The John Kerry Post of the Day

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

You know, there are moments when I feel sorry for John Kerry. Then I remember -- he could become President, and that would really terrify me.

Kerry's latest gambit to turn around his plunging poll numbers was to bring in Team Clinton. Granted, Team Clinton would normally recommend that they simply replace the candidate, but since the Torricelli Option is apparently unavailable outside the political netherworld known as New Jersey, these guys have to live with Kerry. The new focus appears to be an attempt to attack Bush on the economy and domestic issues. But then, in a move that defies the good advice he's been receiving from Bill Clinton and Evan Bayh, Kerry also meandered into criticizing the war in Iraq...

Kerry attacked Bush's Iraq policy on Monday, when he called the invasion
"the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time," and said his goal was to
withdraw U.S. troops in a first White House term.

He also issued a statement calling Iraq a "quagmire" created by Bush's
"wrongheaded, go-it-alone" policy.

Now, there's nothing wrong with making this assessment. In fact, the libertarian Cato Institute issued a paper entitled "Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong War" back at the beginning of 2003. Bush plainly disagrees with this assessment. It's a difference in policy choices.

Unfortunately, Kerry appears to have played both sides of this coin. Again.

Here's how Howard Dean framed the issue in February 2003...

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean says President Bush is focused on "the wrong war at the wrong time" and needs to do more for homeland defense such as providing money for emergency workers and suggesting more effective security measures.

Dean repeated these sentiments in December 2003, after the capture of Saddam Hussein. But note who criticized Dean for making these statements...

On December 15, 2003, in a speech at the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles, Dean said that "the capture of Saddam Hussein has not made America safer." Dean also said, "The difficulties and tragedies we have faced in Iraq show the administration launched the war in the wrong way, at the wrong time, with inadequate planning, insufficient help, and at the extraordinary cost, so far, of $166 billion."

But who challenged Dean immediately? John Kerry. On December 16, at Drake University in Iowa, Kerry asserted that "those who doubted whether Iraq or the world would be better off without Saddam Hussein, and those who believe today that we are not safer with his capture, don't have the judgment to be president or the credibility to be elected president."

Jim Gergahty at KerrySpot may have put it best...

This criticism of Kerry isn't really fair, however. It's obvious he misspoke. He meant to say, "I voted for the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, and if I knew then what I knew now, I still would have voted in favor of wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. And so would John Edwards."

It gets better than that, by the way. Bush had a malapropism last night that was hysterical, as reported by the left-wing dishrag...

At a rally in Poplar Bluff, Mo., he was breezing through his domestic agenda when he came to a favorite: what he calls medical liability reform.

"We got an issue in America," he began, in a folksy diction aimed at his small-town crowd. "Too many good docs are getting out of the business."

Mr. Bush then turned to another point he has been making lately to appeal to women - that among those doctors being driven from the business are many obstetricians and gynecologists.

But Mr. Bush seemed to get derailed on the way to his point.

"Too many good OB/GYN's aren't able to practice their" - he paused a split second, as if searching for a word, then continued - "their love, with women all across this country," he said.

The rag decided this was comparable to Kerry's gaffe today...

Mr. Kerry stepped boldly into the verbal minefield early, arriving at a front-porch session with supporters in Canonsburg, Pa., near Pittsburgh. As he likes to do, he brandished a bit of local color to show he wasn't just any interloping politician blowing through town.

But in so doing he seemed to forget that Republicans have been tearing him down for months as a vacillating, indecisive, finger-in-the-wind politician of the worst order.

"Everybody told me, 'God, if you're coming to Canonsburg, you've got to find time to go to Toy's, and he'll take care of you,'" Mr. Kerry said, dropping the name of a restaurant his motorcade had passed on the way in. "I understand it's my kind of place, because you don't have to - you know, when they give you the menu, I'm always struggling: Ah, what do you want?

"He just gives you what he's got, right?" Mr. Kerry added, continuing steadily off a gangplank of his own making: "And you don't have to worry, it's whatever he's cooked up that day. And I think that's the way it ought to work, for confused people like me who can't make up our minds."

While each of these comments reinforces the common stereotype about each candidate, Bush is in far less trouble than Kerry. Bush often fails to communicate clearly -- no surprise there. But he knows what he wants to say, even if he can't always find the words to express the thought clearly. Put it this way -- he may not be able to pronounce the name of the dish that's on the menu, but he knows which one he wants.

Kerry, on the other hand, can't make up his mind. He's weak. He's indecisive. He's the guy at dinner who spends his time studiously reviewing each item and probably reading the names out loud and then asks everyone else to order first, before he asks the waiter to list the specials again, which is followed by requesting a detailed explanation of each special before he places an order, which is then cancelled in favor of another order.

I think most voters can identify with Bush's public speaking mistakes. What they find hard to stomach is the indecisiveness of Kerry, especially since he would need to take action in the War on Terror.