After a 15-month campaign that took John Kerry from the brink of defeat to the nomination, and after a string of off-the-cuff statements that even his aides described as potentially damaging to his White House hopes, it may be hard to begrudge him a few days off.

On that tape, the former aide, Jean-Claude Mery, described in meticulous detail various kickback schemes that he said were in operation when Mr. Chirac was mayor of Paris between 1977 and 1995.

Recently Ms. Suplicy has begun appearing in public with Luís Favre, a former aide described by Brazilian newspapers and magazines as her new companion.

His driver was killed as was an aide, described as a bodyguard or groundskeeper.

But Clinton advisers were thunderstruck when they watched Mr. Inman on Tuesday, seeing what one top aide described as "a Perot-like quality" and "a spook who sees conspiracies everywhere."

Eventually Mr. Bush chose what his aides described as a compromise, which was to allow an international organization to receive American AIDS money as long as its abortion and family planning programs were conducted and financed separately.

Attorney General Janet Reno and her aides described in detail today a decade-long vitamin cartel that they said had been shattered in one of the largest criminal prosecutions ever made by the Justice Department.

At a lunch meeting with reporters, Mrs. O'Leary and her senior aides repeatedly described the existing arrangements with contractors as a hidebound and wasteful "entitlement" program, a kind of high-technology dole for corporations.

Mr. Hart is planning to seek out audiences such as university students to deliver what aides described as a series of lectures on such topics as arms control, Federal spending and world trade.

Old and new voices are heard in the mix of what one aide described as "managed competition."