I realize that you are more of an insider than I am, and that you deserve some respect for all the work you have done, and all the speeches you have written, but your piece on President Bush's interview with Tim Russert left a lot to be desired. I think you missed the point. Let me explain.

You make the distinction between giving interviews and speeches, saying that following talking points (during an interview) is one kind of skill and it is another kind of skill to make speeches. This would make sense to me if the speeches were extemporaneous, but that is not the case, is it? You being a former speech writer should know this. Speeches are scripted, and the person reading the script doesn't have to think on their feet at all, or perhaps not even think period. You also suggest that it is what is done behind the desk by a President that matters, not the interviews and speeches even. Let me address these in a general way, as if there was a very simple principal that could be understood by which to make the needed judgment.

The fundamental question is what kind of mind does the President (or candidate) have, and behind that question, what kind of mind does our Republic need a President to have. These are very crucial questions, and not very much discussed in politics either by the Left or the Right, or even by the Press. Its as if we don't know what it means any more to have a life of the mind, having become somehow lost to it as an ideal of human development.

Sadly we live in an Age in which the life of the mind is disparaged in one way or another. We have the pejorative "egghead", for example, to refer in a demeaning way to someone who is perceived as an intellectual. Can't have a President who is an "egghead" can we. Have to have someone like us, someone more of the People, which implies by the way that the People are pretty stupid, doesn't it?

What this really does is beg the question of what it is that makes a President a suitable chief executive of this Nation? What aspects of a life of the mind do we need in this our highest political office? Is it a matter of moment whether such an individual can think on their feet, or whether they can only look mentally adequate when they read scripted speeches?

Clearly, if we look at history, it is possible to have a tough mind and clear thinking and not be an intellectual. Many Presidents have exemplified this characteristic - that of what we might call strong common sense coupled with real moral character. But in our democratic Republic, we (that is "we the people") need to have this displayed to us by the candidates for office. They owe us this insight into their inner nature, and the best way to see this is to see them handle a tough interview and difficult questions from ordinary people. We need to see them think on their feet. We need to see the light of their mind reflect in a spontaneous way on the issues and realities of the day.

Unfortunately of late, politics has become the art of hiding this very thing from the electorate. The whole campaign is designed to create a false impression of the real inner capacities of the individual running for highest office, and substitute a false picture - what is essentially a lie - for the truth that we need to know.

In this the second Bush presidency we have the pragmatic and tragic consequences of this political art of the lie as regards the real nature of the character of mind of a presidential candidate. A weak minded President is prey to those more powerful minds such as Rove, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle, and our ideologically corrupted foreign policy is the result of electing a nice man to this most demanding of jobs. He lacked the mental ability to see through the junk he was offered by his advisors, and they took our country into war, and destroyed our international reputation in the process.

Now some may think this international reputation is of no moment, but in reality it is the greatest moment of all. It is our word as members of a community of nations, and these unelected (and therefore unexamined by the electorate) minds sacrificed that reputation on an altar of ambition and greed. Our children will pay for generations for this betrayal of the true American Spirit.

So you see Ms Noonan, it makes all sorts of difference whether President Bush can conduct himself well in interviews. He's got our highest trust, and he needs to be able to do the job. You had that right in a way - in the end its what goes on behind the desk that counts. But, you blew it big time if you think that live interviews don't help us judge his capacities, his mental acuity and strength of character. One of our more ordinary folksy Presidents, good old Harry Truman, who had all of those needed qualities and more, put it right out there with: "the buck stops here". Bush is responsible for everything that goes wrong on his watch, and a lot has gone wrong - far too much in fact, as you will soon see when November comes along.

Well, you've basically won the nomination. Now you want to win the election, and certainly the American People need new faces in Washington. The question is whether you really understand what is going on. Just in case you might not, I'm going to explain it to you.

Between various kinds of political operatives, advertising and focus group social manipulators, and the usually dumb assumptions of politicians, there has come to be a false consensus that under estimates the intelligence and wisdom of the American People.

Sure there are people who will buy lies and cheap talk, but most folks have lived enough life to know what's real and what's not. Most folks realize something is wrong in Washington, even if they can't put their finger on it. Most folks see hate speech for what it is, whether it is so-called conservatives ragging on liberals or the other way around. The heart of the American People is fairly simply once we ignore the true believers, who are always an excessively vocal minority, but who really, in the end, are not representative of the main heart values of our People.

We want honesty, and we can tell when a politician is shading the truth. We'd like to trust government, but have too many times been burnt. We don't trust Bush and Company any more, and a lot of us are going to vote in November just to throw the bums out of office. This will not be any kind of mandate for who we put in office - in the main we are only offered a choice between two evils, and have to take the lesser - a lesson life often forces upon us, so it is one with which we are familiar.

So don't let it go to your head Senator Kerry - you are not being elected God.

You want to win the election? Here's how. Don't run just against Bush, run against the whole gang - your ads should mention Rove, and Rice, and Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, and Perle, and Powell. Make Bush responsible for these people - he picked them, and he listened to their crap. Just show the double talk. Run ads showing them saying one thing before the war and another thing after David Kay's stating there are no WMD. They'll look like the idiots they are. Short ads, not even focused on issues, just on the tissue of lies and misjudgments, and then with a punchy, do you want the same man who picked these people to be in government to have another four years of making mistakes.

You should run a second set of ads as well. These ads are your message and it will have a simple theme as well. Healing the nation from the divisions fostered by the Republican Right, but that is the sub-text and isn't even mentioned. These ads are about us, and about "we the people" and simply say that times are going to be hard, governments are made up of people, mistakes have been made, but we are - when united - strong enough to face them.

Avoid the excesses of rah rah language, such as "this is the greatest nation in the world". That's just BS. Talk about ordinary people, about teachers and parents, and clerks in stores, and all the little folk who make the wealth and make our lives have whatever civility they have. Show us, not your face, but ours. Pictures of someone being nice to someone - like what the bumper sticker says - "random acts of kindness". Show us being who we are, and help us believe again in ourselves. Don't talk about yourself, or what you are going to do, because its not you that makes this Nation what it is, its us. Be humble, help us come together.

In your campaigning don't go for the sound bite. Meet people and talk to them. Really go out and ask us what we want and need, and let the news ghouls do their thing. The talking heads will not get it at the beginning, but in the end it will itself make real news - "candidate works to unite America and return us to our real strength as a people."

The President is not a King, but he is our chief public servant, and has to, in the conduct of that Office, show by example just what public service means. If you don't know, then just ask. The public knows - we're way smarter than most people inside the beltway give us credit for.