Here's Paul Glastris on the Kerry campaign:

I've never understood why the Kerry campaign hasn't made more of the candidate's record in the Senate of holding tough, thankless, let-the-chips-fall-as-they-may investigations of the rich and powerful. Especially impressive was his pursuit of BCCI, the Arab-owned international bank which turned out to be a massive criminal enterprise that enabled terrorists, including Osama bin Laden, to finance their activities--until it was shut down, largely thanks to Kerry's relentless efforts. The campaign's weird refusal to talk about achievements like the BCCI hearings has allowed Bush to paint Kerry as a do-nothing legislator with no record of achievement during 20 years in the Senate.

But now, thanks to Newsweek, we have an explanation for the Kerry campaign's insane strategy. It seems that Bob Shrum thinks the American people are too stupid to understand what it means that Kerry shut down BCCI. "You can't talk about that because people think you're talking about the BBC," Bob Shrum, Kerry's top adviser, told one senior staffer. "Why were you investigating British TV?"

Of course, Glastris is right about one thing: The American people aren't "too stupid" to understand BCCI -- any more than they're too dumb to grasp the essentials of quantum theory if you're willing to invest enough time and resources in the process of educating them.

But that's the problem. Time and money are limited in campaigns, and you only want to pick the fights that you can afford to win. And, in this case, the Kerry people were probably right to take a pass. (After all, you'd have to start the process by giving people a civics lesson about the responsibilities of a senator, making them understand that investigations are part of the job description. Only then could you move on to the substance of Kerry's work on BCCI, which was impressive in its complexity, to say the least, making it expensive and time-consuming to explain.)

Moreover, there's a larger strategic question to consider here: namely, did the Kerry campaign really want to help the Bushies turn the election into a referendum on their guy's Senate record, which, like all lengthy legislative histories, is virtually impossible to defend in the modern media environment? (Today, the Kerry campaign tried to shift the focus away from the senator's liberal voting record on issues like taxes, military spending, and gay rights by focusing on his work as a member of the Senate Banking Committee....) Of course not.

So, while I (pretty much) buy Glastris' larger argument about Bob Shrum's limitations as a general strategist, this probably wasn't the best issue for him to use to make that point. Because, on this one at least, Shrummy may well have been right.

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