Kerry, losing fight for war, resorts to battle of wits

Patrick McIlheran

On the most critical issue of the election, Sen. John Kerry has struggled. His war r?sum? turned into Purple Heartache. Polls, even this week, show people prefer the president?s judgment on terror and Iraq.

So Kerry?s gone back to a very old tune: I?m smart; he?s dumb. ?I can do a better job of waging a smarter, more effective war on terror,? Kerry said Wednesday, a theme he?s clung to since Labor Day.

He keeps saying he?s got a plan. His plan is his problem. It amounts to, ?Me, too.? He?d try to enlist more help, train Iraqis, see that they hold elections, eventually leave ? just what Bush is doing.

Kerry is reduced to adding two things: that because he now disagrees with the premise of toppling Saddam Hussein, he?d be more credible; and that he?d be more effective because he is personally more intelligent than Bush.

The first proposition is fantasy: France and Germany are no more likely to send troops under Kerry.

Wednesday?s unearthing of mass graves again puts lie to the notion that Iraq was better under Hussein. Short of arming Palestinians, Kerry will win over no Arabs angry about Israel?s existence. And if Middle Eastern distrust of America stems from such old grievances as CIA meddling in the 1950s, it is absurd to say that changing administrations will soothe those wounds.

The second proposition, however, is more serious. To clinch the election, Bush?s critics are recapitulating a key theme from 2000 ? that Bush is a moron.

The view is distilled in what a Wisconsin journalist said to me this summer: He?d met both Bush and Kerry, and while Kerry was smart as a whip, Bush was ?dumb as a fencepost.?

This notion is chicken soup for the Democratic soul, and it goes back much farther than Al Gore inventing the Internet. It was Stevenson the intellectual against Ike the golfer, Carter the nuclear engineer against Reagan the senile. Clinton was a Rhodes Scholar while Bush the Elder was baffled by supermarket scanners.

In this simple demonology, conservative politicians are idiots puppeteered by evil geniuses, except for the few, like Nixon, who are evil geniuses themselves.

How corrosive to the Democrats? faith in democracy, then, when voters elect the idiot. For this reason alone, the left should outgrow this attitude.

Bush isn?t dumb. He?s earned an MBA from Harvard ? family connections may get you in, but they don?t corrupt a quorum of professors into passing you.

To the contrary, Bush appears to have an intellectual gift ? for connecting with people. He is widely said, by individuals and polls, to be likable, even by people who disagree with him. This counts in leading people and in persuading allies, as we see in his relationship with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, in no way an ideological soul mate of Bush.

Bush?s personality contrasts with that of Kerry, or would if Kerry had a discernible personality. The senator?s claim that he?d charm French President Jacques Chirac into helping us is revealed as a joke he doesn?t get. He?s scarcely managed to charm his own party. If he?s so culturally sensitive, he would not in a New York newspaper compare al-Qaida to prostitution. He wouldn?t blame Secret Service agents for his own snowboard wipeouts. When speaking in Green Bay, he?d get the name of Green Bay?s most famous landmark right.

Ah, but Lambeau or Lambert . . . Kerry?s got bigger concerns. If elected, he?ll have to replace the entire staff of the executive branch. For if Bush made dumb choices, surely the options given him were foolish, and one must then discount the intelligence of all his policy staff.

The parlous state of Iraq impugns the tacticians there, and Kerry will have to replace the entire military management with a smarter class of people. Does he imply that such a class exists, somehow overlooked because of Bush?s subpar abilities? Or is he saying it?s poor judgment at the top? If so, then Kerry?s own vacillating judgment replaces intelligence as the issue.

At an urgent moment, Bush decided that overthrowing a hostile tyrant who may have been aiding our enemies and may have been preparing horrific weapons was a good risk and a salutary example to our foes.

Kerry, by contrast, changed his mind a half-dozen times, based on polls and hindsight. He seeks even now to embrace both pacifism and belligerence simultaneously.

It doesn?t take a genius to see the difference there.

Patrick McIlheran is a columnist for the Journal Sentinel and works on the newspaper?s design desk. His e-mail address is [email protected]

web page