EARLY LAST WEEK a select group was invited to George Soros’s posh New York apartment to witness a debate between Richard Holbrooke, assistant secretary of State in the Clinton administration and a leading candidate for the top State Department job in a Kerry administration, and Bill Kristol, editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Holbrooke made it clear that the Kerry campaign had taken a momentous decision. In the 37 days remaining until voters go to the polls, Kerry will concentrate his fire on President Bush’s decision to go to war to depose Saddam Hussein, and on his administration’s subsequent handling of the post-invasion situation in Iraq.

That decision means that Kerry has abandoned, or at the very least downgraded in importance, his attacks on the president’s handling of the economy. This, despite the from-his-hospital-bed advice of the Democrats’ most successful vote-getter, Bill Clinton, that Bush’s main vulnerability remains “the economy, stupid.”