THE VETS ATTACK

Cutter could be tough-minded, and some of her instincts were sound. Democrats are notoriously loose-lipped and leaky. Cutter was trying to impose some Republican-like message discipline, to be a sort of Democratic Karen Hughes. But she lacked the kind of gravitas and seasoned judgment to play such a role. Instead she exposed herself to ridicule by posturing. Staffers and reporters snickered about how, at a skeet-shooting photo op for Kerry in Iowa, she had grabbed a shotgun and struck a pose, aiming at the sky. She was notoriously jealous of rivals. In the spring Hillary Clinton's former press secretary, Howard Wolfson, had signed on to work with Cutter on campaign communications. He lasted all of two and a half days; he had gone to lunch on a Wednesday and never come back.

Cutter reported to Mary Beth Cahill. It was Cahill's job to see that Cutter worked out--or to make a change. But Cahill's own authority was becoming shaky. Kerry had never regarded her as much of a strategist, but he had been grateful for her hands-on, no-excuses management style when, in the fall of 2003, she had left her post as Ted Kennedy's chief of staff to rescue the floundering Kerry campaign. But over time Cahill had lost her effectiveness. Back in December she had succeeded in turning off Kerry's cell phone, curtailing the candidate's weakness for back-channeling and second-guessing. But Kerry's cell-phone addiction was hard to break, and within a few weeks he was dialing his dozens of campaign advisers and kibitzers, all day and much of the night.

Cutter became a symbol of Cahill's power, a test case of the campaign manager's increasingly precarious grip. Staffers could not quite understand Cahill's solicitude for the much-maligned Cutter. In late August, one campaign adviser wondered why, if the future of the Kerry campaign and possibly the nation was at stake, everyone was so worried about hurting the feelings of Stephanie Cutter.

The loudest grumbling about the sorry state of the Kerry campaign came from the so-called Clintonistas. The followers and former aides of President Bill Clinton had been the masters of rapid response, the creators of the much-mythologized 1992 war room that never let a news cycle pass without a charge rebutted. The Clinton team was also the only Democratic political faction to actually win any presidential elections over the previous quarter century. Not unreasonably, the Clintonistas felt a certain standing to pronounce judgment and offer critiques.

The loudest, and most colorful, sideline commentator was James Carville, the Ragin' Cajun, who, along with his peppery Republican wife, Mary Matalin, had become a kind of media-political institution in Washington. Carville (affectionately known by his wife as "Ol' Serpent Head") could be heard cheerfully squawking and blathering on CNN's "Crossfire" and at pretty much any cocktail party where prominent journalists and political consultants gathered. For a time Carville uncharacteristically restrained himself with Kerry. The two men talked on the phone, but the earthy Carville and the Brahmin Kerry were not natural soul mates. In the spring, Carville had urged Kerry to bring on his buddy and "Crossfire" cohost Paul Begala to help with strategy and campaign communications. An amiable, fast-talking Texan, Begala had helped out Kerry for a couple of weeks, but the two did not click. Kerry signaled to Cahill that Begala was not the campaign sidekick he was looking for (inviting the question of whether Kerry, the loner, really wanted such a companion in the first place). Cahill did not directly tell Begala it was a no-go, but she stopped returning his phone calls. Left hanging, Begala felt wounded. Carville hurt for his pal, and began having a harder time holding his tongue about the failings of the Kerry campaign.

In August Joe Lockhart, President Clinton's last White House press secretary, joined the campaign plane to bolster Cutter and bring some energy and action to the slow-footed communications department. Lockhart had the idea of sending Max Cleland, the former senator from Georgia who had lost three limbs in Vietnam, on a mission. Cleland was dispatched, in his wheelchair, to the gates of the Bush ranch in Crawford, Texas, to deliver a letter calling on Bush to renounce the Swifties' smear campaign. The stunt, while gimmicky, at least showed some pluck. But it did not move the polls, which were sinking fast for Kerry.