There He Goes Again

Will John Kerry do for the 2006 campaign what he did for the 2004 edition?

Why couldn't the Massachusetts senator have climbed out of the hole he fell into by just apologizing for saying something stupid, rather than getting out a shovel and digging?

There isn't anybody, including in the Bush administration, who believes that Kerry meant to insult the soldiers in Iraq with his clumsy joke that has given the Republicans a big fat target after months on the defensive. But the words he uttered, in his clumsy fashion, were insulting, and he should have moved quickly to limit the damage.

Instead, with the look of a man who will never get over having been unfairly Swift-boated, he refused to apologize and ripped the White House and the GOP, thereby escalating the story and ensuring that he would lead all the network newscasts last night. Bush v. Kerry, the Sequel, is an irresistible headline for news organizations.

This is a joke? "Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

That's worse than voting for the $87 billion before you voted against it.

Even his former spokesman, Mike McCurry, said on CBS that Kerry should apologize, and that he more or less had. But he hasn't, and that's the problem.

Even his Republican pal John McCain, whom Kerry courted as his running mate last time around, felt compelled to slam his fellow veteran for insensitivity.

If you think Democrats aren't steamed, guess again.

Kerry's brave Vietnam service was unfairly denigrated in the last campaign. But this is a totally self-inflicted wound.

"For at least a few hours on Tuesday," says the New York Times , "President Bush had a chance to relive his victorious campaign of 2004, taking a break from a bleak Republican campaign season as he attacked Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts over the war in Iraq.

"Mr. Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who was Mr. Bush's opponent in 2004, is not running for any office this year. But the president seized on what he said were Mr. Kerry's disparaging remarks about the troops at a rally in California -- and what Mr. Kerry insisted was little more than a botched joke -- as he sought to make Mr. Kerry the face of the Democratic Party this fall . . .