The Associated Press story out of Washington reported that anti-war wanna-be Democratic presidential nominee Howard Dean, who had publicly professed to be less than impressed with the capture of Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein, had been attacked by two of the other eight Democrats who also seek the nomination.

When the front-running Dean disputed President Bush’s contention that the capture of Saddam by American soldiers had made America a safer place, Sens. Joe Lieberman and John Kerry suggested it would be nice if Dean might one day smarten up and face reality.

The latest development in the tag-team match that is the Democratic primary came after Dean had made a post-Saddam speech to a Los Angeles group, and it was hardly a surprise. In politics, the rules clearly state that when there are three or more job-seekers competing for one job the also-rans must always gang up on the politician deemed to be the leader of the pack at the moment. Devouring one’s own kind in this primary stage of the game is not only expected, it is encouraged as a means of improving the gene pool.

Lieberman, after all, has good cause to snipe at the former Vermont governor who has an affinity for sticking his foot in his mouth at inopportune times. The former Democratic vice-presidential candidate was publicly jilted by his old running mate, Al Gore, who piled it on so thick in endorsing Dean’s candidacy that even Dean had to blush at the overkill. As well, Kerry’s grand presidential ambitions appear to have been pretty much thwarted by Dean, and that cannot possibly sit well with the extremely confident, though fast-fading senator from Massachusetts.

And so the intramural bickering by Democrats was not, to me, the nub of the AP story. Rather, the article served to remind that what a politician says on any given subject upon one occasion is often diametrically opposed to what he will say on the same subject at some later point. In their quest for the catchy sound bite, they seem never to foresee that their rhetoric might belatedly jump up and bite them.

Kerry was quoted as saying that Dean’s speech “is still more proof that all the advisers in the world can’t give Howard Dean the military and foreign policy experience, leadership skills, or diplomatic temperament necessary to lead this country through dangerous times.”

It’s difficult to argue with that assessment. It’s also hard not to conclude that it seems like a sound bite made in heaven for future use by The Committee to Re-elect George W. Bush should Dean win the Democratic nomination, as most polls indicate he will.

More to the point, it’s easy to imagine that Kerry, by then coerced by the party into stumping for Dean in the general election, might make a slight alteration in his take on his onetime adversary. Thus the campaign-rally version could come out something like “my dearest friend, Howard Dean, unquestionably has all the foreign policy experience, leadership skills and diplomatic temperament necessary to lead this great country through dangerous times. …”

Such blatant course alterations are de rigueur in politics, which is why the natives have grown restless with oily practitioners with a talent for doing whatever it takes to remain a player in the game long after they should have been relegated to a seat on the bench.

The late, acerbic Baltimore Sun political columnist H.L. Mencken knew how to handle the genre. In 1920, when there were seven Republican candidates for the presidential nomination and 23 Democrats hoping to become their party’s nominee, The Great One played no favorites. He skewered the entire lot.

One candidate was “a simple-minded old dodo with a delusion of persecution,” another “a political mountebank of the first order,” and another “a second-rate provincial.” Most others were “simply bad jokes.”

“All of the great patriots now engaged in edging and squirming their ways toward the Presidency of the Republic run true to form,” Mencken wrote. “This is to say, they are all extremely wary, and all more or less palpable frauds. What they want, primarily, is the job; the necessary equipment of unescapable issues, immutable principles and soaring ideals can wait until it becomes more certain which way the mob will be whooping. …”

The man could have been writing about most any crowded modern-day primary campaign, although he’d surely have the sensitivity police on his case if he returned from the dead to do so. Provided they weren’t occupied with collaring us old mossbacks for having the insensitivity to wish you a Merry Christmas, politically incorrect as that gesture is these days.

NEWS columnist Kent Ward lives in Winterport. His e-mail address is olddawg@bangordailynews.net.