Kerry's Drunken Tantrum

Lurch underscored this conclusion within a half-hour of the balloons and confetti descending at MSG.

Staggering out at around midnight, local time, and soiling my father's hometown of Springfield, Ohio, an out-of-control Kerry arrogantly spewed a plume of embittered vitriol.

We all saw the anger and distortion of the Republican Convention. For the past week, they attacked my patriotism and my fitness to serve as commander in chief. Well, here's my answer. I'm not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve when they could have and by those who have misled the nation into Iraq.

First of all, the only anger is coming from Kerry and the Democrats, who have grown so imperious that they are seemingly incapable of coping with the fact that America is still a democracy, Kerry is not a prince insulated by a post-modernist, secular equivalent of the divine right of kings, and consequently his record is fair game for criticism by his opponents, who are not, after all, obligated to simply get out of the way of his inevitable Napoleonic coronation.

Second, he obviously didn't watch a second of the GOP convention, because not one single, solitary speaker ever "attacked his patriotism." To the contrary, every last speaker - including the left's newest boogyman, Zell Miller - went out of his/her way to praise and honor Kerry's Vietnam service - which is, in point of fact, far more than that service merits.

Now, "to be fair," his fitness to serve as commander-in-chief was questioned - based upon the twenty year Senate record that makes it so questionable, a record so questionable that Kerry himself invested less than half a minute and seventy-three words in his own acceptance speech. That is what used to be known as "leaving yourself wide open."

The reason Kerry doesn't understand this is because he sees everything through the prism of Vietnam. Consequently, any criticism of him on anything is, to him, a slur against his "patriotism." And the reason he's so sensitive about his "patriotism" is precisely because his anti-war agitating was so supremely UN-patriotic, and yet it is to this day the core of his personal self-identity.

Mr. Kerry-Heinz, in other words, has "issues."

Just look at the best counter-shot he could muster: that Bush and Cheney "didn't serve" (when, in fact, Bush did, just not in Vietnam - as he's freely acknowledged - and, also in point of fact, Kerry applied for a draft deferment, same as Cheney did, only his didn't get approved) and a lame recycling of a Bushophobic smear that was debunked nearly two months ago.

This is why the Kerry campaign is doomed. Kerry won't change tactics because he can't. Every campaign he's ever run has been wrapped up in his "war hero" image. And in a safely liberal state like Massachusetts, that was enough. In a national campaign, it isn't. It's just that simple. And he has no answer.