Christopher Hitchens: Taking the Measure of John Kerry

The New York Times ^ | August 15, 2004 | Christopher Hitchens

[KentTrappedInLiberalSeattle]

He still gives, to me at any rate, the impression of someone who sincerely wishes that this were not a time of war. When critical votes on the question come up, Kerry always looks like a dog being washed.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

***I had not known until I read these books that Kerry had had his first marriage annulled, signifying in effect that he was never wed to Julia Thorne, the mother of his children, in the first place. How odd that he would invoke one of the Roman Catholic Church's most pitiless dogmas while treating so many of its other teachings as essentially optional. The general effect he has striven to create is the opposite: that of a man who dislikes ruthlessness. ***

Media Offers Free Pass on Democratic Legends***Minutes before John Kerry marched into the Fleet Center to accept the Democratic nomination, CBS reporter Byron Pitts pulled out the intimate personal information: "Senator Kerry is a very superstitious man. Just before he steps into the hall, he will do what he has always done before a major moment in his life. He will make a Sign of the Cross, then kiss the St. Christopher medallion his mother gave him as a child."

Aside from the confusion of religion and superstition, there is one obvious question for viewers: How does Pitts know this is true? Even if it is true, it's also true that no other reporter has passed this regimen along. A search of the massive Nexis database shows no mention of Kerry's St. Christopher medallion in the last two years, and there's no sign of it in the whole Nexis sample of the Boston Globe.***

[nathanbedford]

Hitchens uncharacteristically flinches at the last minute from clearly stating the inescapable logic of the facts he has marshaled: Kerry is unfit.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The voters are beginning to get it.

New Video Rocks the Boat for John Kerry -- Vietnam Portrayal Casts Doubts Among Independents

[BunnySlippers]

''If we hadn't voted the way we voted, we would not have been able to have a chance of going to the United Nations and stopping the president, in effect, who already had the votes and who was obviously asking serious questions about whether or not the Congress was going to be there to enforce the effort to create a threat.''

LOL

[solzhenitsyn]

Not one of Hitchens' more fascinating columns, in my opinion. He dissects a turd with tweezers and finds nothing unexpected, but files his report anyway.

I'll be glad when Senator Kerry is no longer in the news.

[YaYa123]

Thank you!

[bootyist-monk]

[anniegetyourgun]

He undoubtedly suffers from ABB disease too. Hence, in the end, he can't pull the trigger.

[YaYa123]

It's still dark here as I watch the early morning reports on the hurricane. Compare this:

CNN: "Officials say there are "several fatalities at a trailer park" in Punto Gordo (sp)

FOXNews:"Police are guarding stacks of bodies" at the same trailer park"

What I love about Hitchens is that he would fairly include both wildly varying accounts in anything he wrote. This column proves it. Packed with information even us newshounds didn't know, and without hate-filled attempts to change minds, without giving us prejudicial conclusions we should reach on our own, he writes it like it is.

[Watery Tart]

The Boston Globe writers capture a moment of sheer, abject incoherence, at a Democratic candidates' debate in Baltimore last September:

"If we hadn't voted the way we voted, we would not have been able to have a chance of going to the United Nations and stopping the president, in effect, who already had the votes and who was obviously asking serious questions about whether or not the Congress was going to be there to enforce the effort to create a threat."

And all smart people know how to laugh at President Bush for having problems with articulation.

Well, say what you want about the boy, but I like this part, LOL.

[G.Mason]

" ...when Kerry sneered at ''the coalition of the willing'' as ''a coalition of the coerced and the bribed,'' at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, no less, he was much more direct and intelligible. Yet I somehow doubt that he would repeat those clear, unmistakable words if confronted by the prime ministers of Britain, Poland or Australia. And how such an expression is likely to help restore America's standing is beyond this reviewer."

It is also beyond this reader.

I'll give you one Briton, a Poland, and an Australia, for one United Nations, one New Guinea, a Germany, and two French women.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

bump

[thegreatbeast]

Bingo! Thank you.

[pt17]

Dissecting a turd with tweezers bump

[Nick Danger]

I think too much is made of this "Anybody but Bush" stuff. What Kerry really represents is "Anybody but Dean."

Howard Dean had the effrontery to jump into the lead for the Democratic nomination without getting permission from Bill, Hill, Terry, and whoever else pulls the strings in that show. They needed to get rid of him, because he was a sure loser come November. He obliged them by going nuts on national television, and that was the end of Howard Dean.

But then what? Gephardt? Gephardt is Bob Dole with two working arms — the long-time party warhorse who has "earned his turn." But nobody thought he could win either.

In reaction to Dean, they wanted "bland," and they found it in John Kerry. He's the nominee because the Dems were panicked by Howard Dean. They overshot while correcting for "Deanery," and now they have a morose dead guy at the top of the ticket who inspires jokes about Lurch.

Gephardt would have been a better choice. Kerry had never been vetted for national office. He has been protected his entire political career by sycophantic liberal media in his home state of Massachusetts. Put him on the national stage, and all of a sudden people start asking harder questions.

"So Nixon was President in 1968, was he?" How the Hell did he get by with that for 20 years without anyone questioning it? Liberal media, that's how.

He has a wife that is charitably referred to as "different." She comes off like Imelda Marcos, and it's not like people who knew her couldn't see that coming. But they were in a hurry, and they needed the "unDean." And now they got him.

If Hillary wanted the perfect candidate to take a dive in 2004 so she can run in 2008, she got him. This guy won't carry ten states, no matter what the polls say now.

[lainde]

Christopher's version of death by a thousand cuts...

[ABG(anybody but Gore)]

ROFLMAO!

[Aeronaut]

''If we hadn't voted the way we voted, we would not have been able to have a chance of going to the United Nations and stopping the president, in effect, who already had the votes and who was obviously asking serious questions about whether or not the Congress was going to be there to enforce the effort to create a threat.'' (Kerry)

And all smart people know how to laugh at President Bush for having problems with articulation. (Hitchins)