Question

[Tigermike 3,035]

What do Dan Quayle and John Kerry have in common?

Neither one is a John Kennedy!

Losing it

Jay Bryant

September 4, 2004

Remember how when John Kerry didn't get any bounce from his convention and everyone went into high pundit mode and invented lots of structural reasons why such a thing could happen – like for example that with emotions so high in this election, there aren't any undecided voters left to bounce. Remember that?

If you're a really avid fan of this column (and, let's face it, who isn't?) you might even have read something like that here.

Now comes George W. Bush with his Republican convention, and he gets a bounce higher than a Yao Ming dribble. The latest Time Magazine poll now has Bush up by eleven points!

Guess there were some undecided voters out there after all.

An excellent radio talk show host here in the nation's capital, Michael Graham, was asking listeners today to weigh in on the question of whether it was more accurate to say that Bush was winning the election, or Kerry was losing it.

Forget the election, my view is that Kerry's "losing it," in the good old-fashioned colloquial sense.

I don't know about you, but when I'm in deep sneakers, I tend to run around like an idiot and try all sorts of crazy ideas, none of which ever works. Trying an outrageous bluff in a poker game, for example.

Kerry's acting like that, shaking up his staff, issuing absurd pronouncements, stuff like that. And, of course, that outrageous bluff in Springfield, Ohio, an hour after Bush's speech in New York.

That was, to use old Lloyd Bentsen's word, a "real doozy."

(Bentsen, you will recall, lost the vice-presidential election to Dan Quayle, who was, you recall, no John Kennedy. Which is one of the few things Quayle and Kerry have in common.)

Anyway, there was Kerry, out in Ohio, and to build rapport with the audience, he starts talking about how something really wonderful has happened that night. And you're pretty sure he's not talking about either the Republican Convention, the Russian hostage-taking horror or the approach of Hurricane Frances, but you can't figure out what he's talking about either, until he blurts out that the Boston Red Sox have gotten to within two and a half games of the Yankees.

Now, remember folks, I spent most of my adult life writing speeches and stuff for political candidates. So I got some bona fides here, and I think I can say pretty much for certain the number of voters in Springfield, Ohio, with whom the way to build rapport is to talk about the Boston Red Sox is (within the margin of error) zero.

Did someone screw up his briefing book and cause him to think he was in Springfield, Massachusetts, for crying out loud?

And here's the worst part of all, not to mention the most typical. Kerry's little warmer upper was not only stupid, it was flat wrong! The Red Sox did not pull within two and a half games of the Yankees that night. They won their game, indeed, but the Bronx Bombers also won, and thereby remained three and a half games ahead of the Crimson Hose.

Then, a little later in his remarks, which commentators tell me was pretty much the same stump speech he's been giving except for a few zingers like the Red Sox thing, he called President Bush a "one trick pony."

What? Where the heck did that come from? And what, for the love of Barnum and Bailey does it mean?

If George W. Bush is a one-trick pony, what's his one trick? For the life of me, I can't figure out what Kerry was talking about. My guess is that he heard the phrase recently (perhaps spoken about his own incessant harping on his Vietnam heroism) and thought it was cute and stuck it into his repertoire just so he could say it, just like my daughter used to sing the chorus of "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" just so she could say the word "damn" without getting punished.

Now, let me be sure to say this election is far from over. There are still two months left, which is plenty of time for public sentiment and poll standings to go flip-flop, as they say, once or maybe even twice more, and heaven knows the mainstram media will do all they can.

Republicans would be well advised not to prematurely enumerate their poultry, and to be mindful that, as every Law and Order fan knows, it ain't over 'til the Executive Producer's credit comes up.

But with the Swift Boaters hot on his heels and the Republicans having thoroughly outclassed the Democrats, convention-wise, I think Kerry's losing it.

LINK