Teresa Heinz Kerry's aides are now behaving much like the people who transport bears from one baiting to the next. She is shunted in and out of side doors. She is held in rooms. Phone calls go unreturned. A cordon of security hovers in ways that keep questions just beyond earshot, and when a stray one gets through, eyes are averted and the envelope of suits moves for the exit.

All that remains is for someone to shout, "Run for your lives, she's loose" to complete the scene.

La Teresa has had a bad week of it after telling an interviewer for USA Today that she wasn't sure Laura Bush had ever held a real job. She apologized when reminded that Mrs. Bush had been a teacher and librarian, which are certainly real jobs. Democrats usually consider them the most important jobs in the galaxy when the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association are handing out endorsements.

The gaffe was a rare instance of Teresa muffing a fact. The caution built around her by staff is commonplace and easily attributable to the mindset of the Democratic Party, whose operatives always behave as if their candidates are somehow doing something wrong and that every inquiry from a journalist should be treated like a Christmas gift from the Unabomber.

Such interviews as have been allowed have been with national publications, the kind that cannot easily be crossed or ignored without some sort of consequence. As one Heinz Kerry aide put it when explaining why she was too busy for the regional press while spending a week joined at the hip with a national magazine reporter: "Well, it is Newsweek, after all." It has gotten worse since the old Clinton hands have climbed aboard.

Yesterday was drearily predictable. Heinz Kerry showed up late for a speech before the convention of the Pennsylvania Conference of the NAACP. She delivered, in her tiny voice, a speech that, with quiet assurance -- statistics, facts, personal histories rolled out with precision -- took the crowd in her hand.

"We still have two school systems, separate but unequal," she told them. "You cannot promise to leave no child behind and then leave the money behind." She took a shot at minimum educational achievement standards set by the Bush administration, but left largely unfunded. "Otherwise, all they become is traps."

This sense of exclusion runs deep among members of the NAACP, who are tired of hearing about how well off they are, when unemployment for black Americans is double the national average and infant mortality remains a scandal with numbers to prove it.

This crowd loved Teresa Heinz Kerry because she behaved like herself -- unapologetically and in the most personal way. She talked about growing up in Africa and marching against the move in 1959 to segregate her university in South Africa, and ended with a coda straight out of the NAACP's language.

"When John Kerry is elected, he will lift every voice, because he knows every voice matters," she said. She promised a face of America this crowd seeks: "A face that is compassionate but not condescending, a face that is strong but not threatening, a face that is proud but not arrogant."

John Kerry can't say it as well. Asked about diversity during a debate in Wisconsin 10 months ago, he spluttered out, "Why, in my campaign we have ... ." It was hard to hear the rest for the laughter in the press center. We were expecting him to add that he has a black chiropractor. He sounded arrogant. Teresa Heinz Kerry is not. She has Kerry's staff, though, to be arrogant for her.

She mingled awhile, reporters just outside reach and staff looking as if they might at any moment shove her into a getaway car. It is almost as if the goal of a Teresa Heinz Kerry appearance is not to do anything newsworthy, certainly not in the sense of allowing her to say anything new.

"She was open. She was hugging people, much to the chagrin of the Secret Service," said Burrell A. Brown, president of the state NAACP.

The staff must have been delighted. You can't shove a microphone in someone's face in mid-hug.