The winner of today’s most embarrassing pro-Kerry article in the Washington Post is in Book World, an obsequious review of Douglas Brinkley’s obsequious damage-control bio of Kerry’s “war” years, “Tour of Duty.” It ends with these air kisses:

“If, as now seems certain, Kerry wins the Democratic nomination this year, Republican operatives will try to focus popular attention on this post-combat Kerry, the one with the longish hair and grimy fatigue jacket, the better to suggest he was a radical who dishonored his country and his fellow veterans with his protesting. The effort has indeed already begun.

“Judging by the evidence in this book, however, their task will not be easy. Tour of Duty shows Kerry to have been a moderating influence on the VVAW and the antiwar movement more broadly, a voice of caution who counseled nonviolence and working within the political system. When the VVAW became too radicalized for Kerry’s liking, he resigned.

“In this respect, Brinkley’s unabashedly admiring book accords well with what both supporters and detractors over the years have singled out as a defining Kerry characteristic: his careful, color-inside-the-lines approach to social and political issues. What the book also shows, however, on the basis of abundant evidence, is that the young Ivy Leaguer who went off and fought in Vietnam and then returned home to fight against the war was a born leader and a man of uncommon insight and intelligence. Not bad qualifications for the highest office in the land.”

Oh, spare us! There’s no mention in the review of how Mr. Color Inside The Lines made wild-eyed accusations in his Senate testimony about daily rapes and murders and mutilations made by American soldiers with the knowledge and consent of American commanders. That doesn’t show “uncommon insight and intelligence,” just uncommon audacity and recklessness.