So the loathesome (second post down) John “interesting” Kerry has chosen John “even less interesting” Edwards as his running mate. This is obviously a bad move as people will confuse them, and maybe even vote for someone else called John Nondescriptname instead, but on the other hand, their policies seem to be mostly about saying whatever crowd-pleaser pops into their heads at the time, so perhaps it is a deliberate ploy to make people so confused they can’t keep up with all the turnarounds, and surrender their powers of reasoning altogether (unless that happened already).
Here are some of the things they said about each other in the past. Notice the recurrence of the word “different”. Now see if you can spot which statement belongs to which John. Answers on Fox News.
[John’s policies would run the country] deeper and deeper into deficit.
This is the same old Washington talk that people have been listening to for decades.
I think he’s said some different things at different points in time … So I think there’s been some inconsistency.
[John] and I have very different positions on the issue of trade
This one is easy:
No. No. Final. I don’t want to be vice president. I’m running for president.
And my personal favourite (remember, John is criticising John here)…
I think that the world is looking for leadership that is tested and sure. And I think that George Bush has proven that this is not a time for inexperience in the White House.
How very unintentionally right he is.
See, I find John Edwards much more interesting than John Kerry. Edwards seems like he might be a bit of a Jack Ryan (the politico) character underneath that hair and smile and twinkling eyes.
Sadly for him, a friend of mine had dinner with him in the US when he was running for president and Edwards made zero impression on him whatsoever. One night we watching Edwards on Jay Leno’s show and my friend said, astonished, “Who is that? I had dinner with him in North Carolina last week!” (ME: “Uh, yeah, he’s running for President of the United States.”) Sounds like he’s got a bit of a charisma impediment.
Looks to me like a deliberate choice of blandness. Bush is the most opinion-polarizing president for ages, so Kerry is planning to sit quietly in the middle and reap a harvest of centrist “floating voters”. To that end, he’s proposing no particular policies, neither opposing nor backing anything much, he has no personality and his running mate has no history.
In an unrelated story, Patrick Buchanan has announced that he will be changing his name to “John N. Buchanan”… the initial standing for “Nondescriptname”.