AFTER JOHN KERRY’S come-from-behind win in the Iowa caucus, after Howard Dean flagged in the stretch, and continuing through much of the 2004 campaign, Kerry’s fans had the temerity to compare him to Seabiscuit, the great racehorse of the mid-1930’s. But one win does not make a champion, and to anyone familiar with Laura Hillenbrand’s wonderful book, and the movie made from it, it is apparent that the real Seabiscuit in the race was George W. Bush.

Bush and Seabiscuit both had patrician forebears, (Man o’ War was Seabiscuit’s grandfather), but each seemed a little less elegant, a little more common, a bit less refined. Bush was called a cowboy, as a term of derision; Seabiscuit was called a cow horse. Bush and Seabiscuit both had troubled youths, marked by bad attitude and self-destructive behavior. Both were turned around in the nick of time, Seabiscuit by his owner, his trainer, and jockey; Bush by God and by Laura. Afterwards, both of them burned up the track. Al Gore and John Kerry may have lacked the pizzazz of War Admiral, the magnificent Triple Crown winner whom Seabiscuit beat by four lengths in a match race, but they had all the arrogance of his unpleasant owner, a pillar of the eastern racing establishment who felt himself demeaned and degraded by having his horse run on the same track as this upstart from nowhere.