On OpinionJournal, Peggy Noonan has an insightful and funny column comparing and contrasting John F. Kerry with his political model, the other JFK. Excerpt:
The good news about Mr. Kerry, and I mean this seriously, is he does not appear to be insane. We now know Howard Dean was frightened he might become president, and this perhaps led to what might be called irrepressibility and irritability. We know Wesley Clark was . . . well, he seemed a little mad too. The untold story of the Democratic race is that one of our two great parties had a remarkably shallow bench. They had no one. But Mr. Kerry is not crazy. You can imagine him as president. You can imagine him struggling, like Mr. Clinton, to know what precisely he wanted the presidency for once he had it, but at least you can imagine him having it.If he were president he would surround himself with the same foreign-policy people Clinton did--Richard Holbrook et al. It wouldn't be insane--Incompetent maybe, confusing certainly, and uncertain certainly too. They would struggle. The great unmentioned fact of Democrats in power and foreign policy right now is that they try hard to do nothing, because if they were to do something it would be what Republicans do. And they don't want to do that.
They'd be a little lost, maybe a little like JFK.
I recommend the piece.
Posted by oscarjr at March 5, 2004 11:08 AM | TrackBack