A new wrinkle on the old skin game.

Byline: Sid McKeen

COLUMN: WRY AND GINGER

Four years ago, when Sen. John F. Kerry was zeroing in on the nomination to be his party's candidate for president, he got a piece of unsolicited advice from one of Washington's leading speechwriters.

"If voters sense that you're comfortable in your own skin," he was told in an op-ed piece, "they'll be more comfortable with the idea of you in the Oval Office." It was right on the money, but the Massachusetts senator either ignored it or found himself constitutionally incapable of putting it to good use. In either case, the result was the same: President Kerry is not a candidate for re-election in 2008; he makes news this election cycle by endorsing a colleague.

But the phrase, "comfortable in his (or her) own skin," has caught on with Potomac pundits like a California wildfire. You hear it a dozen times a day, or you do, at least, if you happen to be a political junkie like me. I predict that before the year is over, it will be No. 1 on the Political Buzz-phrase Hit Parade. (No. 2 may come to be "back-and-forth" used as a noun to describe the kind of dust-ups so frequently engaged in by squabbling candidates.)

Sen. John S. McCain, whatever his problems with the hardest-nosed wing of the Republican Party, is seen by pretty much all the insiders as snug - sometimes even smug - inside the affable McCain epidermis. A number of analysts gave that as the primary reason for his most recent successes at the polls, even when the issues began to favor his principal rival, Gov. Mitt Romney, whose overall skin comfort may still be in question.

On the other side, the pundits seem generally in agreement that Sen. Barack Obama has quickly taken on the appearance of having the sort of subcutaneous self-satisfaction that is required of seekers after the country's biggest job. The jury is still out on Sen. Hillary Clinton, whose teary performance in New Hampshire sparked a national conversation about who the person under the surface really is.

All this skin talk has got me thinking.

What does comfort in one's own skin really mean? Does it mean that we know who we are? Well, everybody knows that, don't they, except maybe those who have been diagnosed with amnesia? Does it mean we are our own guy or gal? Heck, who else is going to want to take that responsibility? Does it mean we've come to terms or are fully at peace with ourselves? Show me one such among us. I must say I was a lot more comfortable in my own skin before it began to be obvious that it was aging so fast.

I think if I were to find myself a new place to live, I'd try to find one without mirrors, which only go out of their way to rub it in. I'm no neat freak, but I wouldn't dream of going out in public with clothes that are half as wrinkled as my poor face. What law of nature is it that makes our faces wrinkle before our arms or legs or other body parts most people never see? And how come even when our faces somehow get thinner we stay potty around the waist?

So insecure am I about my own skin these days that I duck away from cameras, even those toted by friends, like a Hollywood celebrity trapped by paparazzi. And the last snapshot taken of me in a bathing suit bears the inscription, "Lake Winnepesaukee, N.H., summer of 1961."

May all of you be more comfortable in your own skin than I am - even the good junior senator from Massachusetts.

Sid McKeen can be reached at [e-mail].