This Salon interview with John Kerry is pretty good.

The Bush campaign has spent some $80 million on television advertisements, most of them negative spots attacking you. The president has mocked you as a flip-flopper, and his surrogates are out there attacking you every day. Do you ever find yourself in disbelief over the way you and your record have been treated?

I find it about as craven, petty, childish and destructive in terms of America's hopes in politics as anything I've ever seen.

[...] As you know, the Republican line on you is that you're a "flip-flopper." Do you think the White House really views you that way, or is this just an intellectually dishonest political exercise?

Of course it is. It's not only intellectually dishonest, it's shallow beyond belief. It's exactly what they said about Bill Clinton, it's exactly what they said about Al Gore, it's exactly what they said about John McCain. It is the standard operating approach of Republicans who have nothing to say for themselves, so all they do is try to brand somebody else.

Well, it's not exactly what they did to McCain. Nobody's accused you of having an illegitimate love child.

Not yet. I'm waiting for those. That's probably August or September.

Among other things, what I like about this interview is that it goes a way toward convincing me that John Kerry knows what kind of craven, unAmerican assholes he's dealing with and is going to campaign accordingly. In that sense, Gore might have been too idealistic (as he noted near the end of his speech the other day.) So, Kerry's recognition of who these people are gives me a small measure of optimism.