Liar, Liar

Our radio hero Hugh Hewitt is on a roll in his weekly WorldNetDaily column today: “The Torricelli Option.” In search of a movie analogy to describe John Kerry’s campaign over the past week, Hugh warms to the task:

Jim Carrey in the bathroom scene from “Liar, Liar” when he tries to injure himself. That’s John Kerry over the past six weeks, throwing himself against walls in front of the national TV audience with the effect of inflicting maximum damage on himself. It has worked.

Hugh seems to think the Torricelli option is a serious possibility.
Like any other Democratic stiff, however, Kerry is going to carry California and New York; he’s within shouting distance of the few more states he needs to grasp the brass ring. He could pick up some lost ground if only he would take another week off for more surgery. In any event, I think it’s a serious mistake to extrapolate present trends in a straight line.
Tony Blankley thinks the Kerry campaign lacks a theme: “Kerry’s fatal flaw.” Blankley writes:

Quickly, think of the phrase that catches John Kerry’s theme … I can’t either. Only two phrases come to mind at all: “Bring…It…On” and “Work With Our Allies in Europe and the United Nations.” Who amongst us will put down our beers (or cognacs) and remote controls on Nov. 2 to go to the polls and vote for either of those phrases?

Whatever Kerry says, it seems to me that Kerry’s theme is what we have dubbed Chaitred: irrational hatred of George Bush. It shouldn’t be enough to win, but consider the possibilities. Among other things, the independent counsel investigating Plamegate has yet to be heard from, and events in Iraq promise to make a hash of a few of President Bush’s own themes.
In his New York Daily News column Zev Chafets rewinds the tape and takes a look at Kerry through the haze of his antiwar past: “Kerry’s painful past.” The column is good, but Chafets finds Kerry circa 1971 a more complex character than I do.
As I have recalled here previously, I saw Kerry speak at Dartmouth College in late 1971 or early 1972 on his first tour as a celebrity. He spoke in a relatively small, informal venue (the student lounge on the second floor of Hopkins Center) before a large audience of wide-eyed students.
Kerry gave his then-standard stump speech, reprising his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. One of the students in the audience stood up to walk out on Kerry’s speech and shouted to Kerry as he approached the steps to go down to the first floor: “You phony. You’re just in this for yourself.” Kerry was only momentarily flustered, bending down to the microphone and asking the guy to stay and talk after he’d already gone down the steps.
At the time I couldn’t believe the obtuseness of the student. Like everyone else in attendance, I bought Kerry’s act completely. In retrospect, however, that student strikes me as a person of uncommon discernment. (All linked columns courtesy of RealClearPolitics.)

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