The American Spectator

Enemy of the Week

All over again it's déjà vu. Or maybe just déjà. Yet another primary day of Democrat-only voting found Republican-only G.W. Bush shut out, ousted, overturned, repulsed, expatriated and expunged. After skunking Bush in Missouri, a Dakota or two, maybe both Michigan peninsulas, and along the cactus belt of Arizona and New Mexico and porn-shop districts of rural Delaware, the imposing John AFK-47 Kerry delivered his first Inaugural address and State of the Union speech in one swoop. He pronounced himself "gratified," "stunned," eager to personify "new leadership," and a divider and not a uniter, meaning every word of what he said regardless of how much he was paid to say exactly what his sponsors wanted him to say.

The one controversy arose when Kerry tried to settle scores with the week's even bigger winner, John Breck Edwards, scorning the humble boyly girl as the back-hills product of a region he can do very well without as he conducts an inclusive national campaign. In fact, Kerry doesn't understand why the South never seceded for the good of the Democratic Party. He blames Republicans for keeping the region tied to the United States.

"You can't cherry-pick the presidency," Kerry added, alluding to Breck-Edwards' love of gardening and visits to Mount Vernon. That's easy for him to say. If you're as tall as a giraffe cherry-picking comes automatically, assuming the brunt of the picking is handled by unionized farm labor. Mr. Bush will need to ask Mr. Kerry, if Kerry deigns to debate, "Have you ever picked, or not picked, cherries?" The trick follow-up? "Bing or Maraschino?"

Kerry's war hero business is getting out of hand, particularly among conservative deserters who for reasons best known to the Selective Service and the late Gen. Hersey have granted sanctuary to Kerry's enthusiastic pro-Hanoi activities on behalf of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Bush supporters will not be allowed to raise the subject in any re-election campaign that Bush might yet dare to mount.

That doesn't mean John Edwards is entirely off the hook. Imagine if he had served in Vietnam and proceeded to sue Ho Chi Minh Inc. for all the cruel and deadly booby traps manufactured by its Viet Cong franchisers. Communism would have gone bankrupt a decade earlier. Johnny would have ended up a Reagan instead of a shampoo salesman.

Carolina John has a lot in common with the Carolina quarterback who started off 0 for 9 in his passing in last Sunday's Super Bowl. So far this primary season Edwards is 1 for 8, which is a lot better than the 1 for 42 performance from his days playing for the Trial Lawyer Shakedowners. According to a front-page story in the New York Times, in one of his famous cases Edwards interviewed 40 expert witnesses before hiring the "expert" would tell the jury what Edwards wanted to hear.

Can anyone please tell us why Howard Dean is still in the race? On second thought, tell us a story about Dennis Kucinich. Or Michael Dukakis. Or Adlai Stevenson. Or Henry Wallace. Or Mrs. Woodrow Wilson. Or make that Judy Dean. We like her style, particularly the part about how she never watches TV. She'll never know that Howie the other day raised $700,000 in a pledge drive for Wisconsin Public Television.

Now just think if the lovely albeit ageless Geneva Overholser were the wife of a Democratic hopeful (sic). Odds are their marriage wouldn't last past Super Tuesday. Geneva is famous for many reasons, but above all for the time she played the part of Anna Karenina and dumped her husband and family back in Des Moines, where she had been editress of the Register, and ran off to Washington with her Vronsky, a former copy boy, apparently, but very distinguished. In her disgrace Geneva didn't jump under a train at Union Station, but took on even riskier work as ombudsman for the Washington Post.

Now Geneva is restless again. First she went after the only journalist in America whom everyone likes, Brit Hume. Since that didn't win her satisfactory attention she's gone after even bigger game, Robert Novak, the one journalist in America everyone professes to dislike. The woman is desperate, on the warpath, and she wants Novak to betray a source in the Wilson-Plame matter. We suspect our EOW won't stop until she can bring down the president. Like the rest of her set, she sees him as a dread Tsar figure. Too bad she's turning out to be Rasputin.

topics:
Trade, Television, Business, Law, Communism