there is so much depressing hard news out there that should be ignored, so that we can focus on something a little more entertaining to those on the right – bashing john kerry.

jonah goldberg:

Don’t let John Kerry run again.

Yes, yes, it’s true: I am biased. I have never been kind to the Brahmin Lurch. After his “botched” joke suggesting that American troops are uneducated losers, I wrote that Kerry “is an awful politician, a human toothache with the charisma of a 19th-century Oxford Latin tutor.” In response, countless readers wrote in to complain that I’d been unfair to Latin tutors.

But balancing out my personal animosity is my professional self-interest. As a conservative columnist, there is nothing I should want more than to see Kerry whack his forehead against the concrete wall of history one more time. Why? Because attacking Kerry is always good copy. And, if my North Star were the GOP’s good fortune, I would light a candle every night at my Lee Atwater shrine in prayer that the Kerry baloney leap once more into the grinder.

After all, he’s the most beatable of Democrats. His political instincts are duller than a prison-cafeteria spork. And never in my lifetime have we seen a presidential candidate with a more thumbless grasp of the way average Americans talk or live…

not bad. read it all here.

even better is the follow-up to that column by mark steyn:

I agree with Jonah’s column on the general ghastliness of the Botoxicated Brahmin, but it’s hard not to see that the Goldberg disparagers also have a point. If Kerry was so unlikeable, why was it so close? If Karl’s Rovebot laboratory had spent years constructing the perfect candidate to run against, it would have looked pretty much like John F Kerry – a vain thin-skinned self-regarding tone-deaf francophile insecure not-quite-blue-blood incoherent anti-war war-hero from a Swiss finishing school with nothing to show for 20 years in the Senate other than getting wrong every foreign policy question of the day and so alien to the habits of his electorate he’s unable to engage in as routine a photo op as eating a hot dog without looking like a Grand Duchess dropping in on the village idiot’s hovel.

ouch. because i know a few democrats (and actually like them), i hope for their sake that kerry gives up any idea that he has of running for president in ’08. it won’t be as close next time if kerry should surprise everybody(including me) and win the democratic nomination. i don’t think that the democrats have anything to worry about here, although i do see a leadership void with the current ’08 candidates that needs to be filled by somebody. who will it be?

tags: ’08 election, john kerry

from the economist:

The race will be about policy substance above and beyond the backdrop formed by the drama of Iraq. Both parties are confronted with deep questions about their identities. The Republicans have to deal with the consequences of George Bush’s big-government big-foreign-policy conservatism. Should they return to the anti-government policies of Mr Gingrich and his fellow radicals? Or to the “realist” foreign policy of Mr Bush senior? The party will probably have candidates willing to offer vigorous answers to all these questions, from Newt himself to long-standing advocates of realpolitik such as Chuck Hagel, a senator from Nebraska. It will also have candidates who are willing to offer unexpected variations on traditional themes. Mr Giuliani is a hawk on terrorism but a liberal on social issues; Mr McCain has developed an idiosyncratic variety of reform Republicanism.

The Democrats confront equally urgent questions. Should they return to Bill Clinton’s centrist policies? Or do they need to listen to the left? The former first lady will make a formidable champion of Clintonism. But the centre of gravity in her party has shifted dramatically leftwards—the relentless growth in inequality has put a question mark against Mr Clinton’s support for globalisation, and the debacle in Iraq has strengthened the party’s pacifist wing.

yes to anti-government. i guess those brits will just have to call me a radical. there’s no shame in denouncing the welfare state that has made state and federal governments enablers of the lazy. yes, i realize that there are exceptions where government assistance is necessary, but once a bureaucracy is created, it never gets smaller. hurricane katrina taught us a painful lesson — that it will not always be possible to depend on government to take care of us in an emergency situation, no matter which party is running it. the will to confront the enemies we face and to always be vigilant in defending america’s freedoms begins and ends with the american people, not with our government. the united states government can do more than it is doing to protect us, but there will never be any guarantees that there will not be another terrorist attack on US soil.

(that is…unless you assume the opposite of pat robertson’s predictions)

no to realist foreign policy. it didn’t work for bush 41. it won’t work now. oh yeah…and james baker isn’t a genius.

do we want a return to clintonism? was it really all that great the first time we saw it? if we really want to see something similar, then the country will have to kick out the democrats again so we can watch hillary compromise with the new republican congress. that would be fun. no, i’m done watching the clinton approach to foreign and domestic policy. 8 years of that was quite enough, thanks. i think the democrats should try someone new. i still haven’t seen the can’t miss candidate in the democratic field so far.

i think it would be a mistake for the democrats to embrace the far left. that’s never a great strategy to win general elections.

tags: newt gingrich, hillary clinton, ’08 election

i will never completely understand why being the president of the united states is such a desirable job. yeah, sure, you get a cool jet to fly around in, and there are quite a few other great perks, but ultimately it’s your job to figure out what to do about iraq. let’s not forget about north korea, china, russia, and iran, other countries we need to keep an eye on. the next president of this country gets to deal with all that, plus he or she will have to figure out how to pass any of their wonderful proposals through congress, while enduring daily abuse by the press and the blogosphere. yep…that’s a job i really want.

of course, if a candidate successfully navigates the gauntlet — that is, the rough-and-tumble campaign for the nomination of their party– and then wins the general election, that does deserve some kind of reward. not every potential candidate has this ability. does obama have it? that is yet to be determined. he hasn’t faced a serious challenge of the type that he will face if he goes head to head with hillary clinton in a fight to be the democrats’ presidential candidate in ’08.

barack obama’s appeal is not so much about who he is, but it is also about who he is not. he’s the anti-hillary. he’s a fresh face with none of the political baggage that she carries. he looks like such a charming guy, and speaks to people from the heart, and it could be easy to forget that his record on social issues isn’t much different from senator clinton’s. democrats aren’t that sold on hillary, and they are actively looking for other alternatives. john fund makes that point here.

i think that the honeymoon will be over for obama when people start to take a harder look at his record, because what they will find out is that there is more to the guy than his positive press clippings and fawning media coverage.

tags: ’08 election, barack obama

senator evan bayh is not running for president. that’s definitely a surprise to many of us who speculated that he could possibly make a strong run for the white house. of course, all of the speculation was made before the obama hype began. with hillary clinton, barack obama, and the possible entrance of john edwards into the race for the democratic nomination in ’08, there doesn’t seem to be room for another big dog.

here’s senator bayh’s official statement:

During my two terms as Governor and now in the United States Senate, it has always been more about the people I was able to help than the job I held. As you know I have been exploring helping the people of my state and our country in a different capacity. After talking with family and friends over the past several days, I have decided that this is not the year for me to run for President and I will not be a candidate for the presidency in 2008. It wasn’t an easy decision but it was the right one for my family, my friends and my state. I have always prided myself on putting my public responsibilities ahead of my own ambitions.

The odds were always going to be very long for a relatively unknown candidate like myself, a little bit like David and Goliath. And whether there were too many Goliaths or whether I’m just not the right David, the fact remains that at the end of the day, I concluded that due to circumstances beyond our control the odds were longer than I felt I could responsibly pursue. This path – and these long odds – would have required me to be essentially absent from the Senate for the next year instead of working to help the people of my state and the nation.

I am immensely grateful for the support of my family and friends and the thousands of people around the country who helped me with their time and their resources. There may be no campaign in the near future, but there is much work to be done. When the Senate returns, I will focus on the issues that matter to the people of my state and are critical to the future of the nation including reducing our dependence on foreign oil, creating opportunity for middle class families, and implementing a national security strategy that is both tough and smart.

i think that the wrong guy dropped out of the race. it should have been john edwards. edwards has the name recognition, the cash, and the personality to be a strong candidate if he can make a dent in the hillary-obama juggernaut. there’s no denying that on a political level, former senator edwards has everything going for him. he has everything except that lack of experience i mentioned in the previous post, which could keep him from being president. while acknowledging that there probably wouldn’t be a democrat that i could reasonably support in their bid to be the democratic nominee, i think that senator bayh is certainly more credible on national security than former senator john edwards.

senator bayh made a wise choice here. i am not second-guessing his decision here, because the deck was stacked against him. there may be a place for him in ’08 as a possible VP candidate. we will have to wait and see what happens.

tags: evan bayh, ’08 election, john edwards

once upon a time we had another political lightweight running for president of this country. he was a handsome guy with a nice-looking family. he made his great fortune looking out for the downtrodden while punishing big, bad corporations. only this man could save america from continuing to be the unfeeling monolith it had become under bush 43. america swooned over this guy too, at least until they started paying attention to the obvious holes in his resume.

perhaps you remember this man — i’m referring to former senator and Democratic VP nominee john edwards.

he’s still interested in being president, in case you were wondering about that. someday soon we could all be hearing once again about the two americas, and how these inequalities are the fault of big oil and evil corporations. i can’t tell you how much i’m looking forward to hearing that speech. it always warms the heart to hear proposals for punishing rich people and corporations, suggestions that will somehow exclude senator edwards and his former partner in crime john kerry.

anyway, the shrill shill chris matthews of hardball with chris matthews fame just happened to invite our hero on his college tour. this was home base for edwards, as the show was broadcast from UNC-Chapel Hill. it started out with a discussion of iraq.

MATTHEWS: How many more months of this would you support if you were president now? I know it‘s—you haven‘t announced yet, formally, but with two more years of this administration, should we spend the whole next two years grinding this thing down to its inevitable conclusion and have a couple thousand more American guys killed, another 100,000 Iraqis?

J. EDWARDS: Well, we‘ve got to change and we ought to change dramatically. I mean, I have been saying that for a year or more, that we ought to have a significant drawdown of American presence there to send the signal that we are not going to be there forever and we‘re not there for oil. The president of the United States needs to say that very directly, because the rest of the world does not believe it. They don‘t believe it.

MATTHEWS: He‘s saying the opposite. He‘s talking about permanent bases over there.

J. EDWARDS: That‘s right, and he‘s wrong about that. We have to say the opposite, which is what the Baker Study Group said, we‘re not going to have permanent bases in Iraq and we‘ve got to start pulling our troops out.

MATTHEWS: We‘ve got 140,000 people over there now. How many would you withdraw fairly quickly?

J. EDWARDS: Forty to fifty thousand.

he didn’t answer the question. the question was about a specific timetable for determining whether we can achieve our current goals in iraq or not. it was probably wise not to answer this question, since i’m not sure there is a good answer to it. john edwards simply repeats the tired mantra that we must change our policy, and says that we should significantly reduce our troop presence in iraq. he also says that we should withdraw forty to fifty thousand ‘fairly quickly’, although he still doesn’t say when that could be.

if senator edwards is operating under the assumption that his strategy is what the ISG proposed, he needs to re-read it. it was very clear about the consequences of pulling troops out ‘fairly quickly’, and did not recommend this. the report did make some rather unrealistic assumptions about syria and iran and many other neighboring countries, so i hope that edwards is not completely endorsing the findings of the ISG. it does seem clear, however, that he doesn’t believe we can achieve the goal of a stable iraq. whether that’s true or not, troop withdrawals on the level edwards is suggesting could only hurt our ability to achieve this goal.
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You know, 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. And if you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.

john kerry

this isn’t the first time john kerry has been accused of saying something negative about our military. that’s why he’s not getting the benefit of the doubt here. there are some democrats who buy the explanation that he was attempting to insult the president instead of our military men and women serving in iraq. john kerry says that it was a “botched joke”. if that’s the case, his speechwriters should know better. john kerry is incapable of being funny. he is also politically clueless. whether he was talking about the president or about the military, it’s still a reckless thing to say, especially when nothing is guaranteed for democrats this november.

this isn’t 2004. kerry missed his opportunity to defend himself, and he can’t get it back by trying to justify what he said. it’s not just “right-wing nut jobs” condemning what kerry said, unless you count john mccain, harold ford jr. and HILLARY CLINTON in that group. hillary only said that kerry’s remarks were “inappropriate”, but that’s strong enough language for her, i guess. kerry made a mistake. he should admit it and apologize.

if he still thinks he can be the ’08 democratic nominee, he is deluding himself. move on, senator kerry. do us a favor. do the democrats a favor. go on a nice long vacation.

related:

What Did John Kerry Do?— Hugh Hewitt
Kerry, Kerry Quite Contrary–Jonah Goldberg
Why Kerry’s crack matters— Michael Medved

tags: john kerry, ’06 election , ’08 election