The Promise of a Long National Nightmare

One of the reasons that Senator John Kerry can't be elected president is that he is so pompous, so boring and so self-righteous that the prospect of having him as President of the United States is simply unacceptable. We would all end up killing ourselves while watching him on TV, night after night, droning on.

Don't believe me? Read this transcript. Just try to get through it. Now imagine having to watch it.

There is no known antidote.

Clueless

Voter reaction to the selection of Senator John Edwards as the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee-designate has been tepid, to say the least. If you average out the public polls taken since Tuesday's announcement, you find almost no "bounce." This has been the talk of the political community for the last two days.

Adam Nagourney, chief political correspondent for The New York Times, has a different view of the Edwards choice. To wit:

"The Democrats' emerging plan for Mr. Edwards comes at a time when Democratic and even some Republican officials suggest that Mr. Kerry's vice-presidential selection has the potential of being the most politically significant choice since another Massachusetts Democrat, John F. Kennedy, turned to another Southerner, Lyndon B. Johnson, in 1960. Many experts say the choice of Johnson pushed Texas into the Democrats' column and ensured Kennedy's victory."

To quote the junior Senator from New York: "Okey-dokey, artichokey!" Given that Nagourney's talents as a political analyst are underwhelming, it's not surprising that he would write such drivel. What is surprising is that his editors would publish it.

Postscript: Mister Kaus discerns a "bounce" for Edwards in the "head to head" match-ups collected at RCP. Nice try, but it's a three-way race. And there is no movement -- at all -- inside the three-way numbers.

Dem Picks Gephardt as VP Candidate

So read the sub-head of this morning's New York Post. Given that Deborah Orin, the Post's Washington bureau chief, is one of the best political reporters in the game, how could the paper have made such an embarrassing mistake? Explanation #1: Orin was on vacation. Explanation #2: Orin was deliberately misled by the Kerry campaign. Explanation #3: Someone in the Kerry campaign was deliberately misled by someone else in the Kerry campaign, knowing that the first someone would likely talk to Orin.

Explanation #1 seems unlikely (Orin was almost certainly on the case, knowing that the Kerry VP choice was coming today). So the question is: was it #2 or #3?

None of the Above! The editors did it! Which is why the story was so weirdly written and why the "apology" was so opaque.