Giving bizarre apolitical identity

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Remember when former Sen. Bob Kerrey said Bill Clinton was an "unusually good liar -- unusually good"? Well, surely by now Democrats realize John Kerry is an unusually bad candidate -- unusually bad. Just consider:

Mr. Kerry has never said why he should be president, other than to fulfill a lifelong dream. He inappropriately boasts of his war heroism, when experience tells us authentic heroes rarely brag about their heroism.

The Swift Boat Veterans have deeply discredited numerous parts of his Vietnam record, but Mr. Kerry hasn't even attempted a factual rebuttal to any of the charges. He has been forced to admit -- despite testifying the memory was "seared, seared in me" -- he wasn't in Cambodia, Christmas 1968, at the orders of Richard Nixon, who wasn't yet president.

He has had to virtually admit no hostile fire accompanied his first Purple Heart incident, so he didn't deserve that award.

He has personally attacked President Bush's National Guard Service and Vice President Dick Cheney's "five deferments" and contrasted it with his volunteering for two tours of duty in Vietnam. But he hasn't answered John O'Neill's charge that his first tour was 100 miles off the shore of Vietnam, and he didn't volunteer for service until he was about to be drafted. Besides, who in their right mind would believe Mr. Kerry would volunteer to risk his life in a war he adamantly opposed?

He either perjured himself in his antiwar testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in admitting he committed atrocities or he actually committed atrocities, which is worse. American prisoners of war have said their communist captors used his slander of our troops against them.

He was present at a VVAW meeting where assassinations of public officials were discussed. Whether he voted against them or left the meeting, he has never explained why he associated with such a group of sadistic thugs.

He admitted to being in Paris and having "talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the Provisional Revolutionary Government." Under whose authority? For what possibly legitimate purpose?

He castigates Mr. Bush -- preposterously -- for having no plan to win the peace in Iraq. But he has never explained how he would be qualified to plan for any peace, given his disastrous predictions of no bloodbath or refugee problem upon U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam.

He was rated the most liberal senator in 2003 by the nonpartisan National Journal. And that doesn't even begin to tell the story of his egregiously anti-defense and anti-intelligence record for his entire 20 years in the Senate.