The lastest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows
President Bush with a 48-45 per cent lead, with Ralph Nader showing 2 per cent and 5 per cent describing themselves as undecided.

Encouragingly for John Kerry, his message on the war in Iraq appears to be gaining him as much traction as his appeal on the economy, with even many of those who say the US was right to oust Saddam now saying that the price has been too high.

But despite his renewed focus on the President's "wrong" decisions in Iraq and on national security, it's a risky strategy to convince voters that a chaotic situation would be improved by a change of leadership.

The Washington Times, if you can get past the poll question on whether Dan Rather should resign, has Karl Rove laying out the President's simple re-election strategy.

Meanwhile the Bush-Cheney team's latest attack ad, "Windsurfing" perpetuates the notion of John Kerry as a flip-flopper by changing his position whichever way the wind's blowing.

As John Harris writes in the Washington Post, the incredible thing for a lot of Democrats is how their man has been stuck with the label despite the President's own volte-faces.

Harris writes: As Democrats see it, the flip-flopper allegation is this year's equivalent of how the GOP four years ago portrayed Al Gore as a chronic truth-stretcher, and now, as then, blame the news media for accepting and promoting a caricature.

And finally (maybe far from) the last word for now on the CBS documents fiasco - and astute readers will have noted that this column has now almost run out of descriptions, having worked through farrago, debacle, affair, incident and even, possibly, imbroglio - goes to Jon Stewart who told Katie Couric he was glad Dan Rather was "picking up his mantle of fake news"...

September 20


CBS News, despite its continued robust defence of the authenticity of its national guard documents, tonight apologised for the original 60 Minutes story. "We made a mistake in judgment and for that I am sorry," said Dan Rather, much to the joy of right-wing commentators everywhere.

Rather went on: "..After extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically."

Howard Kurtz in the Post dissects the role of the blogosphere in the whole farrago.

Elsewhere, some agreement seems to have been reached in outlining the schedule for the presidential debates, with the camps tentatively agreeing to three presidential and one vice-presidential face-offs. Final agreement apparently depends on the Bush camp signing off on a format for the 'town hall' style debate, featuring "undecided" voters.

The Times reports, meanwhile, that the Kerry campaign has been scaling back its TV ad spend, pulling back even in key states like Missouri.

About a week after UN secretary general Kofi Annan said the war in Iraq was "illegal", President Bush addresses the UN general assembly on his plans for that country.

The latest poll numbers continue to paint a confusing picture, with the right-track-wrong-track question still showing a majority of Americans belive the country is headed in the wrong direction, yet the President still enjoys an approval rating over 50 per cent.

The Times poll shows Bush leading Kerry among "registered" voters by 50 to 42 per cent, and among "likely" voters by 51 to 42 per cent. Ralph Nader is still tracking around 3 per cent.

Eric Alterman in The Nation, meanwhile, continues to get exercised about Nader's candidacy:

"..Nader is actually polling higher than the 2.74 percent of Americans who provided the votes for his 2000 kamikaze mission--high enough to tip key swing states toward the single worst President in American history."

Finally, the Vote For Change tour will wrap up in the nation's capital, not in Miami as originally planned. The four-hour finale featuring many of the acts who will be touring over the coming month, will be at the MCI Center in Washington DC on October 11.