War of sound-bytes

John Kerry remains for me a frustrating politician. Despite a lifetime in politics, he often reaches uncomfortably for oratory and nearly every time goes off the rails.

In his speech yesterday morning in Hudson, he told the story of a recent emergency helicopter landing in an unsecured LZ in Afghanistan. The rhetorical purpose was to introduce a self-deprecating joke about the phrase he would be remembered by had the chopper gone down:

Don't tase me, bro!

It's not even his line, of course. And he spoiled the helicopter story by painting the accompanying military officer as so nervous he launched into his briefing, which implicitly contrasted with his calm. Though he would have been a much better President than a second term for Duhbya, this captured some of his flaws as a candidate.

The painful truth is that Kerry's epigram would be:

I actually voted for it before I voted against it.

I suppose that's too bitter a memory even for self-deprecation. Reaching back to past glory, there would also be:

How do ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

In those days, Kerry spoke frankly, and that hurt him to some degree thirty years later in 2004. He had to lose to Duhbya to become frank again - to escape the myth of collegiality with the Republicans - but frankness is not his nature either.

The oddest thing is that the man can actually ad lib. There was an old poster of the gubernatorial ticket of Mike Dukakis and Kerry from 1978, and Kerry extemporized a funny story about how the photographer made Dukakis look bigger than Kerry, despite the very different reality.

So, in spite of my frustrations with him, I still sympathize with Kerry. On my way into Hudson, I saw a bumper sticker on a street sign:

United we stood. Bush divided us.

I hope Kerry saw it on the way to the event we both attended. He could use the validation - and the lesson in rhetorical simplicity.