Freakin' A! Kerry Takes Off the Gloves

It's nice to come home after dark, after being out of the loop all day long, to find that John Kerry has come out swinging against the draft-dodging but war-lovin' bunch currently occupying the White House.

"Mr. Kerry did not specifically attack President Bush, whose service in the National Guard has been the subject of much debate, but he called Vice President Dick Cheney as well as Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's political guru, people 'who went out of their way to avoid their chance to serve when they had a chance.'

"Mr. Kerry also referred to the 'twisted ethics and morality' of 'these people in the White House today,' citing attacks on his fellow Vietnam veterans John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona, and Max Cleland, the former Democratic senator from Georgia."

"I WENT," John Kerry said. That emphasis brought down the house.

And that's a pretty good 30-second spot in the making, come to think of it.

"I'm not going to listen to them talk to me about patriotism and how asking questions about the direction of our country somehow challenges patriotism, because asking questions about the direction of our country is patriotism."

So maybe he meant it when he said he wasn't going to be Dukakis?

The real pay-off? This, information supplied by the New York Times research department.

"Mr. Cheney received a student deferment from the draft in 1963, when he was attending Casper College in Wyoming, and another when he went to graduate school in 1965. As an expectant father the next year, he received a hardship deferment.

"Mr. Rove's Christmas birthday gave him a draft lottery number of 84 in 1969. A spokesman for the Bush re-election campaign said Mr. Rove received a student deferment upon enrolling in the University of Utah in late 1969.

"Mr. Rove lost the deferment when he transferred to the University of Maryland in 1972, the spokesman said, and was classified as 'extended priority,' which put his name atop the draft list. But no one was called up the next quarter."

Another zinger: Mr. Kerry said President Bush "has to distort someone else because that's the only way they can survive."

And then the killer: "See that great Stars and Stripes back there?" he asked. "I fought under that flag, I fought under that flag and saw that flag draped over the coffins of friends."

Mr. Kerry added, "The bombs, the political bombs may be bursting in air today around us as they try to distort the truth, but when I look up, that flag is still there, and it belongs to all Americans, not to them."

Not to them, not to them.

So all of a sudden, it's looking nicer having this candidate. Maybe Dean talked to him.