John Kerry: Unfit for Command -- Update 20

[Continued from Update 19.]

It was a fairly slow day for some people who usually stay right on top of the Kerry Lied situation. I think some of them may have decided that the message is getting out well enough that they can lean back and relax a little. Fortunately James Lileks and Victor Davis Hanson have both posted good essays on Kerry.

From the Lileks article:

[...]

So why does Kerry want to be president?

The reason is almost tautological: John Kerry wants to be president because he is John Kerry, and John Kerry is supposed to be president. Hence his campaign's flummoxed and tone-deaf response to the swift boat vets. Ban the books, sue the stations, retreat, attack. Underneath it all you can sense the confusion. How dare they attack Kerry? He's supposed to be president. It's almost treason in advance.

[...]

Inconsistencies are irrelevant, because he's consistently John Kerry. And he's supposed to be president.

[...]

From the Hanson article:

[...]

If John Kerry had once endured fire, his post facto exaggerations about war crimes — with lurid allusions to Genghis Khan — and slurs at veterans were aimed at advancing his own nascent political career at the expense of the reputations of thousands of anonymous, and mostly blameless, others.

[...]

Indeed, one of the striking things about watching the old Dick Cavett-hosted debate between John Kerry and John O'Neill is how naïve the young, articulate Yalie sounds about the probable consequences of a unilateral American withdrawal. He seems to have had not a clue about the true nature of a totalitarian Communist regime with a past — and future — record of mass murder, gulags, refugees, and political re-education camps. And his suggestion of providing a deadline for withdrawal from Vietnam sounded as naïve then as it does now in promises to leave Iraq within a scheduled time frame.

[...]

Other worthwhile reading: The Moderate Voice, TownHall.com: David Limbaugh, Captain's Quarters, Captain's Quarters, Power Line, Instapundit