[sigh]

John Kerry is just pathetic. And I mean that in the sense that he embodies pathos. You would have to have a heart of stone not to feel for a guy who wants something so badly that he can't help but make it impossible for himself to get it. Like the social misfit who pathetically always tries too hard...

But it would help if he were just honest. That was a joke? It was aimed at George Bush? I mean, how is that supposed to have worked? I presume that Bush was meant to be the bad example. But then the joke has to work like this:

On the one hand, you can study hard, get a good education, and go on to get a great job and succeed in life. On the other hand you could be like George Bush -- who has the most powerful job in the world (a job Kerry is pitifully desperate to win for himself), who got his degree from Yale -- and who studied hard enough to get better grades than John Kerry did. If Dubya was really Kerry's target, wouldn't Kerry be saying, "If you emulate Dubya by studying hard, getting a good education, and going on to get a great job, then you will wind up stuck in Iraq -- so don't go there, it ain't worth it"?

John Derbyshire may think it's "obvious" that that's what Kerry meant, but considering how at every possible point Bush is the opposite of the kind of bad example Kerry was trying to draw, I would say you can only say that Kerry "obviously" meant Bush if you are also prepared to say that Kerry "obviously" has the approximate IQ of a goldfish. Which, considering the mind-bogglingly creative ways that Kerry finds to make an utter ass of himself in public, is certainly a defensible position.

But I think it's much more likely that Kerry, who built his political career by denigrating American soldiers and holding them up to public contempt, simply forgot temporarily that outside of the fever-swaps of the nuttier Democratic fringe, Americans have long since moved past the negative and inaccurate Vietnam-era stereotype that anybody with half a brain would obviously find something more useful and congenial to do with his life than to waste it in the defense of his fellow-countrymen and their freedom. I think Kerry's true opinion of the average military man escaped into the open for a moment. But I could certainly be wrong. He could really just be that stupid.

Of course, since this is John Kerry we're talking about, the most likely explanation is that both theories (stupidity, and contempt for the military) are true: he holds grossly inaccurate stereotypes about American soldiers, and he was stupid enough to forget that he was supposed to be pretending to admire and respect the troops. Only Kerry knows, and I think we can count on him to say what he thinks he needs to say to get elected President rather than what is actually true...which of course means that we can count on him to use this opportunity to say all kinds of things that will actually keep him out of the Presidency, under the impression that he is helping his own cause.

However, if you're a Democrat in a borderline district, Kerry has just given you a huge opportunity. You should hold a press conference right now in which you condemn Kerry's statement and quote all the statistics on how well-educated and admirable our soldiers are. You should go out of your way to say that our military are the cream of the crop, and that anybody who looks at a college education and thinks, "Hey, that's a good way to keep from having to go into the military," is a person whose sentiments you hold in contempt. It's an absolutely golden opportunity to publicly place yourself in the mainstream. But you'd bloody well better take that opportunity to climb to success over the political corpse of the junior senator from Massachusetts...or else you're likely to be dragged down by association, because Sen. Kerry unfortunately has a (D) after his name rather than an (R).

At least that's how it appears to me.

What a maroon that guy is. I wonder how much Karl Rove is paying him...