Shut Up About Vietnam Already...

...Clinton says to Kerry...

It's significant that this conversation merited an article in the NYT. The Democratic power base is worried about the Kerry campaign: this is designed to assure them that their best politician is on the case.

But read the article carefully and notice the following lines:

Mr. Kerry's aides emphasized that this was an expansion of the staff for the fall campaign and did not represent another upheaval of the Kerry campaign.

Members of both camps played down any suggestion of a Clinton takeover of a troubled campaign and insisted there was no tension between the two groups.

People close to Mr. Kerry said he was receptive to the counsel and was moving to widen his circle of advisers in the face of mounting concern among prominent Democrats about the potency of Mr. Bush's campaign.

Mr. Kerry's aides insisted that the Clinton advisers were augmenting the staff as it headed into a difficult period, and did not represent another instance in which Mr. Kerry was shaking up his campaign staff.

Still, some Democrats described what was taking place as a slow-motion shake-up as Mr. Clinton's former advisers assume increasingly powerful roles.

The Kerry campaign has become roiled in recent days by criticism - from inside and outside - of its decision to initially resist responding to the attacks on Mr. Kerry's war record by a group of veterans.

Mr. Devine said any lack of clarity of Mr. Kerry's message was due to the campaign's running few advertisements in the past five weeks. He said the polls are showing a downturn they always planned for.

This is "panic" story - plain and simple. The authors try to put a positive spin on a decidedly negative point, but when you remove the fluff essentially what remains is what I've quoted above: Kerry's campaign is going down in flames, but Bill Clinton and his crew are going to try to put out the fire...

Helpful hint for the Clinton crew: the people willing to believe that the president is an inveterate liar are already in Kerry's camp, you're just going to push your candidate off the deep end in the polls by encouraging him to wade deeper into that fever swamp.