The Opinionated Bastard

But not in any detail The problem though is that the way he did it, he sounds like a bit of a whiner.

It will be interesting to see if Bush responds to Kerry, since Kerry seems to be trying to make this a Bush/Kerry thing instead of a Kerry/Swift Vets thing. That’s not surprising, since Kerry loses if he has to go toe to toe with such a small group. He’ll either diminish in stature by doing so, or look like a bully. By complaining to Bush, he surrenders the initiative to Bush. I suspect that Bush will just deny the connection, and repeat that he condemns all 527 ads, that they’ve attacked him as well. That will make Kerry look even more whiny.

In reality though, its the Democrats with moveon.org that get the most benefit from 527s. It seems to me that Kerry’s a bit a of whiner if he’s complaining about what the Republicans can do with $100,000 vs. moveon.org’s $30M.

Kerry should have planned ahead better on this issue when he decided to make Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign. This organization was around before the DNC, so it can’t have come as much of a surprise when this stuff broke open. They were saying the same stuff 2 months ago they’re saying now. The fact that all this caught the campaign by surprise to my mind says quite a lot about Kerry’s ability as a leader, and that’s the most damning of all. Kerry has to realize that his Vietnam service won’t sit well with some number of Americans, and his anti-war rhetoric won’t sit well with some others.

If he had done something since then, we’d all have something more interesting to talk about.