WhatsAPundit

So, ust when it looks like the Republicans are stuck with talking about Republican problems (which pretty much ensured their majority status in both houses would go down in flames) John Kerry commits the cardinal sin of modern politics.

He says what he really means.

Compare and contrast:

You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you dont, you get stuck in Iraq.

I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq.

Let's disregard for a moment the Kerry v Bush educational comparison (which makes the putatively prepared joke very much a pot v. kettle proposition). Instead, let's examine why Kerry might have mangled the joke in the very particular way he did.

• Kerry became famous after his tour in Viet Nam for speaking out against the actions of his fellow servicemen.
• During the 80s, Kerry saw clear parallels between U.S. policy toward Nicaragua and U.S. policies toward the Vietnamese conflict.
• Opposed the first Gulf War because he felt we were in a "rush to war" that was not in our "vital interest".
• Recently accused troops of terrorizing children in Iraq as a matter of routine operations.

This is not a man who trusts the United States military, from the Commander in Chief down to the privates on patrol, to be anything other than a stupid, malicious force for evil. For Kerry, the military will always be the military as imagined by anti-Vietnam protesters, dead-end draftees led by sadistic officers led by a corrupt oligarchic power structure.

That Kerry should slip up in his delivery, going from a calculatedly specific target to what he believed to be a valid generalization, really wouldn't be a surprise.

As an aside:It's actually funny to see how indignant John Derbyshire is that the anti-troops interpretation is the one most of us came to. My only conclusion is that Derb has read the quote totally out of the greater context, and is damned proud of his ability to focus on the tree, and forget about the forrest. (BTW, I love it that Kerry is claiming people are reading his quote out of context. It's exactly his well-documented context he should be hoping people ignore....)