The John Kerry Post of the Day

My latest discovery about my favorite cheese-eating surrendermonkey-looking Ketchup King cum Presidential candidate:

You know, Kerry's supposed to be the smart candidate in the election, according to the conventional wisdom. Yet the Master of Indecision has now been tricked by the President, a man whom most of Kerry's base believes is dumber than any other President. Good thing Kerry's not up against that noted Rhodes Scholar Bill Clinton.

Now the Preteneder to the Ketchup Throne is in trouble for responding to President Bush's challenge -- specifically, Bush has requested that Kerry clarify his position on Iraq. This would be a good thing, since Kerry's position has been anything but consistent. But Bush recently challenged Kerry on whether he would have still voted to authorize force against Hussein, knowing what he does now about WMD. As usual, Kerry debated it for some time before responding, as noted by everyone's favorite left-wing dishrag...

Across the weekend, the Kerry campaign debated how Mr. Kerry should respond. "There were a lot of ideas," said one official, "from silence, to throwing the question back in the president's face."

But the decision, in the end, was Mr. Kerry's. He chose to take the bait on Monday at the edge of the Grand Canyon. Asked by a reporter, he said he would have voted for the resolution - even in the absence of evidence of weapons of mass destruction - before adding his usual explanation that he would have subsequently handled everything leading up to the war differently.

Mr. Bush, sensing he had ensnared Mr. Kerry, stuck in the knife on Tuesday, telling a rally in Panama City, Fla., that "he now agrees it was the right decision to go into Iraq." The Kerry camp says that interpretation of Mr. Kerry's words completely distorted the difference between a vote to authorize war and a decision to commit troops to the battlefield.

Mr. Kerry's answer is being second-guessed among his supporters, some of whom argued that he should have been more wary of the trap.

"I wish he had simply said no president in his right mind would ask the Senate to go to war against a country that didn't have weapons that pose an imminent threat," said one of Mr. Kerry's Congressional colleagues and occasional advisers.

Senator Biden argued that Mr. Kerry is being "asked to explain Bush's failure through his own vote. I saw a headline that said 'Kerry Would Have Gone to War.' That's bull. He wouldn't have. Not the way Bush did. But that wasn't the choice at the time - the choice was looking for a way to hold Saddam accountable."

Such distinctions don't exactly ring as campaign themes. On Wednesday, Vice President Cheney did his best to worsen Mr. Kerry's troubles. He issued a statement noting that Mr. Kerry "voted for the war" but turned against it "when it was politically expedient" and now has his aides "saying that his vote to authorize force wasn't really a vote to go to war."

"We need a commander in chief who is steady and steadfast," he said.

As Jim Geraghty at the Kerry Spot noted, Kerry's own advisors are now arguing about the issues, especially since the Deaniac base will be upset over Kerry's seeming concession that going to war was the right thing to do.

Of course, the Times tries to rescue Kerry by claiming that he has been "relatively consistent" in explaining his position on Iraq. Relative to what? His claims about trips to Cambodia? The only thing consistent on Kerry is his use of really good hair care products. To be fair, this is a virtue he shares with many modern-day Democrats. But it's not a good reason to vote for someone.

Wait, I forgot. He served in Vietnam!!!