Lamenting Kerry's Lack of Popular Attention

You have to love an article that starts off with the sentence, "Like a caged hamster, Senator John Kerry is restless on the road." The New York Times has an article out which bemoans the fact that while John F. Kerry has managed to win the democratic nomination race, he seems unable to get any attention to his personality or endearing quirks. I guess between a War, Prtesident Clinton's memoirs, and President Reagan's funeral, Mr. Kerry feels like the nerd who can't get noticed by by the jocks or the cheerleaders in the run-up to Homecoming.

This restlessness is one of many facets of Mr. Kerry's style and personality that is all but invisible to most voters in this era of stage-managed politics, where authentic insights into the people who would be president are precious few. Though it is impossible to know what Mr. Kerry is like when no one is watching him, observations on the campaign trail over several months, combined with interviews with politicians and aides who spend time by his side, help flesh out the one-dimensional portraits of Mr. Kerry as war hero or waffler proffered by the two sides' television advertisements...He is a relentless polisher, going over and over even well-worn sections of his stump speech until moments before delivery..."I've been on planes with four presidential candidates," Mr. Farmer said. Michael S. Dukakis "would always be reading a policy paper," he said, while "Clinton would always be telling stories."..."John Kerry is always on the phone," he said. (The fourth, the former astronaut John Glenn, he added, "was flying the plane.")

The article teeters between factual and editorial so often, it is hard to nail down the exact intention, but it sounds like the New York Times is heartbroken that Mr. Kerry can't get more attention. We hate to remind the Times, but we haven't even had the conventions yet which is the time most Americans really start to pay attention to the race. But articles like this are dangerous for a candidate. They have a way of making their way into the popular consciousness, by the excellence of their prose and the sharp wit they contain. This article may well have begun the defining of Mr. Kerry as not the hero of Vietnam, but as the nerd who can't get a dance to the prom. And if that is the case, he will have no chance to win the election. (We call this "The Ralph Nader Factor.")