This John-McCain-might-like-to-be-Kerry's-veep meme is running around the internet. (E.g. The Blogging of the President: 2004). It's a nice spring fling of a concept but would be a Really Stupid choice.
Kerry's veep needs to have all of the following characteristics.
A link from Talking Points Memo took me to a website called “gop.com.” There one finds a “Research Briefing” entitled John Kerry: International Man Of Mystery III.
The document states:
Parody or travesty? You decide.
So you have a busy job, maybe a busy week. But you have a private jet, and are in charge of your own calendar. Couldn't you find a few hours to go to your own brother's wedding? Even if it's only his second marriage?
Not, it seems if you are G.W. Bush. The Miami Herald reports that The Neil Bush remarried Saturday — and although G.H.W. Bush and Barbara Bush attended, neither Jeb nor GW took the time to go.
The political calculation is obvious — Neil is the posterboy of sleaze what with his shady business deals, his messy divorce, and his notorious meetings with prostitutes paid for by his Asian business contacts — but even so, shouldn't politics take a back seat here?
The Herald ran this item on its gossip page. I predict the media gives this a lot less play than it gave, say, Jimmy Carter's relationship with his (also very dubious) brother.
The AP reports that Bush Seeks to Bolster Regular-Guy Image:
Until last month, President Bush hadn't been to a NASCAR race since he was governor of Texas and running for president. On Monday, he goes to a rodeo and livestock exhibition in Houston — again, for the first time since he was governor.
Clearly, Karl Rove is counting on the fact that when Abraham Lincoln made his famous remark, he neglected to specify percentages.
It seems that my intuition that the Florida is political ground zero was if anything pessimistic. Comes now the Miami Herlad to report on its latest poll finding: Florida voters leaning toward Kerry (by a little).
The whole poll is sort of interesting. The dismal Florida legislature, whose leadership in particular is inept, grasping, and transparently bent on self-aggrandizement, gets low ratings. Alas, the legislative districts are so thoroughly gerrymandered that almost every incumbent faces no meaningful chance of losing his/her seat.
Governor Jeb Bush, whose policies are actually out of step with a majority of the state's voters (e.g. he favors cutting school spending whatever the consequences, they favor spending what it takes for small classes) gets relatively high ratings. Go figure.
Revealed: how 'war hero' Kerry tried to put off Vietnam military duty. Note the one-two-three punch here: First the suggestion that Kerry was just an uncessesful draft dodger; Second, the suggestion that his medals are somehow not real or significant; Third the quote from Lucianne Goldberg (yes, the one who betrayed Lewinsky), a nice way to try to tie Democrats to sleaze.
Why this item starts in a foreign paper is hard to figure…maybe because the UK's Telegraph, a very conservative paper, is most likely to report it uncritically?
Senator John Kerry … tried to defer his military service for a year, according to a newly rediscovered article in a Harvard University newspaper.
He wrote to his local recruitment board seeking permission to spend a further 12 months studying in Paris, after completing his degree course at Yale University in the mid-1960s. …
The Harvard Crimson newspaper followed a youthful Mr Kerry in Boston as he campaigned for Congress for the first time in 1970. In the course of a lengthy article, “John Kerry: A Navy Dove Runs for Congress”, published on February 18, the paper reported: “When he approached his draft board for permission to study for a year in Paris, the draft board refused and Kerry decided to enlist in the Navy.”
Jotwell Blenderlaw