Hard facts in short supply during American election campaign

By ROGER FRANKLIN

If only the press covered United States politics as it does the justice system, Americans could count on having some real news and views to digest before the national jury issues its verdict in November.

When a notorious defendant is charged - O.J., Robert Blake, Michael Jackson - any prosecutor worth his salt will be feeding reporters damning tidbits long before jurors are even chosen. Most of the time, such information is accurate, relevant, and plays a major roll in shaping verdicts.

Politics, however, is different. As this year demonstrates, the wisdom being breathlessly relayed by the boys and girls on the campaign buses has a very short shelf life. Unlike the big court cases, whenever the political press gang settles on a common narrative, perversely unco-operative voters shred the script.

Less than a month ago, for example, the certainty was that the Democratic nomination was Howard Dean's to lose, and few of those trailing the hot-tempered Vermont Governor from Iowa scout hall to New Hampshire coffee shop could imagine him doing so. Now, he's being written off, despite clinging to apparent leads in Oklahoma and several other states.

Before that, it was Wesley Clark's hat fluttering into the ring that turned so many heads. For sure, it would be Dean v Clark, the pundits swore - Dean the angry outsider in a winner-takes-all battle with the retired general, who was thick with his party's hierarchy and backed by the Clintons' spin doctors. CNN pollsters even predicted he would beat Bush by three points come November.

That consensus survived until the little general opened his mouth and the gaffes poured forth. Turns out the man had once been an ardent backer of both Bush and the Iraq war he now claims to have opposed. Since Clark lacks a professional politician's talent for squaring the circle of his many contradictions, he also fell by the wayside.

Now, having risen in Iowa and surged in New Hampshire, it is John Kerry's turn to ride the wave of awesome inevitability. But the prudent punter shouldn't place too big a bet on the prospect, not with so many primaries yet to go. Having been largely dismissed and ignored when the early attention focused on Dean and Clark, the biggest news concerning the Massachusetts senator is that his middle initial is "F", as he points out every time he mounts the stump. John F. Kerry: JFK, get it?

Attention to matters other than his birth certificate will mount now that Kerry has slipped into the pole position and his political machine rolls into the South, where the facts of political life are just a bit different. With the exception of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, both homegrown sons of Dixie, no Democrat has prospered below the Mason-Dixon line since Lyndon Johnson, who came from Texas and knew a thing or two about pickups and gun racks.

At a glance, Kerry's record offers plenty of reasons to believe that his candidacy will be a tough sell, if not in the Southern primaries then certainly in November, when it is not just his party's hard-core faithful who get to vote.

Kerry is against the death penalty, a major liability in a part of America where few object that executions are almost weekly events. He has consistently opposed tax cuts, backs gun control, and has supported gay marriage and third-trimester abortions. And just to round out a list of positions that Southerners consistently reject, he has urged that less money be spent on the Pentagon and the CIA. Well, that's what he was doing before September 11. After the massacres, it was the intelligence community's failure to spot the threat that drew his ire.

And then there is the Botox question. The whisper is that Kerry underwent the cosmetic procedure to reduce his frown lines and crow's feet at the urging of his wife, the notoriously bitchy ketchup heiress Theresa Heinz . "You sure got a perty mouth," was the hillbilly love call in Deliverance, but the thought of a potential Commander in Chief getting beauty treatments probably won't play quite so well with real-life Bubbas.

No problem, insists the wisdom of the moment. Yankee Kerry hooks up with Southerner and fellow candidate John Edwards, and together they lock up both North and South. Last week, as the pundits joined the Kerry chorus, one unnamed Democratic official was quoted as saying that, in lieu of Hillary Clinton being on the ballot, a Dean/Edwards combo was "the dream ticket".

Again, the voters may have other ideas, since Edwards is hard to pin down. Iraq? The North Carolina lawyer was sorta, kinda against it, but still voted to send in the troops, then opposed the $87 billion Bush said he needed to keep them there. As for what should happen next, he reckons it's the United Nations' call - despite the Blue Helmets' reluctance to return and face more Baghdad truck bombs. Then bring in Nato, says Edwards, who pointedly overlooks the fact that 21 of the alliance's 34 member nations already have troops on ground.

Not to worry, responds Edwards, who is just ahead of Al Sharpton in North Carolina and not much better off in his home state, it will all be sorted out when he moves into the White House. In the meantime, he says, the great thing about American democracy is that he gets to talk to common folk.

If you accept that the US faces some monumental issues - Iraq, a spendthrift President and a booming deficit - it's reasonable to conclude that something more than a chat and a photo op might better address the needs of the future. If elections were orchestrated by district attorneys, that might be the case. At least voters would have hard facts and appraisals of character to chew over.