Then there was the senator's clumsy attempt to declare himself America's ''second black president.'' Bill Clinton was at least canny enough to get himself anointed as the first black president by an actual black person, the novelist Toni Morrison, who declared that he displayed ''every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.'' It's harder to pull that off when you're a Swiss finishing school boy from Massachusetts. Many's the night John and the other boys in his dorm would lie awake dreaming of their freedom as they murmured one of the traditional spirituals of their people: ''Swing by, sweet limousine, comin' for to carry me home.''

Of course, like many African Americans, he understands what it's like when people are prejudiced against you because of your skin. In Sen. Kerry's case, his skin is extremely thin. So it was inevitable that, when a voter named Cedric Brown, in Bethlehem, Pa., needled the candidate to name one of the world leaders who were supposedly desperate for him to beat Bush, within moments the senator would be snarling that it's ''none of your business.''

It's never a good idea in vernacular politics to leave the impression you're more comfortable with the global elite than with American citizens. Instead of the second black president, Kerry sounded awfully like America's first French president.

Also none of our business is the senator's go-ahead-punk bluster about foreign policy. For months he's been droning in his stump speech that, if George W. Bush wants to fight this election on national security, Kerry has three words for him: ''Bring it on!'' So Bush brought it on -- with a 30-second ad arguing that the senator is weak on defense. And suddenly the campaign's curled up on the floor in a fetal position whimpering that it's just totally unfair making such a horrible personal attack. Watching him in New Hampshire, I always thought, when Kerry dares you to ''bring it on,'' he couldn't quite bring it off. As all military strategists say, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. And so it proved.