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THE NEW NEW KERRY By ERIC FETTMANN
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http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/28081.htm

September 8, 2004 -- Here's a word of advice for all the Clintonistas who are being re cruited for John Kerry's presidential campaign: Never forget that this isn't Bill Clinton at the head of the Democratic ticket.
Bimbo eruptions aside, working for Clinton had to have been a campaign staffer's dream. The former president is the consummate pol, crafty and shrewd, understanding at a glance what issues should be stressed at any given time and never straying off-message.

Plus, unlike John Kerry, Clinton never had a short-term memory problem. Which means that when he'd say something to an audience on the campaign trail, it didn't flatly contradict something he'd said four weeks earlier.

Which brings us to John Kerry and Iraq.

No wonder the trademark smirk on President Bush's face was wider than usual last weekend, as he ripped into Kerry's pronouncement that he's an anti-war candidate, after all.

"After voting for the war but against funding it," said the president at a campaign rally, "after saying he would have voted for the war even knowing everything we know today, my opponent woke up this morning with new campaign advisers and yet another position — suddenly, he's against it again."

In what is shaping up as one of the campaign's craftiest moves, Bush last month challenged Kerry to declare whether he would have voted to authorize the use of force in Iraq even if he knew beforehand that no weapons of mass destruction would be found.



Kerry took the bait, saying he would indeed have voted that way, saying, "I believe it was the right authority for a president to have."

Of course, Kerry likes to parse words — during the primaries, when Howard Dean accused him (correctly) of being all over the map on Iraq, the Massachusetts senator declared that he'd only voted to "threaten the use of force."

When it actually came to using it, however, Kerry — in rhetoric that seems left over from his Vietnam protest days — now says it was "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Kerry calls that a "nuanced" position. Most Americans, I suspect, would call that someone who either can't make up his mind or is trying to be all things to all people.

All of which no doubt explains why Clinton, speaking from his hospital bed, pressed Kerry to lay off Vietnam and Iraq and national-security issues and start talking about domestic concerns, which have long been the Democrats' political bread and butter.

Ordinarily, it would be smart advice. Except that this time around, there's a real problem.

John Kerry, after all, surged ahead of Howard Dean for one reason only — his perceived "electability." And that was based entirely on his Vietnam record; Democrats, who'd initially soured on his candidacy, figured he was the only candidate who could stand up to Bush on national security.

Kerry obviously realized this, which is why his campaign swiftly became one giant American Legion rally (though the actual legionnaires, judging by his recent appearance there, are decidedly cool to his candidacy). The Democratic convention in particular was filled with nothing but Vietnam imagery, climaxed by his dramatic "reporting for duty" salute to the delegates.

Kerry, in short, defined himself to the electorate, in his major opportunity to do so, as a national-security candidate. He spoke to the nation about Vietnam, not unemployment; about Iraq, not taxes; about 9/11, not health care.

Indeed, he dismissed his 20-year career in the U.S. Senate in just a couple of sentences.

Now he has to define himself anew to voters who've up till now been told to think of him only as the Vietnam hero turned "our next president." Expanding on his record — rather than crassly exploiting it — is what he should have been doing in Boston.

Now, with double-digit poll deficits staring him in the face, Kerry is once again re-shuffling his campaign staff and starting from scratch with a new strategy.

John Kerry may be in this race to win. He just can't seem to decide which course he's running on