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Kerry is not as smart as he thinks
The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | 11/02/06 | Toby Harnden

Posted on 11/01/2006 4:52:11 PM PST by Pokey78

The first time I met Senator John Forbes Kerry was shortly before 9/11, when I was sitting in the office of a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee talking to a young staffer about European defence.

Suddenly, the Massachusetts senator strode into the room and plonked himself, hands on hips, between us. Then he just stood there, clearly expecting us to jump up because he had graced us with his hallowed presence.

He turned his back on me and I studied his perfectly arranged thatch – this was a man who has spent some time on coiffing his hair that morning (or maybe he had someone to do it for him) – as he barked questions and demands at the astonished aide.

Many people in Washington have similar DYKWIA – Don't You Know Who I Am? – anecdotes about Kerry that reveal his narcissistic conceit that it is all about him, all the time. This trait is the key to the kerfuffle over Kerry's comment at a California rally that: "Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

The words were clumsy and, yes, an insult to American troops. I have no doubt that he didn't mean to say that US soldiers in Iraq are dumb cannon fodder but that's what came out. He was trying to say that Bush was stupid (though the Texan's grade-point average at Yale was higher than that of Kerry) – a jibe that plays well in Europe but not in much of Middle America.

It would have been a minor blip in the final week of the campaign if he had apologised immediately and unequivocally and got the hell off the airwaves.

Instead, he wriggled and huffed and hit back and compounded his mistake with intemperate bad-mouthings of Republicans as "assorted Right-wing nut jobs" and "hacks who've never worn the uniform of our country are willing to lie about those who did". Having been, in his view, misrepresented by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in the 2004 presidential race and berated by his own party for not hitting back hard enough, Kerry went for the jugular. But his desire not to be "Swift Boated" (the attacks were so successful they coined a verb) and lack of political judgment meant that this time he overreacted.

To the delight of Republican strategists, as dawn broke across America yesterday, there he was on the Don Imus radio talk show quibbling about his "botched joke". This time, it wasn't so much what the meaning of "is is", as Bill Clinton famously ventured during the Lewinsky scandal as what the meaning of "us is". According to Kerry, "I left out the word 'us'. 'They got us stuck.' Instead of that, I said, 'They got stuck', and they're taking advantage of it." They are indeed taking advantage of it. With a week to go before the mid-term elections and Democrats poised to win the 15 seats they need to win back the House of Representatives – and perhaps even the six to bag the Senate – Republicans were praying for an "October surprise".

Kerry left it late, until Halloween, but the Grand Old Party was not about to look this gift horse in the mouth. On the 2000 campaign trail, Bush told me that politics was "like judo – you use your opponent's energy to your advantage". A gaffe by a politician only has real legs when it reinforces an existing perception. And so it has been in this case. Kerry has long had a reputation as a haughty Boston Brahmin, a privileged, elitist, condescending careerist who cannot relate to ordinary Americans.

In contrast, on the stump this week Bush has shown that whatever his faults – and there are many – that he still has that indispensable political gift of speaking simply to ordinary people rather than talking down to them.

Kerry served with some distinction in Vietnam. It is a question mark over the character of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that they chose to circumvent the draft rather than serve their country in combat. But Kerry's persistent attempts to capitalise on this have become unseemly.

US servicemen are revered in a way that the British squaddie can only dream of. Soldiers travel in uniform and are routinely ushered to the front of queues and given upgrades to business class with no questions asked. On an American Airlines jet from Dallas last Sunday, a flight attendant made a spontaneous announcement about "the sacrifice our young men and women are making to keep us safe". The whole plane applauded her.

This is not just rah-rah jingoism. The aching reality of war is also apparent. At Houston airport on Wednesday night I pulled up behind a white hearse with two soldiers in dress uniform inside it. "That's one of our boys coming home from Iraq," said a sombre Avis representative, waving me past.

As Kerry has found out, you try to exploit this sentiment for political gain at your peril. The military is the most integrated sector of American society. Poor youths with a bit of get up and go about them use it to get funding for college to pull themselves up a rung on the economic ladder.

I have sat in Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles with black sergeants from Alabama, marines from Mexico and good ol' boy snipers from Kentucky in places like Fallujah and Ramadi as they described their hopes with an affecting optimism that belied the mortal danger they were in. In many ways, they embody what is great about America.

Yesterday, Democratic candidates from Montana to Iowa and Minnesota to Tennessee were cancelling campaign rallies with Kerry and demanding he apologise. Preposterously, the senator was claiming that he was returning to Washington "so that I'm not a distraction".

Those ruing his intervention the most were the candidates he'd appeared with, such as Patrick Murphy, an impressive 33-year-old Iraq veteran poised to pick up a House seat outside Philadelphia. Kerry went there recently to attack Republicans who "think they've served because they played with GI dolls".

In tight seats like that, Kerry could tip victory into defeat. Even if his party overcomes this late setback and prevails on Tuesday, Kerry's hopes for the White House in 2008 are disappearing faster than Democrats can run away from him.


TOPICS: Editorial; Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: halpusjoncarry; kerry; kerrydumbiraqgaffe; tobyharnden; unfit
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To: Dog Gone
Good post. I would only add that Bush did not "circumvent" serving in Vietnam. Many ANG went to Vietnam and Bush knew quite well that he could be sent also.

It was kerry who threw a fit when he was transferred inland from coastal patrol in Vietnam. It was kerry who ran from a fire fight in which his men were in trouble. And it was kerry who arranged to be sent home long before his tour was up. This is the behavior the writer refers to as "serving with some distinction."

161 posted on 11/01/2006 11:06:27 PM PST by Bonaparte
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To: Pokey78

Bump for later read.


162 posted on 11/02/2006 3:22:58 AM PST by Renfield
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To: Pokey78
Kerry served with some distinction in Vietnam. It is a question mark over the character of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney that they chose to circumvent the draft rather than serve their country in combat. But Kerry's persistent attempts to capitalise on this have become unseemly.

This is just plain wrong and shows the writer doesn't understand the US military. Many of us joined the Navy or Air Force during Vietnam, not to "avoid the draft," but to try and become part of an elite force, such as US military aviation. Once having made it into that very tough pipeline, we were eventually assigned to whatever squadron the service wanted, whether it was direct combat, combat support, or logistic. The author of this piece does not understand that.

163 posted on 11/02/2006 7:07:27 AM PST by pabianice
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To: operation clinton cleanup

good one.


164 posted on 11/02/2006 7:52:21 AM PST by Tulsa Ramjet ("If not now, when?" "Because it's judgment that defeats us.")
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To: pabianice

"This is just plain wrong and shows the writer doesn't understand the US military"

What did Kerry ACTUALLY supposedly do to get whatever he got? I thought there was some questions in regard to this. Now everyone repeats the mantra "Kerry had a great record and you can't take it away from him", or words to that effect.

I'm no Kerry expert, but I thought he took three things with him when he went to Vietnam, 1) an agenda, 2) a film projector, and 3), a bullet to shoot in the back of some naked boy running in a loin cloth so that Kerry could claim enemy action. am I wrong here?


165 posted on 11/02/2006 7:57:12 AM PST by Tulsa Ramjet ("If not now, when?" "Because it's judgment that defeats us.")
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To: Pokey78

After 40 years of sticking knives in Soldiers' Backs he sticks it in his own!

Pray for W and The Election


166 posted on 11/02/2006 8:02:04 AM PST by bray (Voting for the Rats is a Death Wish)
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To: Pokey78

What the US Army recruiting poster under "President" Kerry would look like:

Our brave warriors n Irak respond to Jon Carry"


Kerry is no different re his hatred of a strong America and our warriors than 99.9% of the rats in congress. Every rat running for election should have to face a copy of this banner everytime they show their treasonous faces. Pelosi, Murtha, Clintoon, Boxer, Kennedy, Durbin, Levin, Rangle, Reid and other rats in congress hate our military and a strong America. Just look at their voting records the past two years as President Bush pointed out this week.

Kerry is shown leading his fellow hate America and our military Rats to their final destination in American Politics:

Vote against all traitors this election day. Support our troops and their CIC, President Bush.

167 posted on 11/02/2006 9:39:01 AM PST by Grampa Dave (There's a dwindling market for Marxist Homosexual Lunatic wet dreams posing as journalism)
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To: sam_paine; nycgal
It may be that John Kerry is mistaking ridicule for humor. Perhaps he really did think this was a droll dry sort of "joke", something not obvious to the rest of us. It was our fault for "not getting it" and confirmation of his listeners stupidity. ( If I can get sociological, it seems that his reference group--Eastern liberal Brahman Democrat--uses ridicule to reinforce group identity by disparaging non member's intelligence and confirming their own. (Finally, I, a use for my 3 credit hours in Soc. 101!)

Long and short is that he has exposed himself as a pompous failure, even to his own party. I don't see another presidential run in his future. Everyone can rejoice.
168 posted on 11/02/2006 9:58:56 AM PST by Pete from Shawnee Mission (You heard the lady, Play it again Sam....)
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To: Pete from Shawnee Mission; nycgal
Eastern liberal Brahman Democrat-

I've seen all sorts of folks use this term. I always thought it was a humpback breed of cattle from India. What/!?!?!?@

169 posted on 11/02/2006 10:11:26 AM PST by sam_paine (X .................................)
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To: sam_paine
Well shoot fire! Anywhere normal folk barbecue it's a cow! In MA its an upper curst blue blood Harvard type.

Where does that come from? Well, Hindus have a caste system, with Brahmans occupying the top tier, and they believe in reincarnation, which means scummy people are re born in the lowest caste and superior people in the upper, or Brahman caste. Pretty convient for the Brahmans, huh?

Long and short, there is a de facto class system in the minds of NE liberals, and they are at the top.
170 posted on 11/02/2006 1:54:55 PM PST by Pete from Shawnee Mission (Words, big ones, small ones, obscure ones...I paid to get 'em, I'm, gonna use em...)
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To: Pete from Shawnee Mission
Brahmans occupying the top tier [of uppercrust society],

I seeee!

That explains where Kerry is so full of BS!

171 posted on 11/02/2006 2:17:42 PM PST by sam_paine (X .................................)
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To: Pokey78

bfl


172 posted on 11/02/2006 6:23:46 PM PST by neverdem (May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows that you're dead.)
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