Remember Robert Torricelli? He was one of the biggest crooks ever to infest the United States Senate (and that's really saying something, isn't it?). How crooked was he? "The Torch" was so crooked that ... (Johnny Carson drum roll, please ...) he was too crooked even for New Jersey. The investigations of his taking bribes reached such a fever pitch that in late September of 2002, with less than five weeks before the election, he resigned and gave up his run for re-election. New Jersey law was quite specific that this was too late for the Democratic Party to nominate a replacement.
But the Dems got a crooked judge to waive the law, allowing them to put Frank Lautenberg in at the last moment, who then defeated the Republican nominee, Doug Forrester.
A few days ago, my buddy Capt. Larry Bailey - former Commandant of the Naval Special Warfare Training Center (the place that trains the Navy SEALs) - made an interesting prediction. "You know, Jack, I wouldn't be surprised if Kerry ends up like Torricelli."
This is not - NOT - to accuse Hanoi John of being a crook. To the best of my knowledge, John Kerry has never used his office to extort bribes the way Robert Torricelli did. The parallel is different, and it is this:
In 2002, the Dems were facing absolute certain electoral defeat in the New Jersey Senate race. Their only chance of winning was to dump their candidate - Torricelli - and substitute someone else. This worked. Kerry's negatives are far different from Torricelli's. Nonetheless, he is such a ghastly candidate that the Dems may feel they must do the same.
It's not just one major problem that Kerry has, like being Senator Flip-Flop, it's that there's a swarm of them and few are trivial. Let's review them.
Yes, his looks may be trivial - but it's hard to picture Americans electing a president who looks like Gomer Pyle - or Herman Munster, the simpleton Frankenstein of TV's "The Munsters."
His war record is highly questionable. Killing a wounded unarmed defenseless man in cold blood is a war crime, not something that deserves a Silver Star.
The vast majority of Vietnam veterans hate his guts for his anti-war protest activities and his public slander of them in the most libelous terms in congressional testimony. Expect to see hundreds of thousands of them on the Washington Mall in an anti-Kerry rally this September. To them, he is Hanoi John, fully as despicable as Hanoi Jane Fonda - and this label will stick.
Like Torricelli, he has never worked a day in his life in the private sector. He has no direct personal knowledge or understanding of what it means to run a business - or even to work for a business - meet a payroll, be an entrepreneur or manage a corporation.
Regarding the world of business, he hasn't a clue. He made his money marrying wealthy heiresses - who inherited their money and didn't earn it either. He has no respect or regard for what it takes to make money, to earn a living.
He tells bald-faced lies in public. The current flap about foreign leaders confiding in him that they want him and not GW is only the latest. There will be more.
He is impossibly boring, stentorian and pretentious, puffed up with preened self-importance - the whole Boston Brahmin shtick. That's just as phony as everything else about him, for he doesn't come from old-family Bostonian aristocracy at all, nor is he Irish. Americans are unlikely to elect someone so unendearing, so just plain not very likable.
The most prominent negative image is, of course, his being Mr. Flip-Flop - having the most liberal voting record of any sitting U.S. senator (even higher than Ted Kennedy's), yet at the same time trying to straddle every issue. This leads to the charge that John Kerry actually lives in Oakland, Calif., instead of Boston, Mass.
As Gertrude Stein said famously of Oakland, "There's no there there." There's no there to John Kerry, no firm center, no real identity. The more he campaigns the less Americans are going to understand who he is - because he doesn't know who he is himself.
Yet here is the biggest negative of all, and it may surprise you: John Kerry is a wimp.
This is the real reason his campaign is going to implode. He can't take the heat. He was the kid in grade school who "can dish it out but can't take it." One can only imagine the derision Harry Truman, who was fond of saying "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen," would have had for Kerry.
Any and all criticisms of Kerry, no matter how legitimate – such as about his voting record – he regards as an "attack." Any criticism is an affront to him and unjustified. All criticisms of him are "vicious," products of the crooked, lying Republican "attack machine." The guy's a pansy, a crybaby, a sheep in wolf's clothing. All the tough-guy "Bring it on!" manly-man macho-strut is an act.
No one with any genuine self-confidence has such a diaphanously thin skin. He is going to do an El Foldo. He is going to crack under pressure. And when he does, the Dems are going to completely freak out with buyer's remorse.
The show will be better than a Ringling Brothers circus. The only question is when does the curtain rise and the show begin - before or after the Dems' July convention?
If after, with Kerry formally and legally nominated, will they try to pull a Torricelli? The show won't be pretty, but it sure will be fun to watch.
Copyright 2004, To The Point, Inc.
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