Kerry's looking for American failure -- and he's it

Kerry's looking for American failure -- and he's it

SUN-TIMES

September 26, 2004
MARK STEYN

Before John Kerry, the only alumni of Swiss finishing
schools I'd ever
met (in my younger days) were a certain type of lively
English girl, a
couple of minor princesses from Gulf emirates and a
charming young
Iranian lady whose family had been forced to flee
after the shah fell.
Collectively, they all fell into the category the
British call ''posh
totty.'' And, although they were way out of my league,
the one thing I
noticed was their impeccable carriage -- they'd done
all the
walking-around-with-books-on-your-head stuff -- and
how exquisitely
well-mannered they were. Even when giving you the
brush for being a
broke loser, they were very nice about it.

In this respect, John Kerry isn't exactly the best
advertisement for
his Swiss finishing school. Forget the impeccable
carriage -- if you
imagine you're watching streaming video on a slow
dial-up connection,
his gait seems perfectly natural. But the manners
thing seems to have
passed him by entirely. His decision to break the
time-honored
tradition of keeping out of the way during the other
guy's convention
by rushing on the air within an hour of President
Bush's speech to
give an instant response was boorish and petty. But,
given that his
''midnight rambler'' routine in Ohio was a disaster,
there didn't seem
much point dwelling on it.

But last week he did it again. Ayad Allawi, the first
prime minister
of post-Saddam Iraq, was in Washington to give a joint
address to
Congress. A tough, stocky, bullet-headed optimist,
Iraq's interim
leader delivered a simple, elegant and moving speech,
which made three
basic points:

''First, we are succeeding in Iraq. [Applause] It's a
tough struggle
with setbacks, but we are succeeding . . .

''The second message is quite simple and one that I
would like to
deliver directly from my people to yours: Thank you,
America
[Applause] . . .

''Third, I stand here today as the prime minister of a
country
emerging finally from dark ages of violence,
aggression, corruption
and greed . . . Well over a million Iraqis were
murdered or are
missing . . .''

Kerry didn't show up for Allawi's visit to Washington
-- he was in
Ohio again, which is evidently becoming the proverbial
Vietnam-type
quagmire for him. Nonetheless, barely had the prime
minister finished
than the absentee senator did a daytime version of his
midnight ramble
and barged his way onto the air to insist that he knew
better than
Iraq's head of government what was going on in the
country. One
question from his accompanying press corps was
especially choice:

''Prime Minister Allawi told Congress today that
democracy was taking
hold in Iraq and that the terrorists there were on the
defensive. Is
he living in the same fantasyland as the president?''

It would be nice to think this was a somewhat crude
attempt at irony,
but given America's Ratherized media this seems
unlikely. Just for the
record, Allawi is not living in a fantasyland. He's
living in Iraq,
and he begins his day with a dangerous commute across
Baghdad's
''Green Zone.'' John Kerry's regular commute, by
contrast, is from his
wife's beach compound at Nantucket to his wife's 15th
century English
barn reconstructed as a ski lodge in Idaho.
Nonetheless, he's the
expert on Iraq and the guy living there 24/7 is the
fantasist, and
he's happy to assure us the prime minister doesn't
know what he's
talking about. It's all going to hell, forget about
those January
elections, etc.

What a small, graceless man Kerry is. The nature of
adversarial
politics in a democratic society makes George W. Bush
his opponent.
But it was entirely Kerry's choice to expand the
field, to put himself
on the other side of Allawi and the Iraqi people.
Given his frequent
boasts that he knows how to reach out to America's
allies, it's
remarkable how often he feels the need to insult them:
Britain,
Australia, and now free Iraq. But, because this
pampered cipher has
floundered for 18 months to find any rationale for his
candidacy other
than his indestructible belief in his own
indispensability, Kerry
finds himself a month before the election with no
platform to run on
other than American defeat. He has decided to co-opt
the jihadist
death-cult, the Baathist dead-enders, the suicide
bombers and other
misfits and run as the candidate of American failure.
This would be
shameful if he weren't so laughably inept at it.

Still, you can understand why, inside the
Democrat-media cocoon, the
senator's bet on the collapse of a free Iraq doesn't
sound quite as
revolting as it does to the average Iraqi. On
Thursday, President Bush
held a press conference at the Rose Garden with
Allawi. You know the
way these things go. The Norwegian prime minister
happens to be
visiting Washington and they hold a joint press
conference and
Norwegian issues aren't terribly pressing at the
moment so the press
guys ask Bush about prescription drug plans for
seniors and increased
education funding while the visitor from Oslo stands
there like a
wallflower at the prom. But Iraq's the No. 1 issue in
American right
now, and they've got the go-to guy right in front of
them, and what do
the blow-dried poseurs of the networks ask:

''Mr. President, John Kerry is accusing you of
colossal failures of
judgment in Iraq . . .''

NBC guy: ''A central theme of your campaign is that
America is safer
because of the invasion of Iraq. Can you understand
why Americans may
not believe you?''

CNN: ''Sir, I'd like you to answer Senator Kerry and
other critics who
accuse you of hypocrisy or opportunism . . .''

They're six feet from Iraq's head of government and
they've got not a
question for him. They've got no interest in Iraq
except insofar as
they can use the issue to depress sufficient numbers
of swing voters
in Florida and Ohio.

Who's living in the fantasyland here? Huge forces are
at play in a
world of rapid change. As the prime minister said,
''We Iraqis will
stand by you, America, in a war larger than either of
our nations.''
But the gentlemen of the press can barely stifle their
ennui. Say what
you like about the old left, but at least they were
outward-looking
and internationalist. This new crowd -- Democrats and
media alike --
are stunted and parochial, their horizons shriveling
more every day.

So for Kerry the new world war is just a wedge issue.
After their
schooling in Switzerland, those well-mannered English
gels used to
describe themselves as ''finished.'' If he wasn't
''finished'' after
graduating from the Institut Montana in Zug in 1955,
this week John
Kerry is looking finished in a far more American
sense.




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Listen to J.R. on Talk Show America, a political conservative talk show that webcasts Mon-Fri 4-6 PM EST live on the IBC Radio Network www.ibcrn.com or 24/7 @ www.talkshowamerica.com (Recorded)