What do Dewey and Kerry have in common?

Tony Blankley sees the possibilty that John Kerry may place himself in the line of candidates including Thomas Dewey, Adlai Stevenson, George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis — classic flops. Blankley cautions that this is not a prediction — merely an assessment of some potentialities.
Kerry seems to remind Blankley most of Tom Dewey. Like Dewey in 1948, Blankley asserts, his deepest flaw as a candidate is his sheer unlikeability: “It was said of Dewey that you had to know him really well to dislike him. But his pompous, stilted style rang through even in his public appearances.”
Blankley also reports that Kerry is treating his medical records like he has something to hide, that he dissembled regarding his prostate cancer, and that his doctor’s endorsement of Kerry’s health seems qualified. Blankley’s excellent column is “Kerry personally vulnerable.”
UPDATE: Reader Neil Davidson adds:

Your link to the Tony Blankley column comparing the “sheer unlikeability” of John Kerry to Thomas Dewey reminded me of a moment in the Dewey campaign of 1948 similar to the Kerry outburst against his secret service agent after running him down on the ski slope. While Dewey was speaking to a crowd in Beaucoup, Illinois, from the back of his campaign train, the train suddenly lurched a few feet backward toward the crowd, causing a brief panic. Dewey angrily blurted into the microphone, “That’s the first lunatic I had for an engineer. He probably ought to be shot at sunrise.” The angry outburst hurt Dewey in what turned out to be a very close race.
To be fair to Dewey, it was said that you had to get to know him well to dislike him. In Kerry’s case, I think his pomposity is all too evident, even to the casual observer.

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