Much of William Saletan's campaign coverage in Slate has annoyed me this season, but today I have to hand it to him. He just produced perhaps the most dead-on, insightful piece I've read on the race all year: The mystery of John Kerry's missing courage (today's cover story, alternately titled "Can This Candidate Be Saved?")

The occasion of the piece is Kerry's official announcement. Saletan opens by observing that between all the flags, the succession of fellow veterans, and the aircraft carrier "It's obvious what John Kerry is selling this morning. . . . He uses the word "courage" 10 times." He sets that up nicely to pose the question I fear many of us have been wondering for months now. He tackles it deftly: "I can't get a rude but persistent question out of my mind: Can you believe this guy fought in Vietnam?"

Coincidentially, I finally blurted out a similar thought just last night in my response to David Talbot's wonderful Salon piece on the appeal of Howard Dean and Al Franken. It's an awkward question, but past time to address it. "I look at him and wonder how such a brave warrior became such a cautious politician," Saletan says. Me too. Me too.

I shudder to bring this back to Dean again, but the contrast is illuminating, and both Talbot and Saletan seize it. So briefly, from Saletan:

Lately, I've thought about Kerry's service when I watch Howard Dean, the candidate Kerry is trying to overtake. Now, there's a guy who looks like he fought in Vietnam. Dean's words always seem to be holding back an inferno of anger. John McCain was the same way. Kerry is the opposite: He claims to be angry, but you look at him and can't believe it. His body doesn't live up to his words. When Kerry disagrees with you, he makes you feel as though the disagreement is his problem. When Dean disagrees with you, he makes you feel as though it's your problem. I know Kerry fought and Dean didn't. But it's still hard to believe. 

(An earlier piece--by another Slate writer?--made exactly the same point about Lieberman, building an entire piece around it. But who is really taking Lieb seriously anymore? And no one expected Lieb to attack like a brave soldier. Kerry has built his entire campaign around the warrior image.)

But Dean is not the problem Kerry is facing, Kerry is. The party would rally behind him almost overnight--or would have, still might--if only he could demonstrate that courage again. I would consider dropping Dean and getting behind Kerry if he could just find his voice and out-Dean Dean. (Don't worry Deaniacs--I'm not holding my breath anymore.)

I spent considerable time in the past few weeks on the Kerry blog, and found the consensus there astonishing and depressing. The gist of it was that Dean couldn't win because he was either from a tiny state, or opposed the war or whatever; meanwhile, Kerry was a solid guy with strong credentials. Good lord, half the Senate has solid credentials, and most could never hope to poll double-digits in New Hampshire. We're not running resumes here, the guy actaully has to step up to the plate and deliver. Listen to Saletan backing Dean back out of the equation:

At Kerry's announcement, the question takes a different form. Dean is out of the picture. Kerry sits onstage in a row of veterans, several of whom speak on his behalf. My eyes wander across the row and come to rest, with familiar incredulity, on the wooden guy in the white shirt. Of all the guys in this row, can you believe this is the one running for president?

The opening acts overshadow the main event. Alex Sanders, a 65-year-old bulldozer of a judge, flashes his wit and grit. Cleland lights up the crowd with zingers, plain talk, and more animation than Kerry can manage with four limbs. While Cleland works his magic, Kerry sits expressionless behind him, squinting and repeatedly touching various parts of his hair to make sure they're in place. They're fine, but Kerry seems terribly anxious that somewhere, somehow, a hair is out of place.

Really cuts right to the heart of it, doesn't it? That judge could probably run for president. Kerry has all the right qualifications, but doesn't seem up to the task. Or hasn't figured out the priorities. Perfect metaphor with the hair: Yes, this is a crucial moment for him, yes it's the time to be look after every key detail, just not those details.

But the piece just gets better and better as Saletan keeps rolling. As the conclusion approaches, he captures--vividly and eloquently--the precise reaction I've experienced every time I have watched Kerry:

Much of Kerry's problem is superficial. He's as stiff as a GI Joe. He's infatuated with the 1960s. He keeps talking about "our generation" to an electorate that is no longer of his generation. He speaks the language of the Kennedys, which now sounds flowery and phony. He adorns his prose with words like "lavish" and "astonishing." He calls the audience "my fellow Americans." He tells them he's "honored to join you in this endeavor." For the thousandth time, he begins a sentence with the pointless preface, "And I say to you today …" At another point, he proclaims, "Let me put it plainly: If Americans aren't working, America's not working." This is what audiences always have to wade through to get at whatever it is Kerry is trying to say: Nuggets of nothing, wrapped in pretentious rhetoric, compounded by the pretense of plain speaking.

Thank you. I tend to roll my eyes when I hear the type, mutter "windbag," pray they speak candidly next time and prepare to write them off if they don't. And every time I have heard Kerry, I've tuned out muttering "windbag." I'm sure he is saying something some of the time--though unfortunately I'm usually left with the same response Satetan returns to several times: "Yeah, but where does he stand?" And when Kerry does come out and make a clear point, it's very hard to hear it when he has already turned me off with all the crap.

You know that famous Far Side (they're all famous), where the second frame shows what the dog is hearing from his master: "blah blah blah Rover blah blah blah Rover blah blah blah Rover . . ."?

Yes, I'm the dog in this analogy. I have far more attention span than Rover, but it is finte. Every time Kerry opens his mouth and starts in with the bullshit intros, all I hear is "bullshit bullshit bullshit; standard political bullshit bullshit . . ." And all my mind thinks is, "God, I despise these political bullshitters. Look how hard he's working trying to bullshit me." Then he gets to his message and I am so incredibly repulsed it's hard to give him a fair hearing. Yet I have persevered several times, listened closely despite his crap and it tends to be more evasions and double-talk, straight from intro to conclusion. "Yeah, but where does he stand?" 

I'm glad Saletan brought up John McCain. It's not something magical about Dean this year. And it's not about Iraq, for God's sake. It's really not that hard to understand what people will respond to: authentic, candid, reasonable human beings who can respond to a question or challenge like a real human being, and clearly spell out a reasonable response. That alone will get you to New Hampshire. Then stand up and fight for the truth against lying liars like Coulter, O'Reilly and Shrub--that might actually get you to the White House.

Read the piece. It's really an astonishing piece of work. And you know how hard it can be to squeeze a compliment out of me.

Salon editor David Talbot wrote a great little piece today with the above title. I think he nailed a big part of the reason: George Bush and the right-wing liars like Ann Coulter Bill O'Reilly have been screwing the country and getting away with murder, while the wussy little Dems keep scurrying for cover. Finally a few are fighting back, and they're reaping the rewards. My favorite moment:

And what is the temper of the Democratic Party base? They loathe Bush and everything he stands for -- he's become a lightning rod for dark and febrile passions in the same way Bill Clinton was (and is) for the GOP core. It's not just his harebrained ideological nostrums for how to reorder America and the world. They hate him and it's personal. They hate his frat-boy smirk, his phony fly-boy act, his cringe-inducing mangling of the language, his born-again sanctimony, even his Texas twang and his godforsaken, tumbleweed ranch where only someone as fence-post-dumb as W. would hole up in August.

Nice! And the answer?

The Democratic faithful lust for someone who will knock the cocky look right off George W. Bush's face -- as well as the arrogant mugs of Rove, Cheney and all the rest. Someone who knows how to fight just as hard as the men who scrapped and scraped and stopped at nothing until Florida, and the nation, was theirs. Right now, that looks like Howard Dean, the blunt-talking former wrestler.

Talbot also credits Kerry for finally taking a few choice swings in his official presidential announcement speech on Tuesday. It's about time. Here's his advice for the rest of the race:

Kerry -- who has seemed to be sleepwalking on the campaign trail, guided by an old Al Gore, play-it-safe manual -- needs to keep saying them loud and clear if he wants to take the momentum from Dean.

That's for sure. I think the war-hero image Kerry's people were counting on failed to fly for him because he wasn't acting like one. Who wants a play-it-safer coasting on that reputation? If he's ready to step up and show us the stuff that made him a hero in the first place, he might actually find himself with a following.