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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MrLucky who wrote (57160)	7/30/2004 6:39:38 PM
From: Andrew N. Cothran	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793843

Barbara Comstock: Again, tonight, I might be missing something, but I just don't see the homeruns coming out of this convention. However, there are some things that did strike me about this odd man. John Kerry once administered CPR to a hamster. This was one of the poignant vignettes we learned tonight from one of his daughters. Is there some gerbil-loving swing demographic out there we are trying to connect with? His daughter told this story as if we could all relate to this "human" moment of mouth-to-mouth contact with a rodent. I think I can speak for most parents, that while we might lay down our lives for our children; we see no need to swap spit with vermin. John Kerry did not tell us the answer to what type of tree he would like to be, but we were given the "moving" revelation that his mother taught him to see "trees as the cathedrals of nature." And since Mom gave birth to him in the "west wing" of the hospital, he apparently has been destined ever since for the Oval Office. John Kerry's such a great son that he made sure to tell Mom on her deathbed that he was going to run for president. She reportedly said, "It's about time." (The deathbed scene was brought to us by one of the daughters who must have been spending too much time with the Gore family.) John Kerry may have been able to breath life into a hamster; and he may have been able to breath some hope (or is it help?) into the gerbil-loving delegates; but he's still a strange, Herman Munster-like figure to me. Most of Kerry's night was the flip-flop, boilerplate "complex" Kerry droning we've come to know. I'm still confused on how many Americas these guys think we have and what the colors are for the one or two Americas and whether they are going to hope for them or help them. But as far as Herman's opening line — "I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty" — shouldn't some of that duty involve some accomplishment in his 20 years in the Senate? Isn't that what is relevant to leading this nation in perilous times? (Even Kerry cheerleader, Al Hunt, said in his column today: "For the past 20 years John Kerry has been only an average senator.") Kerry's relevant record on defense and intelligence is devoid of accomplishment and includes voting against every major weapon system we use today. And as for reporting for duty on intelligence issues — during Kerry's eight years of duty on the Senate's Select Committee on Intelligence, there were 49 open, public hearings. How many did Kerry attend? Eleven (just 22.4 percent). One of those that he missed was that of June 8, 2000, when there was a hearing on the report of the National Commission on Terrorism. Seems that hamster got more focused attention from John Kerry than the nation's intelligence. — Barbara Comstock is a former Department of Justice spokeswoman and currently a principal with Blank Rome Government Relations. July 30, 2004 National Review Online