Editorial: Affair claims overshadow bigger issues

Ever since the likely contenders lined up for the race, Senator John Kerry has looked like the only Democrat with a chance of unseating President George W. Bush. For a long while opinion polls favoured the unequivocal opponent of the Iraq war, Howard Dean, but from the moment people started actually voting, in state primary elections, Senator Kerry looked unstoppable. Now, just at the point that he is almost certain to win his party's nomination, he must confront a story that sounds ominously familiar.

An internet site claims he had an affair with a young woman, an intern who had been a journalist with the wire service Associated Press. The named woman, Alex Polier, 24, has said nothing and the senator himself says, "There's nothing to report, nothing to talk about. There's nothing there. There's no story". Well there is a story, whether it is accurate or not, and it comes from the same website, the Drudge Report, that brought the name Monica Lewinski to world attention.

Mr Kerry is going to have to do better than blanket denial. His party will struggle to give its nomination to a candidate under a cloud that, unless it is dispelled, will carry too many reminders of Bill Clinton. Mr Clinton, of course, was elected to the presidency despite rumours of a similar sort, but that should be little consolation to the Kerry campaign.

Americans remember that the President they elected despite such a reputation did indeed besmirch the office with his behaviour in it. While opinion polls suggested the public were surprisingly indulgent of Mr Clinton, it is one thing to accept the character flaws in a sitting President, another thing to elect a repeat performance. The Democratic Party must be counted unlikely to run the risk again.

Unless Mr Kerry can lay this story to rest, he has handed President Bush an advantage beyond the latter's dreams, and just when the President needed it. Mr Bush has been on the defensive in the past few weeks over prewar intelligence on Iraq, having to revise his case for going to war and reluctantly last week appointing a commission of inquiry into the intelligence issues. His approval rating, which was in the high 50s and 60s for most of last year, has sunk about 10 percentage points amid the continuing dissension over Iraq.

The Democrats have added to his trouble lately, resurrecting old claims that Mr Bush had been often absent without leave during his Vietnam-era military service at home in the Texas Air National Guard. In response, the White House has made public the President's service record, which seems not to confirm the claims. But Vietnam is a subject Mr Bush would rather avoid in any contest with Mr Kerry, a decorated veteran of that war who became a leading opponent of it. There are, in any case, far more important matters at stake in this year's United States presidential election than service, or lack of it, in Vietnam, or indeed than marital infidelity. This election should be about the use of American power in the world and the state of the US economy. On both those issues President Bush must answer for actions that he would call daring, others reckless.

He invaded Iraq without provocation, without conclusive evidence of a threat to the US or the world, and without the approval of the United Nations Security Council. On the economic front he inherited a healthy federal Budget surplus and sent it deeply into deficit with tax cuts, heavy military spending and subsidies to farmers, steelmakers and the like.

He has proven to be a President who subjugates all considerations to US strategic power, including trade, on which he pursues bilateral deals with military allies more vigorously than the global negotiations that have stalled on his watch. Mr Kerry has impressed as a leader of more international responsibility, though his fiscal voting record in the Senate is a worry.

This US election is more important than most for all other countries. It would be a pity if it turned at this stage on a personal indiscretion.