Kerry: Back Too Soon?

(CBS)  By Douglas Kiker of the CBS News Political Unit.

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John Kerry came back to Washington from his mountain vacation in Idaho on Wednesday. But if one looks back on the last few weeks – pretty bad ones for President Bush – perhaps Kerry should reconsider and spend the rest of the campaign out in Sun Valley.

The Bush administration has had two abysmal weeks on the political front – some by its own doing, and some not. Almost none of their missteps and bad luck have been the result of smart political plays by Kerry himself, but sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.

To recap:

The Commerce Department leaked the name of the Nebraska businessman it intended to appoint as assistant secretary of commerce for manufacturing. As it turns out, the presumptive manufacturing "czar," Anthony Raimondo, had opened a factory in China at the same time his company, Behlen Manufacturing Group, was laying off U.S. workers. By the next day, Raimondo had pulled his name from consideration. Like the flap back in February over Gregory Mankiw and his belief in the benefits of "outsourcing" jobs overseas, appointing someone to take charge of saving U.S. jobs who actually opened a factory in China is just bad politics. The Bush administration needs to stop writing Kerry's campaign speeches for him.

The Medicare system's actuary, Richard Foster, said his then-boss, Thomas Scully, threatened to fire him if he released his cost estimate for the prescription drug benefit the White House got through Congress last year. The reason? It was almost $150 billion higher than the figure the White House was using to muscle the bill through Congress. Had Foster's estimate gotten out, it's doubtful the bill would have passed.

Former top counterterrorism adviser Richard Clarke charged that the Bush administration did not take the threat of terrorism seriously enough before 9/11, and became distracted from the war against terrorism after 9/11 because of a preconceived desire to take on Saddam Hussein. Clarke's accusations, leveled first on CBS News' 60 Minutes, kicked off a week of public hearings by the Sept. 11 commission that raised further questions about how the Bush (and the Clinton) administration responded to terrorist threats.

Medicare's trustees predicted that the system will go broke by 2019 – even earlier than previous forecasts – if nothing is done to rein in the current rate of spending.

To be fair, some of these events occurred as Kerry was packing for vacation and not actually snowboarding in the mountains of Idaho; and, to be fair, Kerry and his campaign had very little to do with them.

But each incident makes Bush look a little less invincible. Consider this: the economy, health insurance and the war on terrorism are three of the main issues voters care about this election season. If Bush is having trouble establishing that he cares about any of them – without the added weight of Kerry's rhetoric – the Massachusetts senator may be wise to unpack his bags and hang out in Ketchum for the next eight months.