The Kerry campaign is surely one of the most sloppy, disorganized, and self-contradictory presidential bids in history; every day brings a new disconnect: Clash And Kerry.

On Thursday, Kerry told a convention of minority journalists that he would have reacted more decisively to the news than Bush, who continued reading with a group of Florida schoolchildren for seven minutes after an aide whispered the news into his ear. It’s a scene that filmmaker Michael Moore uses to skewer the president in his anti-Bush movie, “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

“I would have told those kids very nicely and politely that the president of the United States has something that he needs to attend to,” Kerry said.

The candidate’s wife, on the other hand, is not so sure an abrupt response would have been the right one. “I think the president behaved correctly in terms of being quiet amidst stunning news like that in a classroom of kids,” she told the host of MSNBC’s “Hardball With Chris Matthews” during an interview before the Democratic National Convention last month. “You know, what can you do? It takes you a couple of minutes to digest what you have just heard. And then he was … not in his White House and in his office with all of his people. He was in the school in Florida.”

Kerry’s case that he would have acted with more swiftness and poise than Bush was also undermined by another interview — this one with the candidate himself. On July 8, Kerry recalled for CNN’s Larry King his actions that day. He was in a meeting in the office of Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) when he watched the second plane hit the World Trade Center on television, while standing next to fellow senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). “And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table, and then we just realized nobody could think, and then, boom, we saw the cloud of the explosion at the Pentagon.”

The Bush-Cheney campaign noted that there were 40 minutes between the second trade center attack and a plane hitting the Pentagon. “By Kerry’s own words, he and his fellow senators sat there for 40 minutes, realizing ‘nobody could think,’ ” said a campaign statement. “He is hardly in a position to criticize President Bush for ‘inaction.’ ”