Bush and Kerry, a Running Gag on Late Night

George Bush still wears a dunce cap.

And John Kerry is one strange-looking dude.

"President Bush admitted that his prewar intelligence wasn't what it should have been," Jay Leno said. "We knew that when we elected him."

As for Kerry, "his poll numbers are moving, donations are moving, endorsements are moving," Leno said. "The only thing not moving about John Kerry -- his hair. His hair does not move."

Scoff if you must, but the musings of Leno, David Letterman, Jon Stewart and Conan O'Brien may have as much to do with shaping the candidates' public personas as a ton of newspaper stories, magazine features and cable arguments. Plus, not everyone watches Rather, Brokaw, Jennings and Lehrer.

But this is one contest where winning amounts to losing: 94 percent of the jokes about intelligence, and 89 percent about honesty, involved the president. Kerry drew nearly half the cracks aimed at a candidate's appearance. Leno said that Senate office buildings shut down after the mailing of a white powdery substance: "At first they thought it was another one of John Kerry's Botox deliveries."

Bush's other vulnerabilities at that hour, according to the report: his military service and his credibility on Iraq.

Letterman said of Bush's campaign ads: "In one of the commercials you see George W. Bush for 30 seconds. In another commercial you get to see George W. Bush for 60 seconds. Kind of like his stint in the National Guard."

Leno said that Oscar nominations had gone to Sean Penn, Jude Law "and, of course, George W. Bush for 'Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction.' "

Fair and Balanced?

By varying pluralities, Democrats give positive grades to CNN (53 percent), network newscasts (49 percent), MSNBC (35 percent) and Jim Lehrer's PBS newscast (31 percent). But by a margin of 47 percent to 31 percent, they say Fox News is biased.

Republicans, however, say Fox is fair by a margin of 50 percent to 32 percent. A plurality see as biased the network newscasts (67 percent), CNN (55 percent), MSNBC (41 percent) and Lehrer (27 percent to 24 percent).

Only bare-bones C-SPAN won pluralities for fairness from both sides -- 46 percent of Democrats and 38 percent of Republicans.