There was Dick Cheney speaking to an NRA crowd last week, firming up the base, getting in the administration's favorite Kerry dig: Kerry could try to "explain or explain away all he wants" his vote to authorize the Iraq war, but such vacillation, was, to Mr. Cheney's way of thinking, unbecoming in a man who would be Commander in Chief.

Incredibly, Kerry has allowed this issue to remain an issue, via his thread-the-needle, what-I-really-meant parsings ever since his former primary opponents started lobbing his war vote at him, now continuing to allow it after the GOP has taken it up, using it as the polishing cloth to burnish up their frame around Kerry's flip-flop image.

Incredible because this was, and is, an issue easily dealt with. When Cheney demands to know how Kerry can justify his shameful, unmanly, indecisive, poll-driven equivocation on the war -- how it is that he now opposes what he once obviously supported -- he need only reply as follows:

"Because you lied to me, Dick. Remember? The White House sent its managers to Congress before the vote, and they briefed the House and Senate Intelligence committees on the dire threat of Saddam. The reconstituted nuclear program. The mushroom clouds that would be appearing over New York and Washington in a few years. The lie you were telling the American people in general terms, you told us with specific, impressive-sounding statistics and authoritative reports -- that legendary 'bad intelligence.' It was on that basis and that basis alone -- the basis of imminent threat to America from weapons of mass destruction -- that my colleagues and I voted to give your boss the authority to invade. Now we know better.

"I accept my share of responsibility for the thousands who have since died and are still dying in an elective war that had nothing to do with the war on terrorism but which you and your fellow extremists at the Project for a New American Century had been lusting after since 1992, a war you wanted so badly you lied to Congress and the American people to get it, you dark and terrible man. I was not cynical enough. I know I must make amends for my mistake. But first, come November, the American people must fix another mistake."

Scratch one campaign issue for the Bush re-election team.

Will Kerry ever say anything like it? Or will he continue uttering the careful, measured statements of a major-party candidate seeking swing voters? It's the kind of thing that makes you wish Howard Dean were still in the running, keeping Kerry combative. Failing that outside influence, you have to hope that at some point Bush-Cheney will shove Kerry in the chest once too often, apply an excess of Dutch rubs, noogies and wedgies, and Kerry will stop running for Ambassador to the Court of Saint James; will finally arise from the playground tarmac, rely on instinct, let his fingers form into fists, and figure out what it is that people vote for.

Andrew Christie is an environmental activist in San Luis Obispo, CA

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