(As leaked to the ever-voracious, hard-news-hungry Washington punditry posse yesterday by intrepid reporter Mary Ann Akers in her inside-the-Beltway WaPo gossip blog, The Sleuth...)

John Kerry's SUV Hybrid Sitting On Used Car Lot

If you're in the market for a hybrid SUV once owned by a famous, environmentally friendly politician, Sen. John Kerry's (D-Mass.) 2006 Ford Escape Hybrid is for sale for about $26,000.

Catholic University graduate student Julie Egermayer found out about Kerry's SUV when she called Koons Ford auto dealership in Falls Church, VA., over the weekend. Egermayer's car was totaled recently in a fire in the alley behind her apartment building in Washington, so she decided to replace it with a Ford Escape Hybrid. And not one necessarily previously owned by a big-name politician.

The Ford dealership told Egermayer it didn't have any '08 models of the hybrid SUV on the lot. When she asked about a used one, the salesman lit up like a lottery winner. "They were so excited. The salesman said, 'Yes! We just got one from a very important person,'" says Egermayer.

Egermayer didn't really have to twist the car salesman's arm to get him to tell her whose SUV it was. And no matter how impressed she was that Sen. Kerry owned the car -- her fiancé, Ari Rabin-Havt, worked as deputy director of Internet communications on Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign -- she wasn't interested.

"If I bought John Kerry's car, the warranty would expire at the end of this year," she explained. Better to have Joe Blow's car with a warranty than John Kerry's without.

But what is Kerry, Mr. Saving the Planet Jr. (Al Gore is Senior), doing getting rid of his hybrid? Is he going back to a gas-guzzling, ozone-destroying emissions way of the past?

Never, says Kerry's deputy chief of staff, David Wade. In fact, his boss decided to trade in his two-year-old Ford Escape Hybrid for a shiny new Chevy Tahoe Hybrid -- which won the 2008 Green Car of the Year award, he'll have you know. (Wade says it's a 40 percent increase in fuel efficiency.)

"Senator Kerry has already done two things this year to help fight global warming and reduce greenhouse gas emissions: he bought a new hybrid car and he's giving shorter speeches," Wade quipped.

(And needless to say, equally intrepid JK blogger Faith had a ready answer to the question posed in this blog entry's title when she posted about it on her independently awesome KerryVision.net video blog this morning, too...)

I would!

Heck, there may be copies of speeches tucked under the seat or something. A plan to end the war in the glove box. Maybe a couple signed Springsteen CDs in the disc changer.

You never know.