Free advice...

...is, they say, usually worth about what you pay for it. That certainly seems to be true of much of the advice that's being offered up the John Kerry's Presidential campaign. Some of it is just born of frustration, put forth by folks with seemingly slight perspective and/or little awareness of the calendar but a great deal of frustration that early polling doesn't reflect Kerry ascendent over a failed administration plummeting to the longed for collapse. I certainly share the sentiment, but doubt that it's ground for a reasoned assessment of campaign strategy.

Some seems simply, if somewhat surpisingly, ill-informed. Rober Scheer, for instance, a journalist who I hold in generally high esteem, questions Kerry's approach to the Iraq issue.

He quotes the Senator's April 17 radio address in which he said that "All Americans are united in backing our troops and meeting our commitment to help the people of Iraq build a country that is stable, peaceful, tolerant and free."

Scheer then asks "Wasn't that our stated goal in Vietnam?", but he should know better. That wasn't, in fact our stated goal in Vietnam. Our stated goal was the suppression of Communist aggression, which is about the only thing that Bushco hasn't claimed for Iraq (yet).

Scheer, having failed in that diagnosis, then offers the following prescription. Kerry, he writes, "...must challenge President Bush's entire vision, not just his tactics."

That, of course, is exactly what Kerry has done, and did, in fact, in the very passage that Scheer quotes and misreads. Notice that there is one critical word missing from Kerry's outline for an Iraqi goal. While Bush clings stubbornly to the notion that we must "stay the course" in Iraq until we achieve the self-contradictory result of democracy at the point of a gun, Kerry has pointedly deferred from that goal. Stability, that is, a state of calm under the administration of some internationally developed and guided government structure, rather than democracy in full bloom, will provide the basis for President Kerry to withdraw American forces from the battlefields of Iraq. It's a very different goal, and one which will cut years, perhaps decades, off the scheduled occupation of that country.

Scheer's advice, then, is well intentioned and essentially correct. It's advice, however, that seems to have been taken before offered, and Scheer seems not to have noticed.

Some of the advice overlooked should be carefully heeded, however. In particular, I'm thinking of Arianna Huffington's latest piece for Salon, where she offers this:

"I say let Bush run on 9/11; Kerry needs to run on 9/12.

Remember Sept. 12, 2001? On that day blood banks overflowed, money poured into charities, and so many people turned up to help at ground zero that most had to be turned away. It was the best of times amid the worst of times. In the wake of that horrific attack, Americans were eager to work for the common good -- to be called to a large, collective purpose."

If Kerry wants to repeat the electoral success of the man from a place called Hope, there's no better way to do it than to become the man with a message called hope. Bush may lay claim to optimism, but he's selling fear. If there's one thing Kerry needs to do more and better, it's calling his opponent on that central fallacy and offering people a more attractive alternative.

That's my advice. It's free. And maybe worth about what I'm charging for it....