The Republicans can't win a popularity contest with Edwards either, at least not when it comes to a head-to-head match-up with Dick Cheney. As he showed Wednesday night, Edwards is an attractive and appealing candidate, one who can reach out to voters -- poor voters, voters in rural areas -- who may have a hard time believing that George Bush or even John Kerry really understands them.

"You know what I'm saying," Edwards said in the part of his speech directed not at the delegates in the convention hall but at less privileged voters watching on television back home. "You don't need me to explain it to you, you know -- you can't save any money, can you? Takes every dime make just to pay your bills, and you know what happens if something goes wrong -- a child gets sick, somebody gets laid off, or there's a financial problem, you go right off the cliff.

"And what's the first thing to go? Your dreams. It doesn't have to be that way."

Cheney can't compete. He treats campaigning as a chore, and he's not particularly good at it. When he's not warning that the "enemy" is lurking everywhere, he's cackling and smirking like George Costanza's evil twin. Cheney is no help at all with minorities or swing voters; the White House sends him to speak to conservative groups and military audiences. On Tuesday, the vice president was dispatched to California's Camp Pendleton, where, flanked by two 155mm howitzers and 2,500 camouflaged Marines, he defended the administration's Iraq policy and claimed that "the perception of weakness" -- not aggressive U.S. foreign policy -- causes terrorist attacks.

But then reality intruded: A suicide bomb tore through the Iraqi town of Baquba Wednesday, killing 68. Even before Wednesday's attack -- the deadliest since the handover of sovereignty in June -- Kerry and Bush had been locked in a weeklong duel over defense and national security. On Monday, the Kerry campaign orchestrated the Democrats' first-ever Veterans Caucus, an emotional event in which retired Gen. Wes Clark and former Sen. Max Cleland vouched for Kerry's defense bona fides.

On Tuesday, Kerry called for a one-and-a-half year extension of the 9/11 commission to give it time to ensure that its recommendations are implemented; Bush emerged from his Crawford ranch to say that he, too, was reviewing the recommendations and might take action soon.

Wednesday morning, Kerry's elaborate Boston homecoming was designed to reinforce his identity as a hero from Vietnam. He flew into Boston's Logan International Airport, then boarded a boat for a ride across Boston Harbor -- a ride he took with some of the same men who served with him on a swift boat in the Mekong Delta. Kerry draped a life jacket over Jim Rassmann, the Green Beret he saved from drowning during the war. As CNN aired Kerry's arrival, a dozen generals and admirals -- including two retired chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- endorsed the Democratic nominee in what the campaign called an "unprecedented display of support from the military establishment."

That afternoon, Wes Clark and Gen. Merrill McPeak, a former Air Force chief of staff, briefed reporters on Kerry's national security plan. Across town at the Take Back America forum, Ambassador Joseph Wilson cited the Baquba attack as proof that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating. "And the problem is, we own the situation in Iraq," Wilson said. "Unless we succeed we will own that failure forever." Former Sen. Gary Hart, who has emerged as a senior statesman on security issues, waved away Republican accusations of Democrat weakness as nothing but politics.

And Wednesday night, the Kerry campaign played a video montage of retired military leaders who have endorsed the ticket. Retired Gen. John Shalikashvili, who later spoke to a sea of flag-waving delegates, said that, under Bush, "We are now producing terrorists faster than we're killing them."

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