Attn: Kerry campaign

A Test of Toughness (washingtonpost.com)

A good editorial that I hope the Kerry campaign will read. A couple key passages here:

1) And Bush certainly doesn't want to talk about the facts laid out by a Congressional Budget Office report on Friday that one-third of his tax cuts over the past three years went to people who earned an average of $1.2 million annually. Households with incomes in the top 1 percent received an average tax cut of $78,460 this year. Households in the middle 20 percent -- they average about $57,000 a year -- received an average cut of $1,090. That is a 72 to 1 ratio in favor of the millionaires.

2) When Bush went to Congress in the fall of 2002 for authorization to go to war in Iraq, he did so after saying he was going to the United Nations to seek international support for a war against Saddam Hussein...when push came to shove, Kerry decided to take the chance in voting "yes" to strengthen Bush's hand in negotiating with the United Nations. That seeking U.N. support was never really a Bush priority and that he botched the postwar planning is the president's problem, not Kerry's.

Bush continues to manage to campaign on perceived Kerry failures or flip-flops and not on his own record. Kerry's only failure as I see it is not putting Bush on the defensive and forcing him to defend his own indefensible record.