Bush has achieved something unique in TV personas, managing on occasion to come across as arrogant and terrified at the same time. In his eyes one can see fear when he struggles -- often vainly -- for an apt word or phrase or just a little burst of coherence. And yet he's also possessed of an almost Napoleonic pomposity when performing presidential duties, such as thrusting out his chest and strutting up to a podium. He tried on different personalities in the presidential debates, sometimes attempting gravitas, sometimes speaking down to the audience as if it consisted entirely of third-graders, and then in the last debate turning into Laughing Boy, finding his opponent's remarks to be so darn funny he just couldn't contain himself.

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So whom do the Democrats nominate to go up against Bush, this man who all but turns blank under the allegedly revealing rays of a television camera? John Kerry, a man with less channelable charisma than Wolf Blitzer. Something is wrong when, the minute a candidate is chosen as his party's nominee, he is shunted off to some mysterious laboratory in a valiant if vain effort to make him less stiff (the one word that always comes up when people describe Kerry) and spooky, to make him somehow camera-worthy in time for the convention.

The number of wrongheaded decisions from the Kerry imagemakers would appear to be enormous, including the photos that showed this oh-so-serious man of the people, this regular guy who spoke repeatedly of his devotion to the middle class, merrily wind-surfing in the waters off Nantucket, or Martha's Vineyard, or some other place where Mr. and Mrs. America never go, which is part of what makes the rich people feel so safe and comfy there. He looked nearly as preposterous on a hunting trip that looked more like a GQ fashion shoot.