Mark Steyn: Knowns, unknowns and the Ketchup Kid

The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 01/27/04 | Mark Steyn

[Pokey78]

The American media are all excited about a new poll showing that, come the election, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry would beat George W Bush by 49 per cent to 46 per cent. Back in September, they were all excited about a poll showing Gen Wesley Clark would beat Bush by – guess what? – 49 per cent to 46 per cent. Even the lively Vermont governor Howard Dean had a poll putting him within the margin of error against Bush. Yet here we are just a few months later: the Vermonster self-detonated on Iowa caucus night, and Gen Clark will be lucky to hold on to fourth place in today's New Hampshire primary.

I know a lot of folks on both sides of the Atlantic are salivating at the arrogant Texas cowboy's impending demise, but these polls are meaningless for several reasons, the most important of which is that they're measuring a "known" – Bush – against an "unknown" – some hitherto obscure figure suddenly proclaimed as the Democratic frontrunner. When the unknown becomes known, his numbers slide and the media and the Dems go off in search of a new white knight. Last week, things were so desperate that the only fellow left for the white-knight role was John Kerry, Vietnam veteran and spouse of ketchup heiress Theresa Heinz. Hitherto, the somnolent Kerry had been written off as remote and detached, but these are small sins next to angry (Dean) and kooky (Clark). The Ketchup Kid is a default choice, the least unwhite knight. In the weeks ahead, he too will become known.

In New Hampshire, it's already happening. I don't believe these polls showing him with a double-digit lead. Here's my sense of how things will go today, based on nothing more scientific than a weekend winter-sports break over on the eastern side of the state and a chat with the waitress in the Littleton Diner on the way back to my pad in western New Hampshire. She'd had pretty much every candidate host events at the diner except Dean and Lyndon Larouche, whose campaign wanted to hold a shindig there but got turned down. Larouche is the guy who thinks the Queen is an international drugs kingpin (or, in this case, queenpin) secretly running the world on her cocaine profits. Compared with some of the wackier utterances of Dean and Clark, the House of Windsor drug cartel is one of the less fanciful notions this primary season. At the rate the white knights are tripping over their feet of clay, Larouche could well be the frontrunner by March, with his face on the cover of Newsweek and a poll showing he'd beat Bush 49 per cent to 46 per cent, if Prince Philip doesn't have him taken out by a hit team first.

But, barring a Larouche surge, my bet for today's vote is as follows:

1) Senator John Kerry 29 per cent
2) Governor Howard Dean 28 per cent
3) Senator John Edwards 19 per cent
4) Senator Joe Lieberman 12 per cent
5) General Wesley Clark 10 per cent
6) Everybody else 2 per cent

You can have a good laugh about these predictions tomorrow morning.

If it sounds a bit crass to reduce the whole business to Hit Parade rankings, well, don't blame me. After spending the best part of a year listening to the Democrats' strolling minstrels strumming their way round the White Mountains, I'm staggered by how little any of them have to say. If you go to a Kerry rally – something of an oxymoron, but let that pass – the senator's stump speech is a karaoke tape of floppo populist boilerplate. If he'd downloaded it for free from the internet, that'd be one thing. Instead, he paid a small fortune to hotshot consultant Bob Shrum, who promptly faxed over the same old generic guff he keeps in the freezer: "I (insert name here) will never stop fighting for ordinary people against the powerful interests that stand in your way."

This shtick worked so well for Shrum's previous clients - President Dick Gephardt (1988), President Bob Kerrey (1992), President Al Gore (2000) and President Insert Namehere (2008) that he evidently sees no reason why it shouldn't elect a fifth president this time round. Throw in a few mandatory sneering references to Enron, Halliburton and Attorney-General John Ashcroft plus a handful of local hard-luck stories of doubtful general application – "47-year-old Arlene Claxton of Hooksett worked 20 years to build up her hairdressing business only to contract a rare skin disease from a conditioner manufactured overseas by corporations George W Bush has given tax breaks to in order to export American jobs abroad to jurisdictions lacking environmental safeguards thanks to a sweetheart deal negotiated by a lobbyist for Halliburton and then learnt that her health insurer wouldn't cover the cost of treatment because etc etc."

Sen John Edwards, the pretty-boy southern lawyer, does a much better job of this sort of thing. I caught him at Gorham Town Hall way up in the mountains on Saturday morning. It was a brutally cold morning – 40 degrees below freezing – but the place was packed and we all came away enthused, unlike at a Kerry rally where you come away trying not to think about why you're not enthused. Next to the groggy, haggard Kerry, Edwards has a fabulous, glowing complexion. In Gorham, surrounded by leathery weatherbeaten chapped blotched Yankee faces on all sides, the North Carolina trial lawyer looked like a star. If he'd taken my question, I'd have asked him for the name of his moisturiser. True, his stump speech often sounds less like a political platform and more like a laundry list of class-action suits he'd like to get a piece of – we need to act against credit card companies that charge excessive interest etc – and he has nothing of interest to say about the war. But his qualified support – or qualified lack of support – seems to suit a Democratic electorate that recoils from Joe Lieberman's full-throated backing of the Iraq liberation and isn't quite suicidal enough to nail its colours to the mast of the fruitcake anti-war Left.

That's the real story here: for all Howard Dean's talk that you can't beat Bush with "Bush Lite", the candidates who'll survive to the southern primaries next week are doing their best not to sound anti-war, anti-tax cuts or anti-guns. In other words, even in the Democratic primary, this election's now being fought on Republican terms.

[beaversmom]

Thank you for the Steyn ping. This one is a classic just like most of his rest. I like the line about Arlene Claxton of Hooksett.

[marron]

how all the African-Amerians will take to a former white African colonial as the first lady?

It won't be a problem as long as she doesn't marry a Republican.

[jwalburg]

That WAS a good line.

[hershey]

Boy, every word is on target, as usual. Steyn is a treasure.

[arasina]

Thanks for that Ray Malone link! I like his take on things (peppered with humor) and now plan to visit the site every so often.

[hershey]

Kerry's using botox, combing his eyebrows, and flying around NH in his 'Kerrycopter'. Busy, busy, busy. Loser, loser, loser.

[Mo1]

these polls are meaningless for several reasons, the most important of which is that they're measuring a "known" – Bush – against an "unknown" – some hitherto obscure figure suddenly proclaimed as the Democratic frontrunner. When the unknown becomes known, his numbers slide and the media and the Dems go off in search of a new white knight.

He's right

Plus, Dean is far from out of this race. NH isn't Iowa. From what I can tell the Deanies weren't fully prepared for they way they vote in Iowa

They also weren't prepared for the dirty tricks being played by Kerry and Edwards

You can bet the Deanies won't make that mistake again ..

[Sarah]

Teresa Simoes-Ferreira

In an interview with Newsweek this week, Kerry and his wife, Teresa (full name: Maria Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira Heinz Kerry)

[Sarah]

dau. of José Simões-Ferreira and of Irene Thierstein

[hosepipe]

[ Maria Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira Heinz Kerry ]

AH! hah... good work..

[Sarah]

---

Title: Memorial mass for Irene Thierstein Simoes Ferreira.

Extent: .05 linear ft.
1997.0385 . Archives

[PoisedWoman]

Thanks for Ms Ketchup's full name. Right off the bat I found the following at Insight Magazine. The fast-growing Muslim minority here in Seattle are out to skewer Bush. Kerry isn't going to be a candidate they support when they find out he has Jewish heritage.

From Insight Magazine:


"-- In Irish-American Massachusetts it's not unusual for politicians with no Irish forebears to lie about it. For instance, the former boss of the state senate, now president of the University of Massachusetts, was of Lithuanian descent but hailed from South Boston, an Irish enclave, and besides his brother is fugitive killer Whitey Bulger, crime boss of the infamous Irish Mafia. That was Irish enough.

"-- So Massachusetts locals only cringed when it turned out recently that Democratic Sen. John Kerry's family name was changed from Kohn in 1902, and without any record of conversion from Judaism to Catholicism.

"-- Of more concern to savvy Beantownies was Kerry's pretense, and that of Boston journalists, not to have known that grandfather Fritz Kohn shot himself to death in the Coply Plaza Hotel men's room in 1921, a story that then ran on the front pages of three Boston newspapers.

"-- So what else has Kerry been lying about? Well there was that business about not really throwing his medals from Vietnam over the White House fence. But as for having lied about his health earlier this year after being informed he had prostate cancer, you see, Kerry hadn't yet told his sisters. And naturally they were sensitive because his father had died of prostate cancer after having had the surgery, and ...

"-- Does John Kerry's character problem explain why his billionaire wife, Teresa Heinz, still uses her first husband's name? Maybe one moniker is as good as any other in that family. The name with which Teresa was raised in her native Africa: Maria Teresa Thierstein Simoes-Ferreira."

[hosepipe]

[ dau. of José Simões-Ferreira and of Irene Thierstein ]

Shes a JOOOOO too... Al Sharpton's goin to toss out that fact like a dryed out bagel to the dogs... as he rides the leg of the next interviewer... say Tony Brown..

[Rocky]

Bump for Steyn.

[irv]

Shrum's previous clients - President Dick Gephardt (1988), President Bob Kerrey (1992), President Al Gore (2000) and President Insert Namehere (2008)

But for Liberals (to borrow a thought from Rush), being wrong only increases their stature. It's their intentions that count.

And Shrum's intentions are to tear down George Bush, the Republican Party, and America (in no particular order). I predict Shrum will be the next head of the Democratic National Committee.

[MadeInOhio]

From the Jan. 23 Toronto Globe & Mail

...(Kerry's) wife, who earlier vowed never to take the Kerry name or become a Democrat, has quietly done both, calling herself Teresa Heinz Kerry and becoming central to her husband's campaign, appearing with him at rallies and meeting potential voters on her own.

Born in colonial Mozambique, the daughter of a Portuguese physician, she met her first husband when she was working in Geneva as a United Nations interpreter. After Mr. Heinz's death at the age of 52, she became active in philanthropic activities, including the defence of the environment. The romance with Mr. Kerry reportedly began soon after they met at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

Introducing his wife to the crowd at a rally last weekend in the industrial town of Davenport, Iowa, Mr. Kerry said that he "married up," only half joking. Mrs. Kerry, looking much younger than her 65 years, then took the mike and in slightly accented English made it clear that she is much more outspoken than her husband.

She praised the "idea of America" with its belief in tolerance and its can-do mentality, and seemed to be as comfortable before the crowd as is her husband.

[MadeInOhio]

From the SmarterCop blog

"November 25, 2003

HEINZ'S LOGICAL DISCONNECT

Here's a good one from the silver spoon-fed wife of John F. Kerry:

The wife of Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry said yesterday that suspected terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay should be given prisoner of war status. "They were captured while fighting a war," Teresa Heinz Kerry said at an informal discussion with minority activists in Seattle. "They should have the rights that other prisoners of war have had."
read more »

Prisoners of war, eh? There's just one teeny weeny little bit of information Ms. Heinz-Kerry is leaving out: they aren't soldiers! They didn't and don't wear uniforms, nor do they carry their weapons openly during military operations. Their intent is to deceive, surprise, and cause terror.
Thus, according to the Geneva Convention,

Combatants who deliberately violate the rules about maintaining a clear separation between combatant and noncombatant groups — and thus endanger the civilian population — are no longer protected by the Geneva Convention.
As illegal combatants, therefore, they are not afforded Prisoner of War status.
Heinz-Kerry should ask her husband what a true prisoner of war is (if he's willing to admit the truth) before shooting her mouth and blindly assuming she's read up on international law."

[Ruth A.]

Thanks for the Steyn fix--and this is a really good batch.

Before Iowa, I didn't even know that Kerry was capable of smiling. Without the smile, he reminds me of the hound on "The Beverly Hillbillies."

[JohnHuang2]

Thanks, Pokey ;-)

[JohnHuang2]

Mark Steyn MEGA PING!!