ABC News' The Note: First Source for Political News

ByABC News
September 6, 2004, 4:40 PM

W A S H I N G T O N, Sept. 6, 2004&#151;<br> -- NOTED NOW

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57 days until Election Day

NEWS SUMMARY

Every winning presidential campaign has:

A. A candidate who is in control of his public image.

B. A clear and consistently delivered positive message that thematically derives from the candidate's biography.

C. A clear and consistently delivered negative message that thematically derives from what the American people are already predisposed to dislike about the opposition candidate.

D. (Semi-)clear lines of authority at the upper levels of the campaign about who does what, put in place by a strong candidate with vision and animated by a shared passionate desire to win.

E. An "adult" staffer on the plane who has known the candidate for years, can tell him anything, knows his rhythms and moods, and who understands politics, policy, PR, and campaigns at the highest levels.

F. A traveling press corps whose belief that the person they are covering can win in November not-so-subtly informs every syllable they write and broadcast.

Are John Kerry's chances of winning the White House imperiled by the fact that there were more frustrated-blind-quote-driven, sausage-making-process-oriented stories from inside his campaign this weekend than there have been cumulatively about the Bush campaign this entire cycle?

Think of that stark fact as more a symptom than a disease although it is both.

It has caused no amount of "how-could-that-be?" head shaking within the tight-knit circle that runs the president's re-election campaign that the details of Saturday's Bill Clinton-John Kerry tutorial phone call could leak so fast and so fully.

And as the Bush campaign just laughs and laughs and laughs behind their poker faces at how easily they have banished the economy, health care, poverty, jobs, and the chaos in Iraq from the national debate, the biggest danger for Kerry right now in the wake of the president's Swift post-New York lead is that the left will give up on him.

You can put money on this: BC04RNC will subject John Sasso to their innovative gimmick of press releases attacking the pasts of any new Kerry operatives.

Still, we are pretty sure most Americans don't care where Joe Lockhart's office is in relation to Bob Shrum's. And the media's desire to find "shake ups" and conflict just might, might be overstated in this case.

Still (Note Note: only on holidays do we break our rule of not starting two consecutive paragraphs with the word "still."), two important weekend must-reads give insight into the pre-elex post-mortems already being penned.

On Sunday, Frank Rich offered up a gut check on how the presidential campaign has gotten out of hand and way off issues to being about who did what during Vietnam, who's a bigger tough guy, and "castration warfare." LINK

"Don't believe anyone who says that this will soon fade, and that the election will henceforth turn on health-care policy or other wonkish debate. Any voter who's undecided by now in this polarized election isn't sitting around studying the fine points. In a time of fear, the only battle that matters is the broad-stroked cultural mano a mano over who's most macho. . . . It's Mr. Kerry's behavior now, not what he did 35 years ago, that has prevented his manliness from trumping the president's."

Also on Sunday, Harold Meyerson wrote in the Washington Post that "it's not Reagan's spirit that suffuses the Bush Republican Party; it's Richard Nixon's" and it showed, he argues, with every attack leveled against Kerry, every diatribe launched, even in spite of the big-tent talk. LINK

Rich blames Bush and Kerry, while Meyerson blames (mostly) Bush (and Nixon).

Can Team Kerry hold things together until/unless the public polling settles down and gravity grabs 50%+ of the bounce?

As Joe Lockhart and Bob Shrum would agree, only time will tell.

As we write this, former President Clinton is in the OR at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, undergoing quadruple bypass surgery.

President Bush spends Labor Day in Missouri and holds a 5:00 pm ET rally in Poplar Bluff.

Vice President Cheney also campaigns today, attending a 11:30 am ET town hall meeting in St. Paul, MN, and then travels to Clear Lake, IA, where the Cheneys will attend a picnic at 2:30 pm ET.

Sen. Kerry is also busy on the campaign trail, starting his morning at 8:30 am ET at a front porch event in Cannonsburg, PA. Kerry then goes to Racine, WV for a 1:45 pm ET picnic before ending his day at a 6:45 pm ET picnic in Cleveland, OH. Expect to see this message on the Kerry campaign's press releases today: "W stands for wrong: Wrong choices, wrong direction."

The campaign is spending its Labor Day talking about the economy, jobs, and health care with a new report entitled "A Failed Record: Jobs Quality," which slams job creation and workers' benefits under the Bush Administration, complete with a conference call with former Labor Secretary Alexis Herman and the campaign's economic policy adviser, Jason Furman, to explain it.

On his own, Sen. John Edwards hits three states, stopping first in Milwaukee, WI for a 11:00 am ET front porch event. Then Edwards goes to St. Paul, MN for a 3:00 pm ET picnic and finally to Kalamazoo, MI, for a 8:00 pm ET block party.

Tomorrow, President Bush stays in Missouri, with three events: a speech in Summit, an "Ask President Bush" event in Sedalia, and another speech in Columbia. His schedule is TBD until Friday, when he heads back to West Virginia and then on to two stops in Ohio an "Ask President Bush" event in Portsmouth and a speech in Chillicothe.

Tomorrow, Vice President Cheney goes from a town hall meeting in Iowa to another in New Hampshire. He is down in Washington, DC on Wednesday. Cheney hits the trail again on Friday with three stops in Wisconsin, talking to voters in Green Bay, Sheboygan, and Milwaukee.

Tomorrow, Sen. Kerry is scheduled to stop in North Carolina and then Ohio, where he attends an event in Toledo on Wednesday before heading to a front-porch event in Rochester, MN, then on to Des Moines, IA.

Look for a big speech on Iraq in Ohio on Wednesday.

Kerry rallies in Des Moines on Thursday before heading to New Orleans to address the National Baptists Conference. On Friday, Kerry is in St. Louis, MO, and Philadelphia, PA.

Sen. Edwards goes to a rally tomorrow in Chillicothe, OH, before attending a DNC fundraiser in Bloomington, IL. On Wednesday, he heads to West Virginia for a town meeting, and then up to Maine.

President Clinton's health:

Former President Clinton is in the OR for quadruple heart bypass surgery. ABC News' Roger Sergel reports:

"Doctors at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital waited to perform surgery because Clinton was given the so-called super aspirin Plavix when he was seen by doctors at Westchester Hospital with his chest pain. Plavix increased the risk of bleeding during surgery, and studies show the risk of bleeding decreases if surgery is done after five days. Some heart specialists told ABC News that they like to wait at least 72 hours for surgery after Plavix is given."

A key question, Sergel Notes, is whether or not Clinton will have "off pump" bypass surgery, which keeps the heart beating during the operation rather than putting the patient on a heart-lung machine and stilling the heart to perform the bypass procedure. Dr. Craig Smith, who will perform the operation, is a well-known advocate of off pump, which would also reduce the risk of bleeding."

"The question of which operation would produce the least risk of short-term mental decline might be important if Clinton hopes to resume campaigning after surgery and before the election and would want to be mentally sharp in public appearances," Sergel reports.

The Washington Post 's Shankar Vedantam walks through Clinton's surgical options. LINK

On CBS' Early Show, the Kerry campaign's Joe Lockhart talked about President Clinton, saying he was pretty nervous when he first went in for the angiogram, but he has taken the last couple days to learn about the process and he feels better about it now. When asked how much Clinton will be missed on the campaign trail, Lockhart Noted that he will certainly be missed, but if the doctors tell him to take four weeks off, he will take two.

The New York Post reports Clinton and his family was playing "Boggle" in the hospital while awaiting his surgery. LINK

The Boggle-playing ex-Prez is in good spirits. LINK

The New York Times ' Lawrence Altman reports in Monday's paper that the Columbia-Presbyterian Center of New York Presbyterian Hospital where former President Bill Clinton is being treated has the "highest death rate for the operation in New York State, according to the state's Health Department. While the death rate is quite low less than 4 percent of all bypass operations it is still nearly double the average for hospitals in the state that perform bypasses." LINK

ABC News' Sergel points out that "the doctor quoted [in this story] is from a competing hospital, who happened to do Dave Letterman's surgery. Competition over heart surgery patients is intense in every city."

The New York Daily News profiles "Bubba's Lifesaver," a 55-year-old former fullback for the Williams College football team and master of tiny robots. LINK

ABC News Vote 2004: Sen. Kerry layers and re-adjusts:

Key graphs from the New York Times ' Adam Nagourney and David Halbfinger, some of which are tonally or factually disputed by some Kerry aides and we like any story that forces Shrum to go on the record: