A good politician has it. She is lucky if she wins the first time out, but more often than not, she will lose, crawl off to recover, then come back for another round. Call it indefatigability. Or forget about that million-dollar word; just call it the Merrill Cook syndrome.

Cook, the perennial candidate in Utah for more than 20 years, will not give in, give up or even show signs of fatigue. He won a stint in the U.S. House in the '90s, but his political career has fizzled since. Still, he always returns - thinner, more outspoken, a bit goofier.

Cook's latest role was as a Republican running as an independent in Salt Lake County's mayoral race. Even at the back of the pack, he nevertheless played an effective Greek chorus - tweaking his party for dumping Nancy Workman at the last minute with her questionable doctor's note and for serving up a write-in candidate who waited conveniently off stage for his call-up.

An artist of certain notoriety is attempting to resurrect himself with equal zest. I thought of this on Monday night while surrendering to one of my bad habits, which is falling asleep to late-night talk shows as they plod along on TV in front of me. I woke just as Jay Leno introduced his first guest on "The Tonight Show": Michael Moore.

I figured this was a pre-election rerun. Moore would shuffle in wearing sloppy jeans and a baggy jacket, unshaven, his shaggy hair smashed under a rumpled ball cap. And then he would get all loud and ungrateful about our president and predict a John Kerry victory and I would have to turn off the set and go to bed because I could not sit through this again.

I was wrong. It was a new show, with a reinvented Michael Moore. No doubt the new image is temporary - after all, Moore still ambled out on the set with that characteristic fat-guy shuffle. Except he was wearing an expensive (and baggy) dark suit. And a conservatively striped necktie. He had a good haircut, and he had shaved.

It was Moore's first TV appearance since Kerry got his spanking.

Leno asked him if he had turned Republican. Moore reached into his bag of quips. "If you can't beat 'em," he said, "you might as well try to look like 'em."

Moore was subdued. When Leno asked him why he believed Bush and the Republicans won, he said, "They got more votes." Then he explained - accurately - that from the moment Bush stood with a bullhorn at New York's Ground Zero, promising he would not desert the victims of 9-11 or the rest of the country, the president had his victory. Kerry never defined himself as succinctly.

Naturally, the day after the Leno gig, Moore's loudest critics rallied. On the Web site for people who have no life - http://www.Moorewatch.com - which also sells "liberal-crushing calendars and ornaments," people argued the suit, tie and kicked puppy attitude were just pieces of Moore's game plan to win a best picture Oscar for "Fahrenheit 9/11."

I'll buy it. But then, Moore wasn't exactly hiding his effort at shameless self-promotion. He told Leno that after the big election loss, he got reflective. He said he had decided "I need to start thinking of things that are really important. Like me."

Indefatigable, that guy.

hmullen@sltrib.com