The Kerryness of Kerry

Mark Steyn, as usual, hits it right on the head with his article "The Kerryness of Kerry". It really tells you a lot about the candidate from a guy who watched him up close and personal during the primaries. Here's an excerpt:

I underestimated Kerry [as a primary candidate] because I made the mistake of seeing too much of him in 2003 – in Woodsville, Plymouth, Littleton and other obscure stops on the New Hampshire primary trail. He was awful. And he was just as awful in the huge auditorium at Nashua High School in late January as he’d been at the Barge Inn in Woodsville the previous summer. The only difference was that he was now awful with a full supporting cast – the “band of brothers”, Max Cleland, Ted Kennedy, Patrick Kennedy, Jeanne Shaheen… When the chorus line momentarily parted and you got a glimpse of the candidate, he still seemed like a plodding single-digit fifth-place guy.

Primary season gives the party’s electorate a chance to rattle the leading candidate and make him a better campaigner. This time round the leading candidates – Dean, Clark – rattled the electorate and in their stampede to the fire exits they wound up sweeping the quintessential “None of the Above” man to victory. They made a very basic miscalculation: Howard Dean was a dull centrist governor pretending to be nuts, John Kerry is a nut passing himself off as a dull centrist.

Good stuff! (hat tip Power Line)