Compromising position A wide-open - but completely unaffiliated, mind you - letter to presumptive presidential nominee John Kerry BY BARRY CRIMMINS

DEAR JOHN,

I’m sorry, but there’s no other way to put this: I can’t see you anymore — at fundraisers that is. If Whoopi Goldberg’s comments about court-appointed President Bush at your recent New York show-biz gala were enough to stir up a media storm, the Weather Channel would need to break out its full hurricane crew to cover any joint appearance you and I might make.

From what I understand, Whoopi used a "bush" double entendre to insult your opponent. If you caught my act lately, you’d have a hard time finding anything but a single intention in my shows. I am urging my fellow Americans to do whatever it takes to drive this government Of the Cronies, By the Cronies, and For the Cronies from stolen office. If pitchforks and torches are necessary, I stand ready to authorize their use.

I was sick of these people before they stepped off the reviewing platform on January 20, 2001. This was back when they came to town promising to "return ethics to Washington." (Keep your enemies closer, I suppose.) Three and a half years later, the entire nation is colicky — nauseated by the policies and conduct of a regime that, to put it in the parlance of old-school Boston political insults, is so crooked it could hide behind a corkscrew.

And so you are our hope. Our only hope. Some of my old political allies are vexed with me for placing hope in you. The main reason they question me is that you signed off on letting an administration rife with self-proclaimed Christians cast the first stone in Iraq.

Oh, sure, you have plausible reasons for having done so. Anyone with a whit of political savvy knew Saddam was a bad guy long before Donald Rumsfeld began appearing with him on Kodachrome in the 1980s. And the pre-war human-rights situation in Iraq was undeniably deplorable. But the alibi for falling in line that goes something like, "Well, the administration has produced compelling intelligence information" never clicked with anyone who has even a passing familiarity with the CIA’s odious track record. And giving this administration the benefit of the doubt certainly does not demonstrate the grasp of reality that we should expect from a leader.

I understand the political pressure you felt, but still, you’re a brilliant guy and had to know what a load of hooey was being dumped on us. I further estimate that the hard-bitten among your insiders advised, "Look, you know we can always just say they lied to us," and considering who was trumping up this war, that was a pretty safe fall-back position. But please, you did a nice job investigating and exposing much of this crew back when terrorism was a central component of Saint Ronald Reagan’s not-so-secret foreign policy. And so when the same gang of thugs who help facilitate death-squads in Central America came forward as the defenders of innocence and champions of democracy, you should have marched right outside of the Capitol and joined the hundreds of thousands of us who were in the streets screaming, "Noooooo! Don’t do it!"

Well, Senator, we told you so.

Some of my lefty pals won’t forgive you and I can see their point. Nevertheless, I refuse to join their circular firing squad. I know how to face political reality myself, and if ever there were an occasion for compromise, this is it. I don’t value my moral purity more than the lives of countless innocents. My stridence withers when I consider how much suffering would result if the Bush regime extends beyond next January. Someday, George W. Bush’s administration will be labeled for what it brought us to: the "New Low." Under your leadership, even a slight trajectory of improvements in health-care, environmental regulation, civil liberties, and workers’ rights will have to be measured against the all-too-imaginable speed at which of these vital matters would reach even newer lows during a second Bush term. So I won’t be doing any benefits for Ralph Nader this year, no matter how much the Heritage Foundation offers.

In this system, at this time, we have but two options; one is George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. The other is you and John Edwards. To say there is no difference between the pairs of you would be to articulate political naïveté of the worst sort. No matter what you do as president, the next four years will be better than they would be if we Elect Bush, Just This Once. Because I know you will begin to undo some of the New Low damage that’s been inflicted on us. If you win, no one with even shadowy ties to the Ku Klux Klan will be appointed to the federal bench. I doubt that you’ll ever bring in lobbyists from the chemical industry to write environmental law. I’m relatively certain that you won’t allow national parks to be used for monster-truck rallies.

Even though you’re a hunter (at least, according to your Red State campaign ads), you won’t be persuaded that your fellow outdoor-carnage enthusiasts need automatic weapons because deer attack in waves. I believe that even though you are a Christian, you’ll never take it to the cultish lengths that our current crackpot-in-chief does — which is to say you are not among the lunatics who think that if we can provoke one final fatal conflict between Islam and Judaism, it will end the world and begin a members-only rapture.

And I know that if you’re elected, you’ll be the most powerful person in the world ... and you’ll do a better job of it than Dick Cheney has. I like the Edwards-Cheney match-up; it says you understand that trial lawyers play a huge role in the battle to keep this country safe and just. It gives us a choice between a ticket that includes a trial lawyer and one that doesn’t believe in trials. For that matter, it hasn’t much use for laws either.

But the most important part of this November’s choice is the one between you and George W. Bush. Your charisma has suffered a very unfair assault. I realize that to keep your "all things to all people" advisers happy, you must make overly qualified, platitude-heavy statements of little substance. When I hear you preface anything with "I believe," I know I have time to wash, dry, iron, and fold a load of laundry before you get to telling us exactly what it is you hold dear. But hey, that’s politics. In any case, if this race is decided on charisma, then you’re Clark Gable and John F. Kennedy rolled into one compared to the beady-eyed placeholder who now occupies the Oval Office. A president is supposed to instill confidence. This guy’s press conferences are so heavily scripted that I am always disappointed when Roger Ebert fails to give them a thumbs-down. If charisma is an issue in this campaign, it has to disadvantage the man who tortures the language as if it were a detainee at the Abla Gaduu uh, err, Abo Galabaaga, oh never mind.