Kerry's showing he just can't take the heat

Chicago Sun Times ^ | September 5, 2004 | Mark Steyn

[visagoth]

Both candidates gave speeches late on Thursday night. George W. Bush was more or less expected to. John Kerry didn't have to, but reported for duty even though nobody wanted him to. Unnerved by sagging numbers, he decided to start the post-Labor Day phase of the campaign three days before Labor Day. The way things are going, Democrats seem likely to be launching the post-election catastrophic-defeat vicious-recriminations phase of the campaign round about Sept. 12.

At any rate, less than 60 minutes after President Bush gave a sober, graceful, droll and moving address, Kerry decided to hit back. In the midnight hour, he climbed out of his political coffin, and before his thousands of aides could grab the garlic from Teresa's kitchen and start waving it at him, he found himself in front of an audience and started giving a speech. As in Vietnam, he was in no mood to take prisoners: ''I have five words for Americans,'' he thundered. ''This is your wake up call!''

Is that five words? Or is it six? Well, it's all very nuanced, according to whether you hyphenate the ''wake-up.'' Maybe he should have said, ''I have four words plus a common hyphenated expression for Americans.'' I'd suggest the rewrite to him personally, but I don't want him to stare huffily at me and drone, "How dare you attack my patriotism."

By about nine words into John Kerry's wake up call, I was sound asleep again. But this was what he told Ohio's brave band of chronic insomniacs:

''For the past week, they attacked my patriotism and my fitness to serve as commander in chief. Well, here's my answer. I'm not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve.''

Oh, dear . . . growing drowsy again . . . losing the will to type . . . what's he saying now?

''Two tours of duty''

Ah, yes. As usual, he has four words for Americans: I served in Vietnam. Or five words if you spell it Viet Nam.

So we have one candidate running on a platform of ambitious reforms for an ''ownership society'' at home and a pledge to hunt down America's enemies abroad. And we have another candidate running on the platform that no one has the right to say anything mean about him.

And for this the senator broke the eminently civilized tradition that each candidate lets the other guy have his convention week to himself? Maybe they need to start scheduling those Kerry campaign shakeups twice a week.

There was an old joke back in the Cold War:

Proud American to Russian guy: ''In my country every one of us has the right to criticize our president.''

Russian guy: ''Same here. In my country every one of us has the right to criticize your president.''

That seems to be the way John Kerry likes it. Americans should be free to call Bush a moron, a liar, a fraud, a deserter, an agent of the House of Saud, a mass murderer, a mass rapist (according to the speaker at a National Organization for Women rally last week) and the new Hitler (according to just about everyone). But how dare anyone be so impertinent as to insult John Kerry! No one has the right to insult Kerry, except possibly Teresa, and only on the day she gives him his allowance.

Several distinguished analysts have suggested that the best rationale for a Kerry presidency is that it would be a ''return to normalcy'' -- a quiet life after the epic pages of history George W. Bush has been writing these last three years. Even if a ''return to normalcy'' were an option, I doubt whether John Kerry would qualify. As we saw in those two Thursday speeches, Bush takes the war seriously but he doesn't take himself seriously -- self-deprecating jokes are obligatory these days, but try to imagine Kerry doing the equivalent of Bush's gags about mangled English and swaggering. The president is comfortable in his own skin, which is why he shrugs off the Hitler stuff. By contrast, Kerry doesn't take the war seriously because he's so busy taking himself seriously. If ''return to normalcy'' means four years of a grimly humorless, touchy, self-regarding Kerry presidency, I'll take the war.

That's surely why Kerry is running his kamikaze kandidacy on biography rather than any grand themes. Senator Kerrikaze is running for president because he thinks he should be president -- who needs a platform? One of the most revealing aspects of the campaign this last week were the interviews given by his various surrogates. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic National Committee chairman, went on Hugh Hewitt's radio show and was asked about the swift boat veterans' ads, and he laughed and blustered and stalled and floundered. That sounded weird. This thing's been going on a month now, and the Kerry campaign still hasn't come up with a form of words to deflect questions about it. If they had an agreed spin, McAuliffe and Co. would be out using it. But the seared senator feels it's lese majeste even to question him. He can talk about Vietnam 24/7, but nobody else is allowed to bring it up.

Sorry, man, that's not the way it works. And if he thinks it does, he's even further removed from the realities of democratic politics than he was from the interior of Cambodia. Instead of those military records the swift boat vets are calling for, I'd be more interested in seeing his medical ones.

As for Bush, to be sure at one level his convention was a ''soft-focus infomercial,'' just as Kerry's was. But the infomercial came into sharp focus just often enough to clarify, piercingly, the differences between the parties. On opening night in Boston, the Democrats staged a tasteful, teary candlelight remembrance of those who died on 9/11. On opening night in New York, the Republicans put up one speaker after another -- John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Ron Silver -- resolved that those thousands of innocents shall not have died in vain.

I remember a couple of days after Sept. 11 writing that weepy candlelight vigils were a cop-out: the issue wasn't whether you were sad about the dead people but whether you wanted to do something about it. Three years on, the two conventions drew the same distinction. If you want passivity and wallowing in victim culture, the Dems will do. If you want to win this thing, Bush is the only guy running.

[dennisw]

http://www.johnkerry.com/about/john_kerry/service_timeline.html

Timeline of J Kerry's Naval service.

[SheLion]

50,000,000 voters care about nothing but having abortions, gay sex, government nanny and don't ask me for anything or we would never have heard of these people.

Sickening, isn't it!

[jmstein7]

BUMP!

[EmilyGeiger]

LOL that's funny!

[SheLion]

I'm looking forward to the debates.

I was a little worried about the debates, but lately, watching FnKerry coming apart at the seams, I am REALLY looking forward to them.

I'd love to see FnKerry roll on the floor at his podium and lay in a fetal position, crying. And they would have to scoop him up and carry him off. Remember Jim Baker?

But FnKerry has really been losing it lately. It seems the higher the poll numbers go for our President, the more hateful FnKerry is getting. I hope his head blows off.

[SheLion]

With any luck, this election will shatter the hold this imperious elitist dolt has on the voters of Massachusetts.

OH yes. And Fat Ted has got to GO as well!

[metesky]

The people at Pubbie headquarters in Bangor told me there's a chance W might come back to BIA this fall. We saw him there in the 2002 cycle and he had the joint stomping.

I've been around politicians all my life and I've never seen a phenom like W.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

No one has the right to insult Kerry, except possibly Teresa, and only on the day she gives him his allowance.

I love it.

[Liz]

I am constantly amazed at Kerry's near-sightenedness......he operates in a total vacuum.....has no idea what those on the outside looking in are seeing.

Guess it comes from years of self-absorption (smirk).

[Go Gordon]

I was a little worried about the debates, but lately, watching FnKerry coming apart at the seams, I am REALLY looking forward to them.

And if Kerry tries to pull the Al Gore "approach" (getting into Bush's space) I'd like to see Bush respond a little differently. I'd like to see Bush glance over and just start laughing out loud. Then state: "Okay cowboy, step back to the lecturn before you find out what I'm not all hat."

[Go Gordon]

what = that

[ken5050]

That, and living in Massachusetts.....what's really amazing me now are all the talkign heads who say that Kerry's gotten a wake-up call, he's always best when he's behind, now he's focused...etcs..yada, ydad, yada..well, thatmay have been true in the People's Republic of Taxachussets..but hey, THIS is a national election..he can't just "fly-over" fly-over country..he's got to land the plane there...and he may never get it off the ground again..

[RedEyeJack]

Kerry seems to have a lot of memory problems... Springfield apparently called "Springdale", confusing Ohio and Michigan football teams, Baseball players names, etc.

We have had posts that are unsubstantiated that indicate that Alzheimer's runs in his family (mother and father?). If that is the case, and based on what we continue to see, maybe there is a problem. I really hope not though. Such a revelation could lead to the exercise of a well-timed "Torricelli option".

[Cobra64]

As in Vietnam, he was in no mood to take prisoners: ''I have five words for Americans,'' he thundered. ''This is your wake up call!''

When I heard that bastard make that statement, I damn near put a .45 round through the tv. What a condescending remark.

I'd love to see W and The Traitor in a boxing ring. W'd clean Lurch's clock. Of course, then Lurch would ask for another Purple Heart. A pathetic excuse of an entity breathing O2.

/end rant

[metesky]

I feel no guilt at all over fantasizing that when the election is over Theraza dumps the gold digger, that he spends the next four years hiding in the Senate cloakroom swilling vodka and soiling himself, that in 2006 the voters of Massachusetts turn him out in favor of an advanced kitchen appliance, and finally he ends up drinking his Senate pension in a squalid Latino gin mill in Boca Rotten within RGP range of the new mosque incoherently mumbling at frightened tourists, "Do ya know who I used to be?"

P.S. - Boca Ratton is the "Elephants Burial Ground" of MA politicians; it's where they go to die.

[CarolTX]

Absolutely wonderful column!

[metesky]

After November Ted will be more than irrelavant.

[pray4liberty]

Kerry just keeps owning himself everytime he opens his mouth. I think the UNFIT sticks - and he oughta wear it.

Prince (or would it be King?) John the Unready would fit too.

[finnigan2]

" I posit that it's the midnight tirade where he referenced 'unfit' to frame his response."

- I think you're on to something there.
Note to Karl Rove: Make sure that Bush uses the word, "unfit" as often as possible in the debates with Kerry. He'll come unraveled like a cheap sweater.

[grey_whiskers]

You wrote:

"John Kerry betrayed this country and should be executed."

According to much of what I have read on Free Republic,
Kerry is one of a few in who began the whole lemming-like
rush to "defeat America first" in all matters of foreign policy and internal morality.

I'd say we roll up the whole Gramscian network now; Kerry
should just be the start.

John Kerry:
LAST in war; LAST in peace; LAST in the hearts of his
countrymen.
(Oh, and Ted Kennedy too.)