I'm not a Kerry fan, for reasons I partly explained here, but it's satisfying to find the senator and his allies fighting back against the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who are still shopping their claims wherever they can. As The NY Times explains, the Kerry side is gathering documentary evidence to counter the smears. As with conceptions of former Vice President Gore as an exaggerator, the sense of ambiguity that many may hold about Kerry's honesty about Vietnam is largely transferred in the public mind from one Democratic leader to the party as a whole. To fight the emergence of a false, destructive conventional wisdom that leaves the Democrats dismissed as "unhinged" before the debate on the issues even begins, it can be helpful to engage the gutter tactics at a granular level of detail, destroying the patina of muckraking legitimacy that some sleazy conservative activists often accrue. This toughness is overdue but it's still helpful on the margins, at the very least.

One non-gossipy reason for my hint of interest in the Clinton marriage front-pager in Tuesday's NY Times: the possible artifice of the former First Couple's self-presentation recalls and underscores the political calculation apparent in both her and his policy choices. Not all political calculation is bad -- if you can't win, you can't get anything done -- but you can turn political savvy into obsessive pandering, which, happily, is pretty unpopular anyway. (Alas, much of their centrism is genuine.)

Now, Senator Clinton has a right to do her share of image management if she runs, not least because sexism will come at her steadily for much of the campaign from the we-know-it's-not-liberal press corps, not to mention the GOP advertisers and pollsters and advisors and unofficial spokespeople. But I'd like her a little more if a part of her response involved putting forth an aggressive defense of her privacy. After the $70 million viciousness of the Whitewater witch hunt, she has the right at some point to say, in her own way, but clearly, "Leave my family alone." Making demands is tricky -- running for president requires putting up with unfairness in the press, because it's inevitable and the need to cope with unfavorable and misleading press characterizations is itself a trial run for leadership. So she might frame her response along the lines of the statement, "Maybe you can convince some people not to vote for me by talking about my family. Here's what I want to talk about: national security, health care, jobs, and honest government, for starters. I think the American people are smart and decent enough to decide which kind of focus is more deserving of their respect and attention." Maybe if she isn't willing to take progressive and risky stands on policy issues, she could show some leadership by taking progressive and risky stands on political procedure, shaping it to make it more sane and fair by vigorously appealing to our common sense. That kind of discourse can call up something wise in us voters. Campaign and press improvements would not substitute for good policy, of course, but they would make good policy easier to imagine finding a critical mass. If Hillary pulls that much off, she'll have done something worthwhile. Until we see some leadership on substance or process, though, gossip about her marriage will probably itch at people's attention, and since nature hates a vacuum, they and the pundits will scratch with abandon.