John Forbes Perot

I wonder if John Kerry will ever get to the point where he can actually see around his ego to look in a mirror and recognize what a self-parody his unrequitable ambitions have made of him.

Now the only thing missing is a crewcut and really big ears.

Gone was his stump speech railing against President Bush's Iraq war policy, the sluggish economy, and the Republican agenda; even mentions of Kerry's Senate career and Vietnam War service had disappeared.

Instead, Kerry - a veteran politician who has held office for 21 years - took off his suit jacket and roamed a small stage in Louisiana's Old State Capitol to push a new message: Get angry at Washington.

''Washington seems more and more out of touch with the difficulties the average family is facing," Kerry told the crowd of about 150 last week in Baton Rouge. ''Go out of here, take some anger and a little bit of outrage at the fact that Washington is not dealing with the real concerns of our country."

Six months after his presidential bid ended in defeat, Kerry is on another cross-country campaign. This time, he is running against the political establishment.

First of all, his domestic policy stump speech isn't gone at all; he's just poured it into a different skin. Everything else about it is the same. Same political tone-deafness, same "stiff guy trying to look loose"-ness, same "rich guy trying to sound like Joe Sixpack"-ness, same "any port in a storm" gimmickry, same head-scratching trying to figure out what the devil he's talking about. Does he think that he can make people forget that he's been (an undistinguished) part of the political establishment since he left Vietnam? Has he convinced himself that "outsider-ism" is a campaign miracle elixir that will work for anybody, no matter how establishmentarian, like a hypnotic incantation? Or is he, in his mind, trying to lower public expectations by making such a complete nincompoop of himself that he'll be able to "sneak up" on the '08 Dem field?

Who knows. Lurch certainly doesn't. He just doesn't know how to stop flailing for the golden fleece that will remain forever beyond his reach. And that reflects his undying core belief that the reason(s) he can't catch fire with the public can't possibly have anything to do with him.

Although Kerry said he was not in Louisiana to talk about his loss to Bush, the senator was clearly still smarting from the 2004 campaign. He proudly noted that he received 10 million more votes than President Clinton did during his 1996 reelection campaign and suggested that terrorism warnings sounded in the midst of the last campaign may have been exaggerated to help Bush.

''Fight back against the lies, fight back against the distortions," Kerry implored the crowd. ''In the last campaign, there was an unbelievable amount of fear put out there - 'war on terror, war on terror, war on terror.' How many alerts have we had since the election?"

Given that the election was a prime crystalization point for terrorist attacks in order to disrupt it, that shouldn't really be all that surprising, now should it?

But with John Kerry there has to be an excuse. "War on terror," "unbelievable amount of fear," "lies," "distortions," George Bush's mind control of every local Dem election official in Ohio. It can't be that his campaign veered and wobbled all over the landscape, couldn't rub three strategic brain cells together, was so pompously stiff as to make Michael Dukakis look like a slam-dancer in a mosh pit, and otherwise sucked generous quantities of ass.

It almost makes you wonder what the Boston Balker might have accomplished in his career if he'd ever taken the time to stop and relax that iron sphincter once in a while.

Kerry insists that he is campaigning only to pass the Kids First bill, not to advance his political career.

Looks like that hypothetical will be floating around for a while longer. Or at least until he starts talking about "opening up hoods" and "fixing economic engines."

I can't wait to hear what a nasal twang sounds like.

[HT: Captain's Quarters]