In politics, trying to be clever really sucks

Well at least Senator Kerry did one thing right, by apologizing to the troops and their families. Yes, the Republicans misrepresented Kerry's "botched joke", but the real issue here is that Kerry showed incredibly bad judgment by trying to be ever-so-clever on a topic that really needed to be treated with solemn seriousness. Yes, President Bush and his gang and their supporters have shown very poor judgment with the whole Iraq debacle, but Kerry should have left Bush out of the discussion and focused on the need to replace all of those Republican congressmen and Senators who supported the Iraq fiasco. By all means, Kerry could have and should have referred to Republicans in Congress as ill-educated and unable to exercise good judgment and learn from the history lessons they should have been taught in school. Instead, Kerry tried to take a shortcut to success by being clever instead of being serious, and the lesson to students should be that taking shortcuts, like Congress and President Bush tried to take with Iraq are almost always a really bad idea.

Here's a scary thought: What if Kerry had been elected president in 2004 and we were in the middle of intense diplomatic negotations with Iran? Would he have publicly joked about the education of the leaders of Iran? I would hope not, but now we have to wonder!

Maybe Kerry was simply acting out his anger about the 2004 campaign and election. Or maybe he was previewing the 2008 election. Whatever, it was plain simply very bad judgment.

My advice to Senator Kerry: Let Jon Stewart, et al handle the President Bush humor. We elect Senators to be serious, not to fantasize about being artful comedians.

"Kerry's comment" suggests a serious character flaw. Unfortunately, it is a character flaw that afflicts most of the Democratic Party. Arrogance, excessive cleverness, a penchant for shortcuts, whatever, it all stinks. Just when you think these guys have it all under control and have the election sewn up, one of them pulls a bonehead move like this. I would say that it is unbelievable, accept that I fully expected that somewhere along the line some Democrats would take the election and the voters for granted and think that they could say or do whatever they want with impunity.

I still think the election is still the Democrats' to lose and they will likely gain control of both Houses of Congress, but absolutely no benefits will accrue to the Democrats when they show such poor judgment as Kerry did with his "humor."

Maybe there is a silver lining to the dark cloud of "Kerry's comment": it was a stern wakeup call to all Democrats: be carefeul, watch your mouth, and focus on what it takes to win. Bad jokes can wait until after the election results have been certified.

I can't believe it... I'm actually madder at Senator Kerry than I am at President Bush.

-- Jack Krupansky