"'I Don’t Want an Exciting President'/Joe Biden makes his supporters feel safe, but nominating him is risky."

A NYT op-ed by Michelle Goldberg, which you probably feel you don't need to read because the headline says it all. In fact, I haven't read it, because that's how I feel. But I'm blogging it because the photographs at the link — by Damon Winter — are so eloquent and hilarious (or terrifying, if you're a Trump hater). You see the Biden crowd, and they look dull and inert. (Some of their dullness is the look of a person staring into an iPhone, and photographers will be able to catch people looking like that everywhere.)

ADDED: My son John blogs the Goldberg column and links to something I blogged on July 29, 2004:

Is anyone listening to the speeches at the Convention

who isn't listening through a filter of thinking about the way someone else would be hearing the speech? I think not. I think the someone else, for whom the speech was written and to whom it is delivered, is not tuned in at all. Everyone listening is either already a Kerry supporter hoping the speech will convince someone else or a journalistic observer analyzing whether the speech is the sort of thing that will have the effect on the target audience it is intended to have.

ADDED: My son John Althouse Cohen emails:

You wrote about how everyone watching the convention is imagining how the speeches will seem to someone else, even though it might be that none of those "someone elses" are actually watching the speeches. The same thing happened when Kerry won the primaries. Everyone was voting for him because they thought he would appeal to someone else. And those voters believed at the time that that was the politically savvy thing to do. But it was actually politically disastrous: if everyone was just voting for him because they thought someone else would like him, then NO ONE ACTUALLY LIKED HIM.

One problem is that if you're trying to choose the most "electable" person, I would imagine that you'd be likely to do it by process of elimination -- by ruling out all the candidates with obvious political liabilities. I think this is the number-one reason why Kerry won the primaries: he was the only candidate who didn't seem to have anything particularly wrong with him. Edwards was too inexperienced; Clark was a poor campaigner; Dean seemed kind of insane; Gephardt was too liberal; Lieberman was too conservative. So they choose the one candidate who has no qualities that would really make anyone hate him. The problem is that he also has no qualities that would really make anyone like him either.

"Every four years, by journalistic if not political tradition, the presidential election must be accompanied by a 'revolution.'"

"So what transformed politics this time around? The rise of the Web log, or blog. The commentary of bloggers — individuals or groups posting daily, hourly or second-by-second observations of and opinions on the campaign on their own Web sites — helped shape the 2004 race."

From "The Revolution Will Be Posted," NYT, November 2, 2004.

I'm just indulging in some haphazard nostalgia. Remember when blog was the revolution and mainstream media tried to seem with it by getting the bloggers to come over and stomp around for a short spell? Now, they just embed tweets. More efficient. Less messy.

"Consultant Raised Cash for Hillary Clinton, Used Access to Seek Meeting for Coal Giant, Emails Reveal."

Reports The Intercept.

The "Coal Giant" is Peabody Energy.  The political consultant is Joyce Aboussie, who wrote to Huma Abedin:

“Huma, I need your help now to intervene please. We need this meeting with Secretary Clinton, who has been there now for nearly six months,” Aboussie wrote. “It should go without saying that the Peabody folks came to Dick and I because of our relationship with the Clinton’s,” she added.

Dick is Dick Gephardt, who was House Majority Leader from June 6, 1989 to January 3, 1995 and House Minority Leader from January 3, 1995 to January 3, 2003. That is, he led the Democrats in the House of Representatives during the entire Bill Clinton administration. Gephardt started a lobbying firm in January 2006, the month he left office.

Gephardt ran for President in 1988 and 2004, and he was considered a strong candidate for VP in 2004. There was even a New York Post cover saying that John Kerry had picked him:



(Kerry picked the now-disgraced John Edwards, who had better hair.)

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH said:

“It should go without saying that the Peabody folks came to Dick and I because of our relationship with the Clinton’s,” she added.

Huma must have rolled her exotic eyes and thought "what kind of amateurish influence peddler so consciously violates the rules of pay to play omertà?"

I imagined her rolling her eyes over something else — the illiteracy of "to Dick and I" and "the Clinton's." In my hypothetical scenario, she's saying:

How stupid is Peabody to pay big money to a guy who can't avoid making rank grammatical errors and sending them to me? To me! It's one thing to be married to a man who impulsively sends dick pics to skanky women, but to craft to-Dick-and-I email and send it to me! Ugh!

"Sometimes when I am on a stage like this, I wish that we weren't married, then I could say what I really think."

"I don't mean that in a negative way. I am happy."

Said Bill Clinton, introducing his wife.

I puzzled over that for approximately 3 seconds. The phrase "I wish that we weren't married" is certainly striking, coming from a husband, but obviously he means for us to imagine the much harsher words he'd be free to use if he were an independent speaker. As a husband, what he says automatically attaches to her, and he needs to be careful. He knows he needs to rein himself in and not say something like what got him in trouble back in 2008: "Give me a break. This whole thing is the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen."



ADDED: He wants to be a Hillarybro.

Justice Scalia wants you to know that he's not going to tell you what he's pretty much telling you.

What a scamp this man is!

After giving a speech against the concept of an evolving Constitution, Justice Scalia at the University of Colorado was asked by a high school student about Colorado becoming the first state to allow recreational-pot sales...

Scalia smiled and said, “I’m not going to respond to that because it would force me to have to recuse myself” if the question ever went to the high court.

But he added, “the Constitution contains something called the Supremacy Clause,” which is the provision stating that federal laws trump state laws.

The justice was also asked when we’ll find out if the high court will take up the question of whether state same-sex marriage bans are constitutional.

“I know when, but I’m not going to tell you,” he reportedly replied, getting a big laugh from the audience. “Soon! Soon!” he added.

By the way, years ago, Justice Scalia did recuse himself in a case where he'd commented on the issue in public. It was the case about whether "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance violates the Establishment Clause:

[I]n his talk to the Knights of Columbus, Justice Scalia... mentioned prior rulings by his own Court indicating that government could not favor any religious sect or religion over non-religion. He observed that such rulings were "contrary to our whole tradition, [and] to 'in God We Trust' on the coins," and said that these rulings had created inconsistencies that lent "some plausible support" to the lower court rulings in Newdow.

[And] when Scalia saw a protest sign in the crowd, he remarked: "The sign back there which says, 'Get religion out of government,' can be imposed on the whole country. . . . I have no problem with that philosophy being adopted democratically. If the gentleman holding the sign would persuade all of you of that, then we could eliminate 'under God' from the Pledge of Allegiance. That could be democratically done." Scalia thus arguably implied that the elimination of the "under God" phrase could not be accomplished by any Court — even his own....

The standard for recusal is vague — "[a]ny justice, judge or magistrate of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned" — and there's a great deal of analysis of it at that last link by Vikram David Amar. Excerpt:

The truth is that Scalia's judicial opinions are often far more sweeping, far more dismissive, and far more harsh in their treatment of legal theories, contentions and cases — including fact-patterns not yet before the Court — than any of his extra-judicial public statements have been. And yet no one in the world thinks that simply because a Justice in a published opinion has made clear in passing, say, that he does not agree with an earlier ruling and would overrule it when given a chance, that he is "biased" against that ruling — in the sense that he cannot participate in a case that comes up in which the continued vitality of that ruling is squarely presented. Having opinions about the law is very different from being biased in a particular case.

But cases must be decided. It's the judge's duty. He doesn't have to fly about the country and the world doing speeches and question-and-answer sessions. There, he's choosing to speak, and what he says on those occasions may seem more freely spoken from his mind: I'm saying this because I've got a will to say it. Within the constraints of the opinion-writing duty, there is paradoxically greater freedom: I'm saying this because I must.

But, now, Newdow was a very special case. For one thing, the plaintiff Michael Newdow asked for the recusal and pushed that demand in the press. Another thing is, the Newdow case was to be decided in the presidential election year of 2004, and to leave the liberals to determine that "under God" couldn't be in the Pledge was to invite them to burden the Democratic candidate and help President George Bush get his reelection. (Remember how his father kicked Dukakis around over the Pledge in 1988?)

In Newdow, the liberals ended up figuring out some weird tweak on the standing doctrine and avoided saying something inopportune about the Establishment Clause and the Pledge. And that maneuver has always been enough for me — arguably, a reasonable person — to question their impartiality. But the recusal statute can't mean that. Otherwise, it would be recusals all the way down and nothing could ever be decided.

"Obama does a great job delivering the speech, even though the words of the speech are quite banal."

"There are many references to hope. The speech is blessedly short. Cheers, waving signs. Cue the music."

Now here is a speaker I can stand to listen to....

That's the first thing I wrote about Barack Obama on this blog. It was July 27, 2004.

The next decently substantive thing I said quoted Obama — "I think to some degree I’ve become a shorthand or symbol or stand-in for a spirit" — and commented: "It's appealing to concede that, isn't it? Though eventually Barack Obama will have to be something specific, won't he? Wouldn't it be funny if he didn't?" And:

It's actually rather embarrassing for him to campaign for the Presidency openly admitting that he's doing well because he's a blank screen upon which people project their hopes. Even purely for the sake of appearances, he needs to get some substance.

"Obama plans to 'listen,' not present Mideast peace plan: Kerry."

Don't present. Vote present.

Actually, I'm being unfair. SOS Kerry didn't use the old Obama-hater's buzzword "present." He said "sort of plunk":

"We're not going to go and sort of plunk a plan down and tell everybody what they have to do... I want to consult and the president wants to listen."

The insinuation is that those who present actual plans are clods.

Remember how Kerry, when running for President, was always supposed to be the man of nuance, in whose delicate hands we should place the troubles of all of the world? It was supposedly so important to snatch the power out of the clumsy paws of George Bush.

UPDATE: Saying hello to Secretary Nuance: "Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday fired a rocket into Israel for the first time since a cease-fire reached three months ago ended an Israeli offensive against the militant Islamist group Hamas...."

"The Weird World Of 2004 John Kerry Election Memes."

At Buzzfeed, 19 photoshops + #20 "Not a photoshop, still funny."

"We've got better vision. We've got better ideas. We've got real plans. And we've got better hair."

Flashback to 2004. Remember when John Kerry said that... about himself and John Edwards? I wonder what the best hair combination is among the current group of Republicans... and if Obama ought to oust Biden and go with Hillary for a hair upgrade.

Radiating all the vigour and enthusiasm Kerry had surgically removed at birth, the honey-toned Edwards found himself adored by the media for his "two Americas" stump speech, a Disraelian portrait of Dickensian gloom conjured in the tones of a Depression-era sob-sister.

Ha ha. I came up with a Mark Steyn column when I Googled for what I was looking for:

Even if you have never heard it, you know how it goes: there's one America where Dick Cheney's oil buddies are swigging down Martinis and toasting their war profits; but there's another America where "tonight a 10-year-old little girl will go to bed hungry, hoping and praying that tomorrow will not be as cold as today because she doesn't have the coat to keep her warm".

Oh, what a huckster that John Edwards was!

I embarked on that Google search as I was writing the previous post, disapproving of reasoning/arguing with empathetic anecdotes. I thought it might help you, as you steel yourself against the political rhetoric that comes in the form of anecdotes, to remember that disgraced prettyboy John Edwards and his 2-Americas mascot, the (nonexistent) coatless little girl.

I've been writing about the shortcomings of the human imagination as we get hung up on one thing — such as a person in the room pleading with us — and neglect to think about all the people who aren't here in our presence. But when politicians use anecdotes, they merely paint a picture for us to see in our minds, and the thing that we fail to see may be more real in the world than what's painted in that picture, such as Edwards's nonexistent coatless little girl.

There must be a little girl, you were supposed to think, because her story is specific. She's 10-years-old and I see her there, kneeling by the side of the bed, and it's a cold night. 

You can see it — the unseeable nonentity — in your imagination. The anecdote-purveyor clogs up your head with phony pictures. Fight the fake little 10-year old that the ultra-fake politician would use to gum up the imaginative mechanisms of your mind. Feel the oiliness of the fakery as it lubricates those mechanisms, and visualize the things they'd prefer to be left unseen.

"Reince Priebus elected GOP chairman, replaces Michael Steele."

"Priebus won late Friday afternoon after seven rounds of balloting. He received 97 votes out 168 ballots cast."

The Wisconsin guy with the strange name made it.

ADDED: I guess ridicule on "The Daily Show" isn't so bad after all. January 4th:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Top of the GOPs
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog</a> The Daily Show on Facebook

Super Super Tuesday Tuesday Fat Bowl.

I abandoned you, dear readers, last night. It was Super Tuesday, yet also Fat Tuesday, and for many here in New York it was still the Super Bowl — or Super Bowl afterglow. So: Super Super Tuesday Tuesday Fat Bowl.

Where was I when you were driving up the comments number in last night's post?

I'd love to say that I was out carousing with fans who lined the Canyon of Heroes for the big parade yesterday. Or that I was fabulously costumed and celebrating Mardi Gras. But I was calmly re-ensconced in my Brooklyn Heights apartment, eating 2 bowls of Golean Crunch cereal and drinking C-Boost.

It seemed, after all this blogging about the 2008 Campaign, that I should be supremely excited about watching the election returns, but my attention wandered, and I found myself talking on the telephone and watching "American Idol." (I don't care much about "American Idol." It's just cozily familiar.) After agreeing to do some TV commentary, I was glad it got canceled.

I think there's something about me and voting returns. I tend to lose interest. I like following the campaign, but why?

I'm really not very interested in politics. I'd be moderately satisfied having any of the major candidates as President. I write about politics because I'm absorbed by the dynamics of the fight and the rhetoric. (I feel much the same way about Supreme Court cases.) I'm not actually rooting for anyone, and so the news of who has actually won bores me a little. I can read it in a second on-line at any point. I don't really need to see Wolf Blitzer dramatize it for hours on end.

And yet, somehow, I feel that it's my role to dramatize the election returns for you (or — God help me — for some TV audience). This morning, it's staring me in the face that I'm not that kind of person at all. I'm not going to rise to this occasion. It was obvious — why do I keep denying it? — that I'm this way back in November 2004 when I was watching the election returns. All I wrote here that evening was one post:

Yes, I care a lot about the outcome of the election, and I'm sitting here waiting for the news to come in, sampling the dribbled out exit polls, and fretting. But at the same time, I feel complete assurance that as soon as the outcome is known, I'll fully accept it. Either man will make a decent enough President. I think Bush deserves to continue in office, but if it is to be Kerry, Kerry can handle the job too. Both of my sons support Kerry, and shouldn't I want them to be happy? Despite all this political blogging, I'm not really all that political. Note the subheading above. ["Feeling a strange, nervous equanimity."] It will be nice to break loose from the grip of politics that has held us for so long. As I blogged long ago, I've had preferences in presidential elections going all the way back to 1960, and only one man I've supported has been President. (In case you've forgotten or are not a long-time reader, that man was Bill Clinton.) I'm accustomed to spending election night seeing my man lose. I've even had the experience before of supporting an incumbent who loses when I did not support him the time that he won. (For new or forgetful readers, that would be Jimmy Carter.) Basically, I am a grand supporter of losers. My support is the kiss of death. Oh, no! Have I gone all pessimistic? No, no. It is equanimity that flows through me. Time for a nice glass of win, a plate of pasta with Bolognese sauce, and a calm absorption of reality.

UPDATE: "A nice glass of win" -- ah, so hope does live on! Time for a nice glass of wine and toast to hope! A glass to be refilled later, perhaps, in a quenching of sorrow!

ANOTHER UPDATE: 10:53 p.m. Maybe I am going to get that nice glass of win after all. I'm really surprised. I let those exit polls affect me. Then I called up my sister in Florida and ended up talking with her for a long time, just watching the numbers on the TV screen with the sound off, so I wasn't getting any punditizing and wasn't drawing conclusions about much of anything. I got off the phone, and it took a while for me to absorb it, but eventually I got the message that everything was trending toward Bush.

So there you have it, the Althousian viewpoint. I keep forgetting this is the way I am. There I was doing it again last night.

I need to remember myself and not create the impression that I'm another one of these political bloggers. I'm really not like them. My C-Span appearance got canceled because the blogger on the other side — I was told, late in the day — backed out. Side? I hadn't even been informed that I was booked to take a side. But — I protested, after it didn't matter anymore — I'm not on a side. I'm not able — I'm not willing — to hold up a side. My stress about going on the show was retroactively intensified. I had no business agreeing to do that.

So my relief felt like even more of a crash. Have I had a migraine headache for days? Or am I allergic to something in that Golean Crunch? What the hell is in that anyway? Chicory root! Should that be in cereal? I took a hot shower and curled up in bed. I was thinking maybe I'll analyze the rhetoric of the various speeches in the morning blogging but I don't need to know the results now. Why stay up, when all the news will be there to read in 1 minute when I get up? I fell asleep.

This morning, looking for that old 2004 election night post, I also found this, written the next day:

I know they can't help it, those people who are gearing up for '08. I got into my car to drive to work this morning, clicked on the radio, and the first thing I heard was some talk radio guy raving against Hillary Clinton in '08. How absurd! And then there are those pro-Kerry websites that want to keep fighting out the futile battle of the Ohio provisional ballots. Ugh! I'm not going to tell you dyed-in-the-wool politicos to give it a rest. For you, it is like breathing. You must go on. But many of us are glad to have a chance to return to normal life. Politics is part of life, but the election fight is over now. It's already taken too much time.

Ah, I need to get my bearings and keep them. It's Lent now, and a good time for reflection.

Am I giving up politics or just Golean Crunch? I'm giving up my forgetting the true nature of my interest in politics. I need to be careful to do only what I want to do, to write what I want.

UPDATE: I've rethought my suspicions. I don't think it's the Golean Crunch with its chicory root that is making me feel poisoned. I think it's the C-Boost, with its Echinacea, Astragalus and Maitake Mushrooms — ingredients that seem vaguely medicinal — and with its camu camu fruit, acerola cherries, and — not least of all — mango. Mango, you know, contains urushiol, which is the poison in poison ivy.

ADDED, 6/10/08: I was just writing this post and I gave it the tag "Albert Camus," and so then, following my usual practice, I did a search in Blogger for all the old posts with "camus" and added the "Albert Camus" tag to all of them. I clicked the tag to see all the Camus posts on one page and read this post again. It's interesting, but what on earth has it got to do with Camus? Ah! It's the camu camu fruit! Blogger helps you out by grouping plurals and singulars together. I find it charming to put the old French writer together with the fruit I was so suspicious of, so I'll leave the tag here.

How Kerry lost me.

I started this blog in mid-January, and I've devoted a lot of words since then to analyzing the presidential campaign. I've said many times that I'm not going to pick my candidate until October. Yet I find myself expressing an increasing amount of hostility to Kerry, so I thought I'd go back and trace the arc of my antagonism through my various posts.

Here's my first statement about Kerry and the Iraq war, made on April 9th. (It was Good Friday--scroll up [actually, click here] to see the man preaching from a cross.)

I think it makes a lot of sense, after the primary season, to ignore the Presidential campaign as much as possible. There's no reason for a moderate like me, who might end up voting for either candidate, to follow the campaigns right now. For one thing, it's not fair to Kerry, because I find him a boring speaker and I'm really going to get tired of him if I pay any attention to him. For another thing, I can't think about him seriously until I know what he plans to do in Iraq, and he hasn't said what he will do. (Will, meaning, in the future. How the past might have been different is not going to determine my vote. And don't try my patience by telling me that I can infer what he will do in the future from what he asserts he would have done in the past.) He has no motivation to take a position on Iraq until closer to the election: why should he pin himself down when events are in flux?

Six days later, I got irked at him for the first time, for saying "You're not listening" to a man who wanted to know what his position on Iraq was. Back then, Kerry was saying things like "We shouldn't only be tough, we have to be smart. And there's a smarter way to accomplish this mission than this president is pursuing." My question was: "If you still don't know what he would do differently from Bush, do you deserve to be snapped at for 'not listening'?" I've linked back to this old post of mine a number of times, because I never forgot that he got testy and accused a man of not listening, when in fact Kerry had never expressed himself clearly about what he would do in Iraq. I had been willing to wait a long time for a clear answer, yet here he was criticizing us for not having heard his answer yet. All I had heard was "smarter way," which just seemed like a placekeeper for a plan to be submitted later.

On April 19th, Kerry appeared on "Meet the Press," and Tim Russert asked Kerry exactly the question I wanted an answer to: What would you do differently from Bush in Iraq?

Kerry's "response" is to launch into an anecdote with no apparent connection to the question (about a Vietnam vet--of all things) and gradually work his way toward something that will seem to be an answer. The strategy is to put the "answer" as far from the question as possible, in the hope that you'll forget the question and accept the proffered "answer" as an answer (or just hope that he'll stop talking already). Does Kerry ever answer the question about the future of Iraq? He always substitutes assertions about mistakes in the past. The most I'm hearing about the future is that Kerry will pursue all the same goals, but in a "smarter way." I'll just do it better. Trust me! Why? Because Bush hasn't been good enough.

On April 28th, I complained about a Kerry appearance on "Hardball." I'm irritated by meandering non-answers and robotic repetition of lines from his stump speech. I offered Kerry a deal:

It's on and on about the medals and ribbons. This is incredibly irritating. I agree with Kerry that it's pointless to quibble about whatever it was he threw away when he was an young man with an issue to fight for. But let's make a deal then: stop using Vietnam as an argument for why you should be President. The whole issue is a waste of time. I'm willing to accept that both Bush and Kerry are good people with good character. Now, get on with it! Give me some substance!

After the first commercial break, Kerry is smiling--with teeth showing oddly. Someone told him to smile, so he's taking stage directions. Oh, I'm so hopelessly tired of Kerry.

And that was back in April! Little did I know then that he would keep robotically delivering clips from the stump speech and would make Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign! Looking back, I can see that the "Meet the Press" and "Hardball" interviews were crucial in turning me against him. Notably, Kerry thereafter steered clear of serious interviews.

May 1st was an important day, when Kerry responded to the news of Abu Ghraib. I complimented him and expressed a hope:

Kerry may choose to do something more with this issue later, but [his comments today show] complete forbearance from opportunism. I want Kerry to demonstrate that he would never allow his political ambition to override the interest in the successful completion of our efforts in Iraq, and I have worried that he would pursue the strategy of uniting Bush and the war in the public's mind, creating a single entity (BushWar), and then use every opportunity to find fault with something done in the war to attack BushWar. What a disaster that would be.

Perhaps Kerry's statement only represents the astute political understanding that he needs to avoid appearing not to support our soldiers--especially important for him because of his Vietnam era statements--but I hope there is something more to this restraint, that there is a real commitment to the success of the mission. He is in a tough position here. Should he criticize Bush for not acting swiftly and harshly against the accused soldiers? For now he's chosen to refer to gathering the facts and providing "appropriate" process to the accused soldiers and preserving the rule of law. That may be too tame, part of his characteristic dullness, but it may be the surface of what is a competent commitment to the success of the war effort.

Nine days later, I wrote about Abu Ghraib again:

If Bush doesn't find a way to do something comprehensive, he deserves to be replaced. Whatever deficiencies Kerry may have--and I have not been a Kerry supporter--I would like to see him moved into the Presidency to make clear statement of the thing that Bush himself keeps going around saying: this is not what Americans are.

This was the point of my strongest support for Kerry.

On May 29th, I was pretty sympathetic to Kerry and defended him against attacks that he took too many positions:

One can easily portray Kerry as a man who takes so many different positions in such a confounding mix that no one--no one with any real potential to actually vote for him--ever gets too upset. Yet, obviously, Kerry has a careful balancing act to perform, and he seems sensible about trying to hold on to the middle. For the antiwar side, he seems to be offering only a feeling that he's going to wind things down more quickly and effectively than Bush, but Bush is trying to reach the same goals Kerry is stating. (This is why I'm not deciding between the two candidates until October: I'll see what Bush has actually done between now and then.) Kerry is urging ... that we get away from "partisan politics" and "just think common sense about our country, about what it should be doing." I don't argue with that. It's hard for him to get specific about what he would do, since he wouldn't be starting to do anything until over eight months from now. How can he use common sense to figure out what should be done that far in the future when things are changing every day so far out of his control? That's the downside of not being an ideologue.

Ironically, on this day I was dealing with nasty commenters on my blog (right before I turned off the comments function), who couldn't stop telling me what a louse I was for not condemning the war.

In June, two things happened that I wrote a little about: Reagan died and received a lavish funeral, and "Fahrenheit 911" came out and was loved and hated. I watched a bit of the funeral and avoided the movie. Various people used the occasions to stoke extreme partisan feeling. I felt my usual aversion to all of that. On July 1st, I complained about "ugly political imagery."

On July 31, I was very impressed by a Christopher Hitchens article that attacked Kerry for criticizing the war in Iraq for using money that we could be spending on our own people at home. Like Hitchens, I found that argument repugnant. Kerry further alienated me by repeating that argument many times.

Right after the convention, in early August, I questioned the assumption that Kerry is especially smart and call him "a cipher who went to Vietnam":

[M]y questions about Kerry's intelligence do not arise solely from my inference that he had a poor academic record and low standardized test scores. My questions are also based on his exasperatingly convoluted and unclear manner of speaking. This has been excused as a propensity for "nuance" and "complexity," but could also be caused by a lack of mental capacity. It could also be willful evasion. I'd really like to know. ... I've been listening to him talk for a long, long time, and I'm not impressed at all. And I'm sure not impressed by the mere fact of someone managing to hold a Senate seat for a long time!

I realize people who truly despise Bush don't care about any of this. The fact is Kerry's the candidate, so there's nothing more to say. Unite behind him, whoever he is. It's too late now. And please don't say anything bad about him. Shhhh! But that doesn't work for people, like myself, who don't despise Bush. I am actually trying to assess Kerry! Where is the material? It certainly wasn't presented in the convention last week, and Kerry's speeches and interviews are not exactly brimming with information. I've been looking for an answer to what he plans to do in Iraq for a long time ... and I still can't figure him out. It seems to me we're being asked to make a cipher President. A cipher who went to Vietnam. And isn't Bush. Is that enough? If you hate Bush, the answer is a resounding "Yes!" It isn't enough for me.

Next came the Republican Convention, which I watched much more closely than the Democratic Convention. I had TiVo'd the C-Span coverage of all nights of both conventions, but the Democratic Convention bored me and the Republican Convention gripped me. The speakers that made a real impression on me were: Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Ron Silver. These men all spoke well and with conviction. I listened to every word they said. I will admit to feeling deeply struck by Silver's line: "The President is doing exactly the right thing." Silver was open about being a liberal on the social issues--as I am--but passionate and clear that national security trumps other matters. I agree! I even enjoyed Zell Miller's old-style preacher speech.

How did Kerry try to claw his way back into the running after the convention? He was getting a lot of conflicting advice and being told to fight harder and attack. This post, written on September 5th, was pretty sympathetic to Kerry:

Of course, Kerry does seem to be on the path to defeat right now, so his supporters can't help panicking and find it hard not to yammer a lot of (conflicting) advice at him. But I think his best chance lies in continuing to be the lumbering, dull but solid and grown-up guy that he is, so that when election day finally comes and the excitement-seeking is over, people will look at him and say--perhaps: Yes, he's a frightful bore, but put him in the office and he'll probably earnestly work hard and make a decent share of good-enough judgments, which is all we really ever hope for anyway.

I could still have accepted Kerry at this point. But Kerry decided to go for the hard Howard Dean-style criticism of "the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time." In these last few weeks, he has battered us with negativity about the war, but still without offering any realistic positive solutions that are different from Bush's, and raising worries that he will simply give up on Iraq. And then he disrespected Prime Minister Allawi when the man was in the country and speaking to Congress. Yesterday, I wrote of Kerry's treatment of Allawi as his final, fatal mistake. I meant only to say that he had sealed his fate with voters for that, but, realistically, thinking about it today, I have to say he sealed his fate with me personally. Rereading this post, I see that the hope about Kerry I expressed on May 1st is completely lost.

UPDATE, MONDAY EVENING: After devoting much of Sunday to tracing the arc of my antagonism, it was nice to get so many visitors today. Thanks to Instapundit for starting the traffic, to Allahpundit for the cool quip ("[A]fter several months of looking at the menu, Ann Althouse decides she's not in the mood for Waffles."), and to lots of other people who linked and emailed.

Television ratings for the Democratic Convention.

So, we all know the ratings for the Convention are down from previous years. A key reason is that all the excitement has been drained out of them, as they've become carefully planned to work as slick commercials for the candidate.

New entry for a modern "Dictionary of Received Ideas":

Presidential nominating conventions: Be sure to use the phrase "tightly scripted."

Though the numbers are low, a few million are watching. But who are these people? Are they the ones for whom the smooth, Bush-bashing-free, hope-'n'-optimism fest was designed? Or are they just people who would actually enjoy some hardcore Bush-bashing but are tuning in to observe whether it seems is the sort of thing that will influence less hardcore people? Consider the cable news numbers:

During the ... 10 p.m. ET hour, CNN averaged 2.54 million viewers, Fox News Channel had 1.44 million viewers and MSNBC had 1.10 million, Nielsen said. ...

CNN won the ratings competition even though Fox routinely has a bigger audience during a normal prime-time.

Politics may play a part: Democrats are more likely to watch CNN and Republicans to watch Fox, according to a study released this spring by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

So there's the evidence that the Convention is mostly playing to existing Kerry supporters. That doesn't suggest that they may as well have had their Bush-bashing fun. If they had, the worst quotes would have echoed in news and commentary and hurt Kerry with the undecideds. And, by the same token, those who don't watch will get a general sense that a well-run, well-behaved, reasonable convention is taking place and that that might allay some worries and inspire some confidence.

But that's not to say the whole extravaganza was a worthwhile use of anyone's time and money.

Edwards ... and those terrible trial lawyers.

Yesterday, I set my all-time record for least posting: a single line. I wonder why the big announcement of Kerry's VP pick did not inspire me to write? Edwards was a choice I expected and approve of. We talked about it a lot in my house as we watched a different news channels last night. Most of my comments were about what a great speaker Edwards is compared to everyone else we've been hearing: Kerry, Bush, and Cheney. Both Kerry and Bush require some patience to listen to. The return of Edwards was quite a relief, a bit like the recent reexperiencing of the speaking skills of Reagan and Clinton. People on TV keep commenting on how good Edwards looks. More important is how well he speaks. Heard in my house: "He's the Great Communicator."

The other subject relating to Edwards that keeps coming up is the fact that that he was a--gasp!--trial lawyer. Are the news media getting enough play out of this? Attempts to stir up general anxiety about that fact alone are getting old already. Anyone who wants to raise this as a problem had best do it behind Edwards' back, because if he's around to respond, he will respond brilliantly. An attempt to drag Edwards (and Kerry) down by slurring lawyers is likely to end up improving the image of the whole legal profession. And after the events at Abu Ghraib and the Supreme Court's push-back against the most extreme assertions of unchecked power by the Bush administration, a return to law seems like a good theme.

UPDATE: A lawyer responds:

I disagree with your contention that Edward's profession is not a liability. Its significant that you call him a trial lawyer. Actually, he's a personal injury lawyer. The difference [is] the difference between pro-choice and anti-life, rain forest v. jungle, homeless v. vagrant, and many other formulations. A trial lawyer doesn't sound so bad - after all, Perry Mason was a trial lawyer! A Plaintiffs Personal Injury lawyer, as Dave Barry can tell you, is a shark.

Count on the GOP, if they're smart, to use his proper title. Count on them to solicit a lot of Doctors to oppose Edwards. Count on them to tell the truth, that we've never heard of a PI lawyer who didn't claim to " fight for little girls who were horribly mistreated." ( It's always a little girl.) Count on them to tell the Republic what percentage of consumer items goes towards lawsuit insurance. It won't be that hard.

Is "trial lawyer" a euphemism that the other side will gain ground by declining to use? I don't think there is a "proper title" here or that ordinary people are going to become excited if they are told that he calls himself a "trial lawyer" but really he's a personal injury lawyer. It's just not that alarming. It even sounds nice--personal. Now, "shark" is alarming, but it's hardly a "proper title." My point is that even if being a personal injury lawyer is something of a negative for some people, the issue is easily overplayed, beyond its significance to ordinary voters, and Edwards has a comeback that is so appealing and powerful that those who try to make headway are giving him an opportunity to display his skills and to make lawyers seem noble. Last night, C-Span re-ran a 2001 interview in which Edwards was asked about being a trial lawyer and his response was so perfect, so measured and balanced as he justified the role of the personal injury lawyer in particular cases with respect to truly culpable defendants. He is extremely well-prepared to respond to the kinds of arguments you cite. I'm not saying these arguments shouldn't be raised in some well-thought-out and substantial form, but the bare fact that he's a trial lawyer/personal injury lawyer is not good enough.

By the way, where did this idea that "rain forest" is a euphemism for "jungle" come from? I've heard that before, but it is just wrong. A rain forest is not a jungle.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Prof. Bainbridge is surely right that there are plenty of people whose support for Bush will be reinforced now that there's a trial lawyer on the Democratic ticket. And maybe some voters who could tip one way or the other could be influenced to tip away from Kerry because of some issues that have to do with trial lawyers. But I don't think the swing voters are going to be tipped by the mere label "trial lawyer," which is already overplayed. Something more substantive is needed, but Edwards is very good at dealing with these issues in a balanced way that would probably not strike moderates as anti-business.

Kerry on Hardball. I'm watching Kerry on Hardball. This is billed as an "exclusive" interview with Kerry. What does that mean? Any time one person interviews another it's "exclusive"? (No two snowflakes are alike.) It's only exclusive, I'd say, if it's a person who hasn't given any interviews in a long time. That's not Kerry.

Comment on Kerry's face: Whoa! It's re-Botoxing time! He's re-craggifying. Especially, on the right side of the face. Yikes! This Botox stuff wears off unevenly? That's pretty embarrassing.

It's on and on about the medals and ribbons. This is incredibly irritating. I agree with Kerry that it's pointless to quibble about whatever it was he threw away when he was an young man with an issue to fight for. But let's make a deal then: stop using Vietnam as an argument for why you should be President. The whole issue is a waste of time. I'm willing to accept that both Bush and Kerry are good people with good character. Now, get on with it! Give me some substance!

After the first commercial break, Kerry is smiling--with teeth showing oddly. Someone told him to smile, so he's taking stage directions. Oh, I'm so hopelessly tired of Kerry. If he would only take a strong stand about following through in Iraq now, looking forward and not backward! But he is in robotic mode: "The fact is that, uh, to PEEL it away, I think it comes down to this larger ideological, neocon concept of fundamental change in the region and who knows whether there are other motives with respect Saddam Hussein, but they did it because they thought they could." That lack of a "to" after "respect" is in the original. And before he launched into that he seemed to get a weary, okay-I'll-have-to-run-the-neocon-ideology-tape-loop look on his deBotoxifying face. Ugh!

I'm distracted by this news, which puts everything in a new light, but I make it through the final moments of the Hardball interview, as Kerry plugs in the domestic-economy-working-people-tax-cut-for-the-wealthy loop. Then Chris Matthews, sounding like an idiot, complains about calling a technical help line, getting a person with an Indian accent, and saying "Forget about it!" to that person. Why isn't that offensive? Someone answering the phone in an Indian accent justifies some sort of outrage? Meanwhile, Kerry is laughing, showing his teeth awkwardly again. Are we supposed to have contempt for the people of India? How does that relate to the idea that we need to cooperate better with the people of the world, which is what Kerry seems to be talking about half of the time? He's so manipulated and machined-tooled into his candidacy, there doesn't seem to be a real person there to think about putting your trust in.

UPDATE: Strange Doctrines criticizes me for asking for substance while being insufficiently substantive myself, but I'm not the one running for President. I keep asking for a substantive plan for what Kerry would do in the future in Iraq (here and here and here and here and I'll stop there, but that's just April). Without that, I cannot begin to think about him as a replacement for the person who is currently seriously trying to deal with the situation, however imperfectly. Do I need to have my own plan for how to wind down the conflict in Iraq? Kerry is robotically repeating fragments of stump speeches, almost incoherently, as quoted here. How can you understand what he's blabbering about (e.g., re neocons) unless you remember the point from before? As for Matthews, I was truly offended by his prejudice toward people with Indian accents, and Kerry just laughed when Matthews ranted about hanging up on such a person. Kerry is coming across as an empty shell of man.

FURTHER UPDATE: Strange Doctrines responded to that update, but none too coherently. I never said Bush had a more substantive plan for Iraq in the sense of a verbal expression of a plan. What Bush is doing, I can see in the news. Kerry has to tell me what he will do, because he isn't in the position to be actually doing anything yet. I have wasted untold hours of my life listening to Kerry and trying to detect an answer. I waste little time listening to Bush, because I can see what he's doing. I think they are both bad at speaking, if it's any consolation, and I have the complaint about lack of substance with respect to virtually every sort of political debate, speech, or event from Kerry, Bush, and everyone else. Why do I say anything about Kerry's face? One: because he calls attention to it by doing things to it. Two: because I am so bored waiting for an answer to the one obvious question that he never answers that I have to grope for things to do with my mind. Three: because physical appearance is a valid and interesting topic, generally, and even specifically, with respect to the Presidency. It has a lot to do with how people respond to a candidate (e.g., Nixon vs. Kennedy) and matters of style have something to do with how a President is able to persuade and influence.

THIS IS THE LAST ONE: Strange Doctrines still thinks I'm being unfair to Kerry because I'm only asking for a "future" plan for Kerry and not for Bush. Only Kerry's presidency is in the future. I just want to know what he'll do if and when he's President.

"Kerry is in an impossible box on Iraq." I keep waiting to hear Kerry say what he will do in Iraq, and I can't even think about the possibility of voting for him without an answer. Chicago polisci prof Daniel W. Drezner explains in TNR why Kerry can't answer (along with why we are in a Bizarro World where the war going badly helps Bush):

On a normal issue, if a challenger disagrees with an incumbent--and, moreover, if the incumbent's initiatives are both objectively failing and increasingly unpopular--then the challenger can simply advocate taking the opposite approach. But Iraq isn't a normal issue; there is no opposite approach (or, at least, no responsible opposite approach). ...

I will now go back to averting my eyes from the futile flailings of this campaign season.

Kerry on Meet the Press--a few observations. Kerry has been working on his face. As Chris put it, "He made himself orange." Why did he do that? Going orange didn't work too well for Gore. I supposed it's the Tanned-and-Rested image, which he seems to be striving for generally. At least he went with brown rather than red rouge. Chris adds:

He has the Charlize Theron tan. You realize it's like a major Hollywood fad. All the big Hollywood celebrities, especially the female celebrities, are getting an orange tan. Britney Spears got it. ...He's gone way too far. I mean, it's hard to even take him seriously."

Why did Kerry get his eyebrows waxed half off? They now begin directly above the inner edge of the iris. Once you notice it, it looks really weird. I assume they thought you wouldn't really notice but would just subliminally think he had stopped scowling.

The degree of facial reconfiguring that has gone on is made clear whenever Russert puts one of Kerry's old quotes up on the screen: there's a little picture of Kerry looking quite pallid and withered. The fact is, he does look a hell of a lot better now, despite weird eyebrows and orangeness.

Most insane exchange:

RUSSERT [after playing a 1971 clip of Kerry stating that he took part in war atrocities in Vietnam]: You committed atrocities?

KERRY [laughing]: Where did .... Where did all that dark hair go, Tim? That's a big question for me.

He does then go on to deal with the issue of his characterization of the fighting in Vietnam as atrocity: it was the "over the top" language of the time. As to "all that dark hair"--as if he's gracefully accepting the effects of age and wouldn't use artificial means to regain youthful looks!

Russert asks him a direct question, maybe the single most important question: What would you do different from Bush in Iraq? Kerry's "response" is to launch into an anecdote with no apparent connection to the question (about a Vietnam vet--of all things) and gradually work his way toward something that will seem to be an answer. The strategy is to put the "answer" as far from the question as possible, in the hope that you'll forget the question and accept the proffered "answer" as an answer (or just hope that he'll stop talking already). Does Kerry ever answer the question about the future of Iraq? He always substitutes assertions about mistakes in the past. The most I'm hearing about the future is that Kerry will pursue all the same goals, but in a "smarter way." I'll just do it better. Trust me! Why? Because Bush hasn't been good enough.

Comparing campaign letters. In a seeming testament to my political moderation, today's mail brought envelopes from both the Democratic National Headquarters ("Bushspeak/What you hear isn't what you get") and the South Dakota Republican Party ("Tom Daschle is hoping you will throw this letter away..."). Well, that's fair warning not to open either letter, but I did anyway.

"Ann, not only is this a fight we CAN win ... it is a fight we MUST win." Thanks for the personal touch. Either letter might have said that, but that line is urging me to fund the fight against Daschle, for his "extreme partisanship and obstruction of President Bush's agenda." According to the SD Republican Party letter Daschle has a 59% disapproval rating among South Dakota voters, and somehow this should encourage me to send them money. If SD voters dislike him so much, presumably he'll lose.

The Democrat's letter, from Nancy Pelosi, is mellower than her previous missives. It studiously avoids using the words "lie," "lying," and "liar," and goes with "haven't been straight," "misled us," "made promises they haven't kept," "I'm going to tell you the truth," "misleading rhetoric," "empty promises," "credibility gap," "the truth is," "in fact..," "the truth is," "the stark reality is," "his rhetoric is far from reality," "Bush has said one thing and done another," "what's really going on," and "get the word out about the real President Bush." Well, that's nice. I hate overheated rhetoric, that is, I'm not fond of it. And these so polite Democrats are not just asking for money, they want me to sign a "Statement of Affirmation," which seems a bit creepy to me:

As a proud American and a loyal Democrat, I am today rejecting the politics of privilege for the few and callous neglect of the many, and affirming my belief:

In a government characterized by fairness that keeps its promises to its citizens

In a government strong enough and caring enough to promise "compassion" to those in greatest need and really mean it.

In the deep conviction that the most blessed and affluent democracy in the worlds history--one that can spend billions on war and the weapons of war--can also create jobs for those that want them, educate its young, care for its elderly and infirm, provide hope for its destitute and downtrodden, protect its environment and guarantee equal rights and opportunity for all its citizens.

"Affirmation"? "Blessed"? It's just politics, people, it's not a religion. And why doesn't this "affirmation" appear on the web anywhere (so I could link to it)? Insiders only? Afraid of mockery?

"You're not listening." Kerry got testy at a City College event:

Retired college professor Walter Daum angrily accused [Kerry] of backing an imperialist policy in Iraq and called on him to demand the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops.

"You voted for this," Daum shouted. As he spoke, a group stood silently and unfurled a large sign that read, "Kerry take a stand: Troops out now."

Exasperated, Kerry said at one point, "You're not listening."

Speaking with reporters afterward, Kerry argued that stability in Iraq is his top priority and dismissed the notion of withdrawing U.S. troops. He indicated he would support any request for more U.S. forces in Iraq. Bush, at his news conference this week, said he would support an increased U.S. military presence in Iraq. ...

"I think the vast majority of the American people understand that it's important to not just cut and run," Kerry said. "I don't believe in a cut-and-run philosophy."

Kerry, arguing that there are "very real differences" between him and Bush on Iraq, said, "I believe it is possible to reduce the cost and the burden and the risk to American soldiers."

"We shouldn't only be tough, we have to be smart. And there's a smarter way to accomplish this mission than this president is pursuing," he told reporters.

Well, what is it? If you still don't know what he would do differently from Bush, do you deserve to be snapped at for "not listening"?

So will you watch Bush or American Idol? Well, maybe if Bush would wear a tight black T-shirt and tell the reporters their questions are "ghastly," "dreadful," and "horrific." Or maybe if we could speed dial to vote in favor of our eight favorite policies.

UPDATE: Now Drudge is reporting (same link) that Fox will delay showing the Tuesday show until Wednesday and then do a live results show on Thursday. Excellent move, for two reasons. First, you don't want to lose the votes of the people who are politically engaged yet TiVo-less. That would skew the vote, assuming people like that vote in AI. Second, delaying the results show until Thursday helps--along with my boycott--to reduce the number of people watching The Apprentice.