John Kerry, Super Genius

This is something I've noticed for a long time, but it's even more amusing today. If you could go back to October 31, 2004, and drive around the Twin Cities, you would see various versions of John Kerry for President bumper stickers on a limited number of cars. But you would not have seen dozens of them on a typical drive through town. Today, two years later, I see more John Kerry bumper stickers on cars than I did during the 2004 election. I have seen Kerry stickers on cars that are 2006 or 2007 models, including a silver Honda Fit and a black Buick Lacrosse I saw driving down 35W in recent days.

That means that, at least in some cases, people are putting bumper stickers for a defunct political campaign on their cars. I can only guess at the intent of these drivers; I'm guessing that they view the Kerry sticker as some sort of talisman that tells other drivers that they didn't support George Bush in 2004. This is silly, but one of the beauties of free speech is that allows people to speak foolishly.

But I wonder how many of these folks are proud of John Kerry today, after his revealing comments of yesterday. Kerry, appearing at a campaign event for Phil Angelides in California, said that people who don't get education (as he understands it) "end up in Iraq." There are a few ways to parse this - the most charitable is that he is taking a shot at George W. Bush, his fellow Yalie. But a less charitable sort might see this as the same old condescending shot at the soldiers that liberals like Kerry like to imagine they are defending. If so, it's a decided insult to many men and women who have served with distinction in this war. And my guess is that the second interpretation is the one that is going to stick. And it could bite Kerry and the Democrats in the ass with a week to go in this election cycle.

I'm always struck by the arrogance of the left. Thomas Sowell has written extensively about this topic and one of his books is titled "The Vision of the Anointed." Kerry is a classic example of this sort of thing - he is a bright fellow and he is a polished if pompous public speaker. Still, he seems to say these arrogant things at inopportune moments. We tend to call this sort of thing a "gaffe," which denotes a mistake, but which really means "a moment of unguarded truth." The real John Kerry believes that soldiers are generally suckers and that he must support the troops by removing them from combat missions and redeploying them to do armed social work, perhaps in Darfur or East Timor. But Kerry can't say that openly. Unless he slips, like he did yesterday.