Kerry-Edwards … and Moore?

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When John Kerry introduced his running mate last week, he and John Edwards kicked off a partnership that has four months to win enough hearts and minds to put the Democrats back in the White House. But many analysts in the U.S. argue that the election isn't Kerry's to win — it is George W. Bush's to lose. Whenever an American President seeks re-election, the race becomes a referendum on his first term; this year, with the war in Iraq still unfolding and the U.S. electorate so divided, that's especially true. With the Democratic convention just two weeks away, Kerry and Edwards are focused on defining themselves and selling their campaign as an upbeat "celebration of American values." So for now, they'd just as soon avoid the issue of the war (which both supported) and let others carry the attack against Bush.

Michael Moore is happy to offer his services. Fahrenheit 9/11, his new Bush-bashing movie, has generated more heat than any attack ad the Democrats could possibly dream up. In effect, the provocateur has become an uninvited (but not altogether unwelcome) Democratic operative, and his documentary can be thought of as an independent, uncoordinated expenditure on behalf of the Kerry-Edwards campaign.

Moore wasn't anywhere near Kerry and Edwards last week — he's such a divisive figure in the U.S. that the Democrats are careful to keep their distance. Kerry hasn't seen and won't comment on the movie, and, as Moore told TIME, "if Kerry's President, on Day Two, I'll be on him [too]." Kerry and Edwards and Moore — two smooth polls and a rumpled polemicist — are unlikely bedfellows anyway.

But politics has always created alliances of convenience; for now the three share a goal. And they have more in common than is evident at first glance; Moore plays the outsider, unkempt and loud, but he does share two things with Edwards: blue-collar roots and an unapologetically populist stance.

Moore's radical sarcasm differs from Edwards' sunny, Clintonian bonhomie, but both are effective. Moore's bold, baldly manipulative film was already the biggest-grossing documentary ever in the U.S. when it began rolling out across Europe last week. It's too soon to say whether Fahrenheit 9/11 will change the way anyone votes or even energize the Democratic base. But there is a long tradition of American pop culture having a subtle and sometimes decisive influence over presidential politics. Frank Sinatra lent a cool cred to John Kennedy's 1960 campaign, and Ronald Reagan would probably never have captured the White House in 1980 without his well-honed Hollywood delivery. Moore's filmmaking may be coarse, but it is also incendiary and witheringly derisive — and it could be exactly what a generation of young voters weaned on Jackass and reality TV will respond to.

Whatever its impact at home, Fahrenheit 9/11 has only cemented Moore's standing in Europe, where his blunt, truth-teller pose has won him myriad fans and hero status. People know his shortcomings — Le Monde calls Fahrenheit 9/11 "simplistic and often demagogic" — but cheer him on anyway. His latest book, Dude, Where's My Country? , has been on the German best-seller lists for more than 30 weeks. The idea that this renegade could galvanize U.S. opinion and boost the Democratic ticket holds a certain appeal for Europeans. Bush is so unpopular in Europe, says French legislator Pierre Lellouche, that "the Democrats could nominate a horse" and draw more support. But the Constitution has no provision for equine candidates, and it's the American voter who will decide.