Only every couple of thousand years do people rise from the dead. So—hosanna,Mr. Kerry, your resurrection was most unexpected.

Now, what’s your next trick? ’Cause another debate’s coming up.

Friday, to be exact, in St. Louis, Mo.—a state where you’re no longer advertising (no use throwing good money after bad). But let’s stick with cheery tidings another paragraph or two, since there’s plenty of the other variety to come.

Only the most bitter of bitter-end right-wingers disputes who creamed whom in the first Presidential debate—and even the holdouts gotta stretch some. This they’re perfectly capable of doing, to judge by posts on their favorite Web sites, one of which reports that Jim Lehrer fixed the result by lobbing softballs to Mr. Kerry, while firing 95 m.p.h. sliders to Mr. Bush. The proof? A novel— The Last Debate — written by the PBS moderator four years ago, wherein newspaperman-moderator "Michael J. Howley" does the same thing at a debate in Williamsburg, Va., to "Bible-quoting, media-savvy" Republican Presidential candidate "David Donald Meredith," staying him from delivering a verbal knockout to his "floundering" Democratic opponent.

And Bill O’Reilly says Michael Moore is paranoid.

Anyway, the happy poll results and Dubya-handler hand-wringing you know by now. Same with the latest haywire goings-on in Iraq (nice of the president we installed to condemn us for killing the guys trying to slit his throat), and this week’s escape of John Edwards from the back of milk cartons, and into the jaws of Dick Cheney, with consequences yet to be determined as of this writing.

Now to what can no longer be avoided, starting with Friday’s "town-meeting" encounter.

First off, the President is not nearly as dumb as he looked in Coral Gables. Everyone has off nights (ask the F.B.I. supervisor who didn’t forward reports of Middle East types learning to take off but not land), and as has been stated in this space before, "ignorant" and "incurious" are not synonyms for "stupid." Mr. Bush, in fact, is quite bright, according to a really smart Yellow Dog Democrat mutual friend who shared classes with him for 12 years; sufficiently bright, at any rate, to learn from mistakes (Iraq excepted). He’s also a hell-on-wheels campaigner, particularly when there are non-journalist human beings with whom to interact, as there will be in the city Mark Twain took one look at and moved to Hartford instead.

Friday’s moderator, Charlie Gibson of ABC, is edgier than Mr. Lehrer, his goofus chores on Good Morning, America notwithstanding. Nor will there be any break-cutting for Mr. Kerry from him, especially if the subject of his Capitol steps ribbons (or was it medals?) toss comes up. Mr. Gibson was standing alongside him when that event occurred, and has already given Mr. Kerry a tough, televised time about it when fudging was attempted earlier in the campaign season. Shrinking violet, Charlie is not.

Friday’s subject, domestic policy, plays to Mr. Kerry’s strength. Or so everyone’s reporting. Maybe so, but by nearly every index the economy (whose mishaps not even Bill Clinton blames on Mr. Bush) is improving, and if the latest job figures that come out the same day as the debate are O.K., Mr. Kerry will have to be quick on his feet—a lot quicker than he was last week, when he trotted out the Bob Shrum line of attack, accusing Mr. Bush of catering exclusively to the fat-cat likes of Halliburton. As applause-getter from the assembled faithful, it was swell. But as Al Gore demonstrated in 2000 by repeatedly saying similar, it doesn’t cut ice with the Great Undecided. Reason: Americans are blessed/cursed by being the only people on the planet with utterly no conception of class. Quite the contrary: They’re sure they’re going to win the lottery, get rich and get their taxes cut, too.

Democratic sachems since Bob Strauss have been pointing this out to no avail—until Bill Clinton came along and not only took the advice but campaigned like a Republican. Which—as with so much else about Mr. Clinton, whose presence in black pulpits is urgently needed—made up for in success what it lacked in honor.

Times are different, to be sure, but not that much. Should doubt linger, check out West Virginia, which is everything a Democratic paradise ought to be: dirt-poor (per capita income’s just over 10 grand, and nearly one in five subsist beneath poverty level). And if that’s not enough to make you think the state should be permanently blue, Democrats have run the place since the Great Depression. Need more? Government’s the leading employer after the coal industry, thanks to Bobby Byrd, who’s moved there every federal agency that isn’t nailed down.

Now, who do you suppose carried the Mountaineer State in the last Presidential election? Answer: Not Al Gore.

Mr. Kerry’s crew thinks he has a better chance because, unlike Al, he hunts. (Squirrel, apparently, is a mainstay of the local diet.) You wouldn’t know, though, from the polls, which currently have Mr. Bush ahead by six points, largely because of all the traits Democrats despise him for.

Should flood visit West Virginia, as it does with Biblical regularity, Mr. Bush will be in even better shape, since he controls FEMA funds, which he’s been dispensing like the dipsomaniac he was before being introduced to Christ: to Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio, all of which just happen to be battleground states.

Being President affords Mr. Bush other advantages, like deciding which pushovers to strike in Iraq in order to show how swimmingly things are going. Samarra was last week’s example, achieved at officially reckoned modest cost, except for the civilians who got in the way, and the families of the two G.I.’s who were killed.

Back at home, meanwhile, the national polls so intoxicating to Kerry supporters have yet to translate into a winning electoral-vote margin, which is the only tally that counts. For a dose of depression, try out the L.A. Times ’ interactive election map, where the states are colored according to their latest poll results (moving the cursor over them summons the figures), those within statistical margin of error painted white. As of Tuesday, the electoral-vote totals were: 177 BUSH; 153 KERRY; 208 "UP FOR GRABS."

The last category is where the map gets interesting. Click a white state once, it turns red; twice, blue. Your correspondent plays this game every morning, right after black coffee, a cigarette and Drudge. And until, oh, a month or so ago, it wasn’t too hard to get Mr. Kerry to the magic 270, heralded by the map playing "Hail to the Chief." Nowadays, the game’s not nearly as fun. Even with the most optimistic scenario (white states Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa, Washington, Oregon, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Maine all clicked blue), the song sounds for the wrong guy. Still, there’s a month to go. (Take two aspirin and tell yourself that.)

No assessment of speed bumps ahead for Mr. Kerry would be complete without mention of Florida—currently white, but probably red on Election Night, courtesy of paper-trail-less "touch-screen" voting in the heaviest Democratic counties, the usual disenfranchisement of minorities and whatever else First Brother Jeb can conjure up. The margin’s likely to be exceedingly close and fraud-charged, as will almost certainly be the case in a number of other states. If history’s any guide, that means the Supremes get to decide who wins again, and we’re not talking about the Motown girls.

For a handicap of what may be in the offing in that event, flip open the current Vanity Fair to David Margolick’s account of how the result was ringmastered the last time round. Citing former SCOTUS clerks, Mr. Margolick reports that betting among marble-chamber residents was that the Court wouldn’t touch Bush v. Gore with a barge pole. "It was just inconceivable to us that the Court would want to lose its credibility in such a patently political way," a clerk told Mr. Margolick. "That would be the end of the Court." This failed to trouble Reagan-appointed figure of fun Anthony Kennedy, who rounded up fellow conservatives (Rehnquist, Scalia, O’Connor and Thomas) to grant cert. Sandra Day O’Connor was ready to vote then and there—forget about briefs and oral arguments. "She thought the Florida court was trying to steal the election, and they had to stop it," a clerk told Mr. Margolick. Three other Republican appointees shared her view, but lacking a fourth, the Court kicked it back to the Florida Supreme Court, whose response brought on chad-counting, and a new appeal from Mr. Bush’s lawyers demanding a halt to the recount, which was whittling their client’s 537-vote lead day by day. Dick Cheney’s duck-hunting buddy, Antonin Scalia, took over from there.

"In a highly unusual move, Scalia urged his colleagues to grant the stay immediately, even before receiving Gore’s response," Mr. Margolick writes. "He told his colleagues such recounts would cast ‘a needless and unjustified cloud’ over Bush’s legitimacy. It was essential, he said, to shut down the process immediately. The clerks were amazed at how baldly Scalia was pushing what they considered his own partisan agenda."

The Court didn’t move quite as speedily as Justice Scalia wished, but still quick enough to stop the counting before it showed Al Gore the winner. More oral arguments and opinion writing remained, but for all intents, George W. Bush was the 43rd President. As for the legal reasoning behind the final five-to-four decision, a clerk quoted Mr. Justice Scalia summing it thus: "As we used to say in Brooklyn, it’s a piece of shit."

For bombshell megatonnage, Mr. Margolick’s piece ranks right up there with Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack and Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies. Mr. Bush’s backers sure seem to think so. Dubya dad Attorneys-General Dick Thornburgh (taking time out from investigating Dan Rather’s documents reporting, at the behest of CBS) and William Barr, along with John Ashcroft’s Solicitor General Ted Olson (who argued the Florida recount for Dubya before Scalia and brethren), have gotten nearly 90 mostly conservative former SCOTUS clerks to sign a letter excoriating Mr. Margolick’s sources for tattling. (The truth of the blabbing they don’t quibble with.) That’s been accompanied by Republican Senators Lindsey Graham (one of the House managers of Bill Clinton’s Impeachment), Saxby Chambliss (the guy who beat Vietnam triple-amputee Max Cleland by suggesting he was in cahoots with Osama) and John Cornyn (suffice to say, he’s from Texas) calling on Judiciary chairman Orrin Hatch (who says Al Qaeda’s rooting for Mr. Kerry) to launch a full-blown Congressional investigation.

Press reaction? Virtually nil. Not one word from Court queen bee Linda Greenhouse of The Times, or princess Nina Totenberg on NPR. Or from about anyone else, for that matter, save lefty denizens of the Internet and a lawyerly publication or two.

The hush is deafening—and getting louder. Couple of weeks back, for instance, CBS announced it was putting off until after the election a 60 Minutes report on the Bush administration’s being snookered by the Saddam-shopping-in-Africa-for-uranium fable. Bumped by a far less consequential con (the phony Killian papers), the uranium piece was said to be brimming with embarrassing juice. So why delay it till some unspecified time after Nov. 2? The embarrassing juice: "inappropriate," CBS termed it, for pre-election viewing.

Nor is it coincidence that PBS—which relies heavily on Bush beneficence for its existence—has suddenly found need for the weekly prime-time services of Tucker Carlson and the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal, whose collective punditry is Ann Coulter with more syllables.

And by the way—heard anything new lately about Mr. Bush’s National Guard service? (Only if you read the L.A. Times.)

Mr. Kerry lacks the charm to steer the press (though he could throttle the fathead who leaked the pre-debate manicure tidbit). Better he concentrate on himself, which is where the biggest worry lies.

He was great during the debate, and—pumped by crowds not Bobby Kennedy register in adulation, but not Fritz Mondale, either—has stayed so since. The question: Can he keep it up?

His handlers would have you think so, attributing the John Kerry of flip-flops, multiply-claused sentences and wet-blanket charisma to their predecessors—a prescription that suits given-to-blaming-everyone-else Mr. Kerry just fine. But the candidate was over the age of legal consent when he was lapping up all that now-scorned advice, and even cats of the most exotic lineage (identifiable when they commend hurricane survivors for "pluck," as Mr. Kerry did during the debate) do not change spots. The new, dramatically improved John Kerry is still maddeningly vague about issues that deserve precision (understandably in the case of Iraq, where his solution is a near-duplicate of Mr. Bush’s, including in chances of success); still too eager to accept focus-group findings as Holy Writ; still, in all, a mouthpiece for beliefs whispered over cell phone from Georgetown and Chappaqua. Difference is, he’s gotten better at hiding it.

Occasionally, there are slips—like the "phantom pain" amputees sometimes experience. Several surfaced just prior to the first debate, during Mr. Kerry’s two-part interview with Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America. The first "oh-oh" was Mr. Kerry’s response when Ms. Sawyer asked whether he regretted letting three disastrous weeks slip by before saying boo about the Swift-boat clowns. Said Mr. Kerry: "No, I—look—that’s not what this race is about and I think people know it." Then he began tripping over his shoe laces with assumed-vanished hedges and qualifiers about Iraq. But the stake through the heart was "depends"—which began Mr. Kerry’s answer about whether getting rid of Saddam was worth it.

At which point, your correspondent began composing Mr. Kerry’s political obituary.

It was a pleasant shock having to throw in the wastebasket all that "hard work"— a debate phrase employed 11 times by Mr. Bush to describe what’s required in Iraq. (Also nice to be wrong, two columns ago, about the testosterone levels of Jim Lehrer, to whom apology is hereby tendered.)

Indeed, devout is the hope that every expressed kvetch about Mr. Kerry’s past and present personae proves misplaced; that he survives the sky-blackening slings bound to come his way between now and Nov. 2; and that on entering the White House, he disconnects the Oval Office phone and follows the instincts that made him a hero in Vietnam and the anti-war movement.

Will it happen?

God knows.