Of Battery Packs and the Presidential Pompoms

This, said a wry Jay Leno, host of “The Tonight Show” on NBC, is a new John Edwards.

Gone was Mr. Sunshine of the presidential primary; absent was the low-key No. 2 whose ability to be a vice presidential attack dog has been doubted. Tuesday, late-night audiences saw a candidate who questioned President Bush’s manliness. Even the audience seemed surprised.

So who’s going to win the race, was one of Leno’s first questions, as Edwards strode on stage fresh from his regular five-mile jog.

Leno wasn’t talking about the run for White House, but a hypothetical footrace between the North Carolina senator and the equally fit president, whom Edwards would love to help unseat.

“I run, and I played a little football back when I was in school. And the president, I think, was there at those football games too. He was, I think, on the side maybe with his pompoms?” drawled Edwards, contrasting his youth as a mill town athlete with Bush’s tenure on a prep school cheering squad.

As the audience responded with scandalized laughter, he added: “Can you run fast with those cheerleading outfits on? I don’t know.”

And what about that debate controversy, Leno asked, that bulge in the back of the president’s jacket when he met Sen. John F. Kerry in their first televised face-off Sept. 30? Some, said Leno, thought it was a transmitter.

“I think it was his battery,” said a deadpan Edwards. “Talk about the [debate] rules ... before the debate [tonight in Tempe, Ariz.], John Kerry ought to pat him down.”

Over the course of the campaign, Kerry and First Lady Laura Bush have appeared on “The Tonight Show.” The show has been courting Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to no avail.