Did Bush Mislead Clinton Too?



January 27, 1998

Sitting Here in Limbo

Know how hard it is to go to a restaurant with a kid under ten? Imagine campaigning for president with your kids in tow.

Sure it would be miserable for you but imagine the living hell it would be for the kiddies. No friends. No attention from Mom or Dad. Nothing but grownups talking to each other on and on all day long.

If you still can’t picture it, check out this New York Times video about the lovely and talented John Edwards. He’s campaigning for President and I guess he wants to show what a great father he is by taking his kids out of school and dragging them through endless photo ops in Middle America on a rented bus.

Frankly, I’d do the same thing if I had to run for President. But I don’t have to, and neither does Edwards. I’m sure the campaign thinks that his pursuit of the presidency even though his wife has cancer and his kids are bored out of their minds is proof of Edwards’s’s’s focus and perseverance.

But I think it just makes him remarkably selfish. All the more remarkable since he lost his eldest son in an accident and must surely regret the lost opportunities to share love and life. Why then subject your other children to the whims of your career?

His kids are certainly getting a unique education though. When this is over they should be able to write a dissertation on child exploitation.

John Kerry Demonstrates His “Courage”

This morning Adam Nagourney of the New York Times covers John Kerry’s presidential campaign kick-off with an almost palpable sneer.

I must admit, I rather enjoy one of the Times’ exquisite hatchet jobs when it’s directed at someone I can’t stand.

Kerry addressed “a listless crowd” on a “sweltering morning” in front of “an elaborate backdrop of the docked carrier Yorktown 1,000 miles from his Boston home.”

The article reports that the speech represented a “relaunching of a ship that had drifted off course this summer.”

While not directly dispatching the speech as a colossal failure, Nagourney notes that the candidate felt compelled to issue a statement an hour later expressing confidence in his campaign team and declaring that there would be no changes in his staff.

Helpfully, the Times notes, “it took Kerry only two sentences in his prepared remarks before he made his first reference to his service in Vietnam.”

Nagourney also includes this wonderful snippet from deep within Kerry’s speech:

"Some might not like to hear it, courage means standing up for gun safety, not retreating from the issue out of political fear or trying to have it both ways," Mr. Kerry said. "I'm a hunter and I believe in the Second Amendment but I've never gone hunting with an AK-47. Our party will never be the choice of the N.R.A., and I'm not looking to be the candidate of the N.R.A.”

What is this, some sort of psychological disorder? He has the “courage” to stand up for some focus-grouped non-term, pseudo-issue called “gun safety” and not “have it both ways” before claiming that he is both a gun enthusiast and not a gun enthusiast?

I think I speak for much of the American public when I say, what the fuck?

Kerry goes on to explain his uncomfortable vote in Congress authorizing President Bush to unleash his terrible swift sword against the sadistic fascist Saddam Hussein regime thusly:

"I voted to threaten the use of force to make Saddam Hussein comply with the resolutions of the United Nations."

Nagourney properly calls this "an unusual description." I'll say. Isn’t this like saying “I only meant to threaten the use of force, not actually use it” and isn’t that the sort of thinking that made us vulnerable to attack in the first place? Jeez, no wonder no one trusts the Democrats with national security.

It’s kind of hard to imagine what might be motivating a hard-core Kerry supporter if there are any?

I presume that they’re the sort of coddled and privileged young guys from Tufts who imply they went to Harvard and see politics as a way of furthering their imaginary careers as one-day influential investment bankers with a global focus along the lines of Roger Hormats who can get rich without sullying themselves in actual commerce and some day work at the IMF as a prestigious and useless international bureaucrat.

Sorry guys, but Kerry is a sure loser.

And thanks to the New York Times for demonstrating what they can do when they put their talent to work in the service of good rather than evil.