronounced the best-dressed man at the Paris Peace Conference ending World War I. The ability to convey this stature is what Greenstein, author of "The Presidential Difference," means when he notes talk that "Kerry looks ready to be put on Mount Rushmore."

"I think gravitas is the common denominator," Greenstein says.

Harry Rubenstein suspects what we're really looking for is the mythic George Washington, a strong personality who has "weathered the storm."

To these qualities, McCullough adds common sense and the ability to work hard, do one's best, and own up to mistakes -- as well as a talent for language that, if not eloquent, is forceful and believable.

We want presidents to relish the job. Theodore Roosevelt did. "The country loved that about him, and because he was having a good time they felt they were having a good time," McCullough said.

Bush loves being president, too; he has unabashedly said so. In this contest, he's running on his stewardship of the country as a wartime president, while Kerry brings his reputation as a Vietnam war hero and his Senate experience.

Charlie Cook, in the NYT (March 9, 2004)

After the initial stir, Ralph Nader's entry into the presidential campaign has been widely dismissed as the folly of an over-the-hill egomaniac. While Mr. Nader's critics might be right about his character, a look at the current polls and the election results from 2000 show that his independent candidacy cannot be ignored. And while I agree with the conventional wisdom that he will get far fewer votes than the 2.7 percent of the electorate he received four years ago, the race between President Bush and John Kerry may very well be so close that even a declawed Ralph Nader could tip the election to the incumbent.

Remember that Mr. Nader, running as the Green Party nominee, cost Al Gore two states, Florida and New Hampshire, either of which would have given the vice president a victory in 2000. In Florida, which George W. Bush carried by 537 votes, Mr. Nader received nearly 100,000 votes. In New Hampshire, which Mr. Bush won by 7,211 votes, Mr. Nader pulled in more than 22,000. National exit polls by the Voter News Service showed that had Mr. Nader not run, 47 percent of his supporters would have voted for Al Gore, while only 21 percent would have voted for Mr. Bush.

Recent national polls suggest that a similar dynamic may play out this time around. While surveys that test a two-way contest between President Bush and Senator Kerry generally show the senator ahead by a few points, those that add Mr. Nader to the mix put the race at a dead heat — or they give the president a narrow edge. A national survey last week by The Associated Press and Ipsos Public Affairs showed the president garnering 46 percent, Senator Kerry 45 percent and Mr. Nader 6 percent.

That poll, which was taken only a week and a half after Mr. Nader dropped his bombshell, likely overstates the support he will carry into November. After all, the circumstances are very different from what they were in 2000. Back then, many moderates and liberals were ambivalent about the Clinton-Gore administration; what's more, George W. Bush was well-positioned as a relatively unthreatening" compassionate conservative." To the independent-minded voters on the left who fled to Mr. Nader, the choice between Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore just wasn't all that stark.

Today, Mr. Bush is a far more polarizing figure, with former Nader supporters among his most vociferous detractors. My hunch is that some of the most miserable people in America are the 97,488 Floridians who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000. Thus it seems reasonable that, nationwide, Mr. Nader will garner just half or even a third of his support from last time.

Even so, however, he may still be able to tilt the election to the Republicans.