The Democratic National Committee, in dire need of campaign cash, has enlisted CNN "Crossfire" co-host James Carville to call President Bush a liar.

Writing on behalf of the DNC, Carville says the president's re-election strategy will be to continue politicizing the Sept. 11 terrorist atrocities while questioning the patriotism of Democrats - who he says only want answers about Bush's "State of the Union lies."

Carville says Bush dreams "about a country with no debate and no dissent," and calls another four years of his leadership "almost unimaginable."

NEW SPOKESMAN

Michael Reagan, eldest son of Ronald Reagan, is joining the daily-talk lineup of Washington-based Radio America.

Heard for nearly 10 years over the Premiere Radio Network, Reagan is now joining the very network on which his father, while president, gave his weekly radio addresses.

Radio America President Jim Roberts says he intends to promote Reagan's show aggressively and says the presidential son will be relied upon heavily as a spokesman for the network.

IMPROVING WITH MONICA

Former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin writes in his new book, "In an Uncertain World," what happens when politics and economics collide.

Like when Monica Lewinsky collided with the Asian economic crisis.

"The Lewinsky revelations . . . resulted in far less attention being paid to events overseas," Rubin acknowledges. "The distraction kept the public from recognizing the threat from crisis abroad to the stability of the U.S. economy."

As a result, on "the same day in August 1998 that Russia became the first of the crisis countries to default on its foreign debt, the president testified before a grand jury and made a televised speech apologizing to the nation about Monica Lewinsky."

Still, the former Treasury secretary, who now heads the executive committee of Citigroup, says he "truly admired the way Clinton had dealt with the crisis - even though the crisis was of his own making. He was remarkably focused and intent, doing his work while the storm raged around him."

And, like everybody else, "I wondered how the president could do this. Sometime later, we had an interesting conversation. We'd been discussing the vice president's campaigning difficulties during the primaries, and Clinton told me that he had used 'mental devices' to help him through the Lewinsky period . . . (and) he thought Gore might use similar techniques to overcome his difficulties and campaign more effectively."

Incredibly enough, Rubin took these "mental devices" Mr. Clinton revealed and, for lack of his own personal crisis, applied them to his tennis game.

"While playing, I kept in mind the thought that even . . . a fine tennis player makes a lot of errors; the object is to focus on hitting the shot as well as possible and not to worry about either the likelihood of messing up or the outcome of the point," he says.

"When I told (political operative) Steve Friedman that the Lewinsky matter had improved my tennis game, he waited with bated breath for what I had to say. He may have been somewhat disappointed by my explanation."

BUSH VS. BLANK

Mr. Fundraiser himself, Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, is obviously impressed - and worried - over George W. Bush's campaign fundraising ability.

Observing in a memo we obtained that President Bush has just broken the $100 million mark in fundraising, McAuliffe states: "This breaks all presidential fundraising records in history. No candidate has ever had this much cash in the bank this early - or ever - in an election."

The DNC chairman informs the Democratic Party that it must have an additional $500,000 in the door by Dec. 15 to reach its 2003 financial goal.

"If we do not make this goal, we will move into 2004 already behind. We can't let this happen," he says, adding that matters are made worse by the fact that "Bush is running unopposed in the GOP primary."

Which obviously isn't the case in his party, which features an entire stage of Democrats vying for the White House next November.

As McAuliffe warns: "The clock is ticking."

ABOUT FACE Continued...