Kerry's Calm: Signs of Storm or Signs of Life?

Most of us here at Mod-BLog have been feeling more and more that John Kerry's campaign has started to stink like an over-ripe fish. Senator Kerry has never shown any real passion or desire to be president. Instead, he was the antidote to the damaging wildfire of liberal Howard Dean, and nowadays he is the "Anybody But Bush" Nominee. Noone seems to be voting for Kerry so much as voting against Bush, and that was a recipe for disaster only 7 years ago in the Dole campaign. But David Brooks of the New York Times has a different take on the current Kerry calm.

John Kerry is doing exactly what he should be doing right now. He is in a post-primary molting season. He's emerging from the shadow of Howard Dean and becoming more like the policy twin of Joe Lieberman: a pro-trade, fiscally conservative centrist Democrat who is willing to pour more troops into Iraq to win the war.

Is Brooks right? Is this a strategic retreat while Kerry moves to flank President Bush on the right? Somehow, I doubt it. While I respect the Senator's advisers, I think they are in the job of being salesmen for a dead fish. They can dress it up, they can season it, they can heat it up, but I suspect that in the end the final product will still have olfactory issues.