John Kerry's Foot

November 1, 2006

What is it with the Democrats lately? Those who aren’t struck dumb by the Bush administration’s rhetoric open their mouths and insert their feet.

It’s an understatement to say that John Kerry, or Howard Dean, would have been far superior to George Bush as the president of the United States; as Cheney would say, “that’s a no-brainer”. But when it comes to getting out messages, they stumble all over the place.

I think it’s anger. Righteous anger, but delayed – and even misplaced – anger. Kerry – like Al Gore before him – seems to have what a friend calls the “dinosaur syndrome”. You hit a dinosaur on the head today and he reacts to it much later.

It took Al Gore a couple of years after he “lost” the 2000 election to start making angry speeches about the policies of the Bush administration. But even then, he never really funneled that anger (as so many of us longed for him to do) into the fact that – as evidence has shown – he was the rightful winner of that election. And now, two years after “losing” the 2004 election, Kerry is fighting mad... finally. But, instead of talking about the theft of the 2004 election – the Ohio debacle, the voting machines, even directly addressing the Swift Boating itself – he blurts out a statement meant to attack George Bush’s failed policy in Iraq, but which instead sounds more like an attack on the American troops.

Now John Kerry is so angry about being Swift-Boated in 2004 that he was initially reluctant to apologize for what even he called a “botched joke”, which is understandable, but it took Imus repeated attempts this morning to get him to make a coherent statement about what he really meant to say.

Maybe it’s something in the water in Washington. After all, George Bush can barely string a series of words into a clear sentence and John Kerry’s history with mis-statements goes back to his most infamous: “I voted for it before I voted against it”.

Kerry appears to be a very bright and thoughtful man with his heart in the right place, but the complexities of his mind are not serving him – or us – well. More importantly, where was he when we needed him to stand up and speak out? There was a time when speaking up would have made the difference between war and peace, when it would have protected our Bill of Rights from being dismantled and our country from being sold out to the interests of big money.

As he postures himself for another possible run at the presidency, John Kerry’s latest foot-in-mouth episode reminds us that in 2008 we need a candidate with a cohesive message and the ability to express it coherently and consistently.

With the 2006 elections a week away, the Democrats really need to pull together and to help or get out of the way.

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