That's How Kerry Will Get Other Nations To Join Us

Maybe it really was Kerry's aides who kept inserting stupid statements into his speeches:

And yet it's not an easy gig. For one thing, the candidates treat the foreign media with contempt. During the 2000 election, a reporter from a German newspaper asked Karen Hughes, Bush's senior adviser, a question. Half way through her answer, something struck her. "Who do you work for?" she asked. "A German newspaper," he began. "Then what am I wasting my time talking to you for?" she asked, somewhat rhetorically, and turned on her heel. One Kerry aide was equally specific. "To us," he told the Washington Post last week, "foreign media are about as useful as lice."
As a result, when it comes to media access, rationing is extremely harsh. There are ten media places on Air Force One and Kerry's campaign plane and these go to the four US television networks - Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC - as well as CNN and the big daily newspapers (whose journalists are charmingly known as "scribblers"). These people form the "gaggle", the small group of hacks who get daily briefings from the campaign team, outlining the theme for the day at the various speeches the candidate plans to give. On October 27, for instance, the Kerry gaggle travelled with the senator as he visited Iowa, then Minnesota, back to Iowa and on to Ohio. They were pre-briefed that Kerry planned to pick up on the New York Times story about missing explosives in Iraq, managing to feed reports into every bulletin - even those that went out before a speech had been made.

Nice work. Kerry should have Europe eating out of his hand should he be elected.