Michael Kinsley’s famous definition of a gaffe is when a politician tells the truth, and the New York state comptroller, Alan Hevesi, betrayed a larger truth about the contemporary left when he blurted out – at Queens College commencement, of all places – his hope that Senator Schumer would handle the situation in Washington by putting “a bullet between the president’s eyes.” Mr. Hevesi, according to the AP, later tried to apologize, saying, “There is no excuse for it. It was beyond dumb.” That’s an understatement. The way for Mr. Hevesi to correct his appalling gaffe is to confront the outrageousness that comes out of his own party nearly every day. Its tribunes have been running around asserting that Mr. Bush lied America into a war for oil in which thousands of American soldiers and innocent Iraqis have died. His party chairman, Governor Dean, seems eager to stir up not just opposition to the president but real hatred of him. What Mr. Hevesi voiced was a kind of bitterness and anger, an ugliness, that is no doubt accountable for many of the left’s electoral failures. New Yorkers will be able to judge whether to believe Mr. Hevesi’s apology by watching how he deals with the hatred that is being stirred up, within his own party, for the leader of America, indeed for America itself.