Kerry Redux

Greg Lewis

Much has been made of John Kerry's Vietnam record, and of his subsequent tossing of medals and/or ribbons over the White House fence, and of his anti-war activities in the early 1970s. All of these work, in my estimation, against his being a qualified candidate for President of the United States. But there are other, more personal quirks, that help to round out the image of a supremely ill-qualified person, a future runner-up in the Presidential election.

For starters, John Kerry rides a bike — and not very well, I might say — that cost him more than a month's salary for a very very well-paid construction or factory worker. And I do mean "very very well-paid." I am talking about the gross monthly salary of a worker who's making something like $36.00 an hour.

Which is to say, John Kerry's bike cost in the neighborhood of $6,000.00.

While he was out riding said $6K bike over the weekend, he, in motorcycle parlance, set it down. Which is to say, he crashed it. After he crashed it, it's reliably reported that he took it to a cycle shop, had it "tweaked up," and rode it home. Good to know he was able to finish his "ride."

John Kerry doesn't even blink an eye at spending 6 large for a bicycle that's not even a regular part of his exercise regimen. President George W. Bush, by the way, has in the past relied solely on his legs to power him through jogging sessions whose 7.5-minute mile times attest to serious cardiovascular fitness.

Somehow, under the circumstances, Kerry's propensity to put thousands of dollars worth of technology — in the form of a "bike," for God's sake — between himself and cardiovascular fitness seems to trivialize the whole topic. Further obscuring this issue is the fact that Kerry blamed his crashing the bike on riding it through a "patch of sand."

Let's remember that Kerry is a guy who has trouble chewing gum and snowboarding at the same time. Well, in defense of chewing gum, it does appear that Kerry didn't have gum in his mouth when he recently endured several snowboard wipeouts. His vigorous denials that he had endured snowboard wipeouts recalled the denials of a former President with regard to somewhat more sleazy recreational activity.

You'll recall that it was during the snowboard crisis that photos surfaced of Kerry wearing a large daisy zipper pull (it's fairly widely agreed that said daisy was not a "ski pass") attached to his ski jacket. The wide variety of interpretations of the presence of the daisy evoked, for Hugh Hewitt, weighing in via Power Line (powerlineblog.com), an image of "just the man to instill fear in the hearts of our enemies."

You'll recall also that during the period of the daisy zipper pull incident Kerry blamed his ineptitude at snowboarding — which was, unfortunately for the candidate, also captured via digital camera — on a Secret Service agent who "caused" him to fall. Secret Service Agent, patch of sand . . . it's all the same. Cause a subpar performance by John Kerry and you're sure to garner headlines, or at least tangential references.

What is it about John Kerry that not only causes him to put his doofus tendencies right out there where everyone can see them, but which causes him to think that spending copious amounts of precious campaign time engaged in snowboarding, recreational biking, and undergoing elective surgery somehow increases his possibilities for being elected President of the United States? What is it that makes Kerry and those managing his campaign think that the secret to his electability is Botox treatments and two hundred-dollar haircuts delivered by a stylist-to-the-stars flown in for the sole purpose of helping insure the candidate's presentability?

Never mind that Kerry, because he is a member of the Democrat Party and therefore is the nominee of the party "of the people," is in possession of a fortune that dwarfs that of George W. Bush. Never mind that Kerry has a "personal assistant" — a former caddy whom Kerry plucked from the obscurity of being a "bagger" and on whom the candidate bestowed instant respectability by giving him valet-level responsibilities — who is charged with making peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches on demand for the candidate. Nor that the candidate is a resolute and scary loner whose closest "friend" might just well be said former-caddy-turned-personal-assistant.

(The fact that he craves peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, by the way, is thought by those who manage Kerry's image to be a "personalizing" or "humanizing" component of the candidate's personality. The fact that he has a personal assistant, one of whose duties is to hover near the candidate and fetch said culinary concoctions on request seems not, in their eyes, to mitigate Kerry's "humanity.")

And so the choice for the American people in November's presidential election is becoming clearer and clearer with every passing week. It's a question of entrusting the most important office in the world to someone like John Kerry, who not only has no experience at the job, but who seems to have a congenital propensity to blame others for even the tiniest mistakes he makes, or to someone who has proven that the buck really does stop on his desk, and who's not about to dodge any responsibility that comes his way.

The fact that Kerry's dodges go from issues as serious as his conduct during and after his military service down to the seemingly trivial only serves to underscore that this component of Kerry's character is soul-deep and not about to change. It is incumbent on the American people not to give Kerry a chance to demonstrate it in real time on the job for which our current President has proven his fitness.

© 2004 by Greg Lewis
First North American Rights Only