The John Kerry Post of the Day

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

All right, so our humor-challenged King of Condiments appeared on the Late Show with David Letterman last night, in another attempt to humanize a guy who... well, to be frank, is a stiff. As I've noted before, there's nothing wrong with being a humor-challenged stiff -- it's when you try to go out of character that you get into trouble.

I didn't watch last night, for the obvious reasons (coughEaglesvictorycough), but I did see the "highlights" this morning on TV, along with Kerry's Top Ten list, which has a video clip here. But here's part of Jim Geraghty's take on it, which is admittedly biased...

...I wanted to write jokes for Kerry. Something like, "Dave, could you do me a favor? While we’re here at CBS, I meant to drop this memo off to Dan Rather. It's an e-mail from 1972."

"Boy, it is tough out here on the trail, Dave. You've seen these ads, you know, the Veteran Hamster Rescuers for Truth. They're saying I used the wrong kind of CPR on Licorice, my daughters' hamsters. But I'm not worried. I might sue them. I know a good lawyer from North Carolina."

But instead, Kerry has gone on Letterman... and basically given his stump speech!

Now he's talking about the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. The audience is dead quiet. They're listening respectfully, and Kerry's doing his policy stuff fairly well.

I'm not saying Kerry couldn't make some serious points during his appearance - but I can't see this wowing people the way Gore's lighthearted appearance did back in 1993. I realize that was a non-campaign appearance, but still...

This is a drier policy discussion than you'll find on Nightline.

UPDATE: Now he’s talking about the beheading of the American in Iraq today. It’s a topic worth discussing, but I’m not sure the Letterman show is really the right format for Kerry to lament the inability of the United Nations to deploy more than twenty-five percent of the staffers necessary to organize an election.

Now he’s citing the Iraq criticism of Chuck Hagel and Dick Lugar — and finally, the crowd reacts with wildly enthusiastic applause and boisterous cheers.

No, I’m kidding, they’re silent for that, too. They probably think Dick Lugar is a porn star’s name. When they go to commercial, it’s polite and respectful applause. The audience doesn’t hate Kerry - they just aren’t really warming up to him… or so it seems through the television screen.

UPDATE THREE: Oh, God, he’s bombing. Letterman asks him a direct question — “If you were elected in 2000, and you had the same intelligence information Bush had, would we be in Iraq right now?” Kerry is incapable of giving a yes or no answer. Turns to his “Bush rushed" stuff.

Talks about how it isn't a true multilateral coalition. Now he's into a how he wants to double the number of special forces. "I want to do better intelligence."

I'm going to have to get the full transcript. This is a stunningly bad performance. Senator, you go on Letterman, you just give Dave a straight answer and he'll love you. Leave the usual political caveats and spin at home.

To his credit, Kerry does get good applause on "I'd fire Halliburton tomorrow."

His Top Ten list is the "Top Ten Bush Tax Proposals." They're getting applause, not really laughter.

Okay, one, "Cheney can claim Bush as a dependent" is a pretty good one.

Number One: George W. Bush gets to deduct his mortgaging of our entire future.

Overall: Wow. Maybe the rest of the country will love what they saw. Maybe my taste and sense of humor is out of whack from everyone else's. But frankly, I thought this was a pretty darn bad performance. Kerry could have done himself a lot of good here, and he just came across as a bore.

I saw the Top Ten list, and it was pretty lame, although I thought the line about the Dubya-2 form was pretty good. Geraghty's missing one point -- this can't really hurt Kerry. If he's boring it just re-affirms what people think -- he's certainly not going to drop in the polls. This was a no-lose situation -- huge TV audience (outside Philly and Minnesota, anyway) and free press with a friendly interviewer. Of course, if Kerry did bomb, he just wasted another opportunity. He did do Regis & Kelly this morning, but it's too early to tell if that had any impact. The one joke they mention, about Bush wanting lifelines for the debates, may even backfire, as noted by Vodkapundit. Lowering expectations for Bush in the debates is supposed to be the GOP's job.

The problem for Kerry is that he's not a natural comedian, not in the least. For one thing, he really can't make fun of himself without making it look painful -- self-deprecating humor comes pretty naturally to most good politicians, but it's a serious strain for Kerry. Most of his humor comes at someone else's expense, typically his opponent. That plays to the base some, but not to folks who are tired of hearing jokes bashing the other guy. Kerry doesn't like to make fun of himself, because his ego seemingly gets in the way -- unlike Clinton, for example. Even Gore was good at making fun of himself, before he went crazy -- it was like the geeky guy was trying very hard to do it, but there was a weird sincerity to it. With Kerry, it's horribly strained -- the hair line might have worked for someone else, but it came out flat here. You can write Shakespeare, but if it's delivered by Pauly Shore, it will still suck.

The problem here is that Kerry, similar to his performance on the Daily Show last month, is trying too hard to be all things. He wants to be a serious, patrician candidate who's concerned about the war and deficit spending... but he also wants to be the guy at the end of the bar whom everyone likes. In short, he wants to be Frasier Crane, while also being Norm Peterson. The problem is, he's snobbier than Frasier ever was (in fact, Gore is a better fit for Frasier), and he can't be Norm if his life depended on it. So he winds up sounding like the loser whom no one wants to be with at the bar. Yes, like Cliff.

And I'm sure someone out there is busy comparing Bush to Woody. And Clinton to Sam Malone... wait, forget I started this.