Kerry Spot    [ jim geraghty reporting ]
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Kerry and media members, aboard the candidate's plane, June 22, 2004.

Dick Morris concludes in the New York Post that John Kerry is trying to keep as low a profile as possible for as long as possible:

Until August, at the earliest, the Democratic Party will be represented by a man few of us know.

If this is his strategy, Kerry's being wise. Modern politics is a lot like modern warfare, where precision-guided munitions never miss. The best way to avoid being killed is to avoid being seen.

As Dean found out between November and January, and Bush learned in April and May, when you are the center of attention, your risk of political mortality is very high.

Only the stealth candidate — the modern dark horse, who hides in the shadows of his opponent — can make it all the way to the finish line intact.

The lesson for Bush is that he must force Kerry out of the shadows. But how? His $80 million of negative ads have trimmed the Democrat's favorable/unfavorable ratio from 58-33 in March to 50-41 now, but have yet to cut into the half of the electorate that voted for Gore and remains positive to Kerry.

The key is to lower the volume of the other news so that Kerry can stand out on his own. Iraq must be pacified. No more torture photos or suicide killings of Americans. The 9/11 Commission must pass from center stage.

Then, and only then, will Americans look closely at the man who might be their president. And when they do, they won't like what they see.

Morris may be onto something, in that this strategy would explain why Kerry spends every day talking about the minimum wage and technology investments when the national spotlight is on beheadings in Iraq and instability in Saudi Arabia. Obviously, the Bush administration hasn't gotten much criticism through the media filter, and the reason is not The Liberal Media (at least, not completely — this time). The news of the day is more dramatic, and often horrifying, than Kerry's old proposals and ideas for tax hikes. The main (maybe only) way for the Bush attacks to reach voters is through paid media ads.

On the other hand, this passive lingering is the opposite of the Clinton strategy that worked through the Nineties. Clinton got out in front of the cameras and slugged it out with his critics. He defended himself with ruthless countercharges. He went out, made the case for his policies, and always had something to say on the day's headlines.

Can this really be the Kerry gameplan? In the first presidential election since the 9/11 attacks, as the U.S. is looking to finish the job in Iraq and deal with a worldwide jihad movement dedicated to killing as many infidel Americans as they can, anywhere they can, the Democratic candidate's strategy is to lay low and seem like a bland, generic, acceptable alternative? That's the opposite of leadership: minimalist and reactive as opposed to proactive.

And it seems hard to believe that a candidate who embraces this "hiding in the shadows" mentality is what America needs right now. It wasn't FDR's style, it wasn't JFK's style, and it wasn't Reagan's style. There is no such thing as a low-profile president. If John Kerry is listening to some screwy adviser on avoiding the big news of the day and holding deliberately boring and irrelevant events, he ought to listen to someone else.