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No, Kerry's problem was that the only thing he had going for him was that he was 'anybody but Bush'. You don't win a campaign on a ticket like that, especially when you spend so much time making sure that every thinks you're on their side that no one understands what you really believe, and you end up looking like you have even less of a backbone than the current President. Honestly, if you think Bush is being controlled by the people around him, how bad do you think Kerry would have been?
Man, I've seen the exact same quote about just about every moderate and liberal politician to run for president in the last thirty years, and a few traditional conservatives as well.
Isn't it quite a bit suspicious that a man like John Kerry can be a popular and respected public servant his entire adult life, get re-elected time and time again to high office, possess an admirable record of accomplishment that he runs on every election cycle, and then . . . and then . . .
And then he runs for president and a solid chunk of the electorate, voting and non-voting, suddenly discover that the man is a spineless moral and intellectual failure who doesn't have an idea in his head and is utterly incapable of taking a solid position or making an ethical judgment.
You could exchange Gore's name for that of Jimmy Carter, Jack Kemp, Walter Mondale, Howard Baker, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, George H. Bush, and a dozen or two other worthies who had ambitions to be president since the 1970s.
Somehow a man--or a woman, in a couple of cases--can have an respectable, successful career as a governer or senator, be well thought of most everyone who knows him, can write thoughtful books and attend highbrow political and scholarly conferences, and when he runs for president, all that history disappears and he becomes a worthless piece of human trash you wouldn't trust to take out the garbage.
At some point, I think we should start seeing a pattern here. Possibly the problem isn't with the people running for president at all, but with a political pundit culture that devours reputations and shits them out all over the floor of the TV studio, purely for purposes of entertainment. Then, there is also the cynical spinning of dirty political operatives who know that there is a solid chunk of potential voters who are willing to believe any kind of excrement you throw at your opponent. The source of this social pathology are a little murky, but, as with the punditocracy, we apparently feel better about ourselves if we can be reassured that the people running things are inferior in some way. It's an interesting puzzle for the historians and the sociologists to work out.
I personally had no problem determining what John Kerry would do if elected president; he has a long history of being against corruption and in favor of the left-of-center establishment political agenda. Nothing I've seen in the publlic record of his career suggests he would have the least bit of trouble making decisions. He was never plausibly criticised for this failing all the years he held public office---until he ran for president. Then the Beltway social club and the right wing media machine started chewing on him, and all the years of honorable service meant nothing.
The Beltway picks its favorites, builds them up, and pisses all over people it doesn't like. The right wing noise machine does the same to anyone who isn't supporting their agenda. I would expect that the best way to learn about a political candidate is to bypass the mass media and dig for information on less fashionable sources. You won't get any trustworthy views from Meet the Press, Rush Limbaugh, or Internet forums.
Heck, I'm sure very few people who read this are going to believe everything I've written. You shouldn't, actually, until you have a chance to cross-check it from other sources. Doesn't bother me a bit.