In two weeks, what will probably be the last chance for George Bush to change the dynamic of the Presidential election will occur in New York City, the site of the Republican Convention. Since John Kerry clinched his party's nomination in March, there has been a steady, relentless trend in the national polls giving him between a two and seven point lead, a trend that hardened after his convention last month. Kerry not only leads Bush in every state captured by Al Gore in 2000, he continues to lead in almost every "purple" state that Bush narrowly carried last time, such as Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, New Hampshire, Arkansas and Missouri. In fact, Kerry is practically tied with the President in a number of states that cannot reasonably be considered part of the Democratic base, including North Carolina, Tennessee, Colorado, Arizona and Virginia; unless the situation on the ground changes, Kerry may well capture over 400 electoral votes, something that has been accomplished by a Democrat only once in the last 60 years, as well as sweeping the Democrats into power in both houses of Congress.

Of course, the first Tuesday in November is an eternity away, and the polls can shift dramatically from now until the polls open, so Kerry supporters should feel far from complacent. Because of his unpopularity, Bush as an excellent chance to get what eluded Kerry, a significant post-convention bounce, and at least temporarily alter the dynamics of the race. Whether that bounce has any durability, though, may have been hurt by the President's sluggish performance on the campaign trail since Kerry was nominated. Instead of providing the electorate with a compelling reason to stay the course, Bush's campaign has been diverted rather foolishly by ephemera such as the attacks on Kerry's Vietnam service, and the pointless negativity of last week's speech by Dick Cheney on the subject of "sensitivity" in foreign policy, a charge that ended up becoming a public relations disaster when it turned out the President had used the exact same word. At a time when he should be building up his positives leading into a make-or-break convention, and holding off the attacks until September, Bush is only reaffirming why much of Christendom views him as being one of the biggest a-holes on the planet.

A case in point is the latest blogospheric obsession, the allegations raised by some of Bush's supporters that Kerry's war record was not all that it seemed. While this issue may resonate with the armchair warriors, envious of Kerry's willingness to sacrifice for his country even when he didn't approve of the policy, it simply isn't an important issue for people concerned about whether they will have a job next year, or if their sons and daughters are going to be sent to die on some ideologue's crusade. And even if every charge made by the "Swift Boat" vets was plausible (and as shown here and here, there is a good reason why the recovered memory of "witnesses" some 35 years after the fact tends to be less reliable than contemporareneous accounts of the same incidents), one is still left with the reality that John Kerry went to Vietnam, while most of his counterparts didn't. Focusing on Kerry's service, even in the most negative manner possible, still leads to a comparison with Bush's history during that period, and that is comparison that cannot help but benefit the Senator from Massachusetts; hence, the polls taken over the last two weeks have seen a strengthening of Kerry's lead, rather than any perceptible movement towards the President.

Even more pathetic has been the intense focus over whether Kerry ever set foot in Cambodia back in the day. For those of you who don't spend every waking moment on the internet, the controversy stems from a number of references Kerry made over the years to having assisted the CIA in drop-offs on the Mekong River. At one point 20 years ago, Kerry had claimed that he had done so on Christmas Eve, 1968, when apparently he was off by a month. When compared with some of the "misstatements" made by Presidents over the years, from Reagan claiming on several occasions to having helped liberate concentration camps when he was "in uniform" during WW2, to Clinton's initial denial that he had a sexual relationship with an intern, to some of Bush's more ignoble efforts (from "hitting the trifecta" to his recent boast that like Senator McCain, he had once been a bomber pilot), the allegations against Kerry are pretty trivial, even if it had been proven that he was never in Cambodia, and had always known he had never been there. The exaggerated boasts of a soldier, like a politician's use of hyperbole to make a point, are pretty much discounted by the public anyway, and not surprisingly, the issue seems destined to remain with the purview of the tinfoil hat brigade.

So the Republicans, frustrated that there issue hasn't developed any traction in the media outside of the broadsheets owned by Rupert Murdoch and Rev. Moon, counter that this is yet another example of that diabolical conspiracy known as the lib'rul media, which supposedly wants Kerry to win. Instapundit, among others, has compared the coverage of Kerry's adventures in Vietnam with the media's interest in Bush's shirking of duty in the Texas A.N.G., ignoring the fact that four years ago, the media showed almost no interest in that subject, and didn't this year until the head of the DNC made it an issue.

Back in 2000, it was Gore who was being hounded mercilessly, for claims that he never made (such as inventing the Internet), and for places he never lived at (such as a luxury hotel in D.C.). Quite often, those attacks came straight out of GOP press releases, and the "journalists" who covered the campaign for the major newspapers and networks pretty much published them verbatim. Since the only Republicans to comment on the Swiftboat Vets' allegations (Senators McCain, Warner and Hegel) have repudiated them, it is perhaps not surprising there has been a lack of interest in such warmed-over smears by reporters, many of whom seemed to have been shamed by how they covered the campaign four years ago.

Or maybe it's just that we're living in the post-9/11 world, and we all just want to take this election a little more seriously this time. The last-second articles in the LA Times last October on the Gropinator, which were far better documented, actually seemed to help Arnold with swing-voters, and these attacks have certainly not helped the Republicans take down Kerry. As I said, there is still some time to go before the election, and Kerry's campaign will have to pick up its game when it comes to responding to Republican attacks, but for the time being, it's looking good....