[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.

[nathanbedford]

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

[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.

[bootyist-monk]

[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

[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...

[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)

[TalBlack]

"We are looking at a man who would make, or would have made, a perfectly decent peacetime president."

Hitchins hasen't thought out that last line.

Kerry as president would be Kerry no matter the circumstances of his presidency. He would have the same faculty for decision making no matter what the political environment.

What Hitch sees put doesn't admit is that in a time of war Kerry would be QUICKLY shown up as the gutless vision less cowardly flip-flopper he is.

[Unam Sanctam]

''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.

I actually don't think Kerry is very intelligent. How could anybody who is supposed to be so smart say such a dumb line as "I voted before it before I voted against it." And he makes other verbal gaffes quite often, it seems to me.

[dano1]

We are looking at a man who would make, or would have made, a perfectly decent peacetime president.

There is a decided lack of leadership about Kerry. From Vietnam, the Cold War, and up to Iraq, Kerry has defined himself more or less by what he is against, rather than by what he is for. Without a war like Vietnam or Iraq, Kerry is more or less the sound of one hand clapping. Can Hitchens be so sure Kerry would make a good "peacetime president"?

[JasonC]

"perfectly decent peacetime president"

Meant to be faint praise, certainly. But wide of the mark. Kerry lies constantly. He does not have the slightest respect for the public he serves. He has managed to consistently find the wrong side of every major moral question to come down the pike during his adult lifetime. These are not adequate qualifications even for a peacetime US senator, let alone a president.

[x]

Good article. The English know how to dispose of those they despise without getting angry or overheated. Without the italics, though, this inspired bit of comedy is lost:

... Two men, Michael S. Dukakis and Edward J. King, were vying for the gubernatorial nomination, and at the endorsement convention that year Kerry's staff had two sets of buttons printed, reading ''Dukakis/Kerry'' and ''King/Kerry,'' to demonstrate their man's utter readiness to serve the ticket. (This reminds me of Albert Brooks in ''Taxi Driver,'' indignantly declining to pay for buttons that say ''We Are the People'' instead of ''We Are the People.'') ...

Hitchens is stretching a bit to include the joke but the lines from the movie sound just right for the neurotic, slightly prissy characters Albert Brooks always plays on the screen.

But wasn't there some other Democratic war veteran on whom he ought to have called, if the man is to be a heartbeat away from the position of commander in chief?

Indeed, what happened to Bob Kerrey? Was John Kerry afraid choosing him would make the ticket too bottom heavy? Did Kerrey turn him down? Had there been some scandal? Or was Kerry afraid people would get the two men confused and not know who they were voting for?

[Frumious Bandersnatch]

Poor Chris. Caught between a rock and a hard place. He doesn't like president Bush at all. OTOH, he really despises hypocrisy.

[Jeff Blogworthy]

Best line - Teresa Heinz Kerry: living proof that ketchup is not a vegetable. LOL