"Every modern presidential candidate has a factotum, or 'body man, '" Jodi Wilgoren writes today in The New York Times.

And that's true -- but every modern presidential candidate's factotum/"body man"/valet isn't profiled in a front-page New York Times story that runs for 34 paragraphs and is accompanied by a sidebar listing all the things the factotum/"body man"/valet carries for the candidate.

Funny thing -- the only candidate whose "valet" seems to have gotten that treatment is the one who's routinely derided by his Republican opponents as patrician and accustomed to first-class service.

Let's watch Wilgoren type up Republican spin points (as Bob Somerby of the Daily Howler likes to put it):

Mr. Kerry is comfortable being catered to. He has his moods and his myriad personal needs. A social loner, he is happy with an aide half his age.

Kerry is hoity-toity and a weirdo -- not a cheery regular guy like Bush!

Of course, as some of us know, Bush expects a certain level of service from "the help":

In [The Price of Loyalty, Paul] O'Neill says the tone of his relationship with Bush was set at their very first meeting where he was offered the job of Treasury Secretary.

Instead of a detailed discussion, Bush was more interested in why the cheeseburgers he had ordered were slow to appear. He interrupted the talk to summon White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card.

"You're the chief of staff. You think you're up to getting us some cheeseburgers?" O'Neill recalled Bush saying. "Card nodded. No one laughed. He all but raced out of the room."

There's nothing like that in Wilgoren's article. In fact, Wilgoren can't even bring herself to mention a Republican who ever asked an aide to do anything:

Greg Schneiders, an international political consultant, was President Jimmy Carter's administrative assistant in the 1976 campaign. He cites that fact in the first paragraph of his biography, even though he went on to run the day-to-day operations of the White House communications office, serve as a Senate press secretary and teach at Georgetown. Two of President Bill Clinton's former aides became executives at USA Networks and Starbucks; one of Mr. Gore's aides is engaged to his daughter.

Republicans on the campaign trail, I guess, carry their own bags and each sandwiches they made themselves the night before.

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UPDATE: Not surprisingly, the lead item in today's Daily Howler is about the Wilgoren article. Good stuff, as always. (Consider my post above an hommage.)