Tumulty: He?s Too Smart

CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: And what did he do to the enemy? He shot ’em. They got in the way, he shot ’em. So he gets elected president, and he figured out he couldn’t shoot members of Congress, so he said, hell with it, and he just played golf, joined Augusta National, played golf. And I’m convinced the less politicians do on a day-to-day basis the better off we all are, the less laws we make, the less think care about it, the less they mess around with all that, the better off we are, and Eisenhower — look it, it’s a joke, but I mean your point is well made, and it just goes to show you how long elitists have been around. And elitism is typified by this business, Adlai Stevenson, too smart to reach the common man.
Of course it wasn’t Stevenson’s fault, it’s the common man’s fault for being so stupid, and they just don’t know how stupid and dumb they are for missing out on such a brilliant opportunity as to be led by Adlai Stevenson. Now, the reason Glenn is bringing this up here folks, is because he’s been waiting since almost the beginning of the program. Since I was giving a little review of my John Kerry stack today and there’s a story by Karen Tumulty in Time magazine which basically says that John Kerry is too smart to be a presidential candidate, and the headline of her piece is, and I kid you not, “What Kerry Means to Say.” And the subhead, “He is tripping over himself on the trail but not without a little help from the Bush campaign.” And let me read for you just a few excerpts of this piece, again, “What Kerry Means to Say.” So here’s another member of “the media” who has decided that — it’s a little private joke I have going on here — but you have a member of “the media,” saying we’ve got to help the guy out.
It’s like, remember when Kerry — this is back I think in the primaries or shortly after — the primaries are still going on, either won the nomination or is very close to it and somebody at CBS asked him a question, and ten minters later, the CBS producers, “Could you try that again? You didn’t give us anything we could use here as a good sound bite. Could you try take two?” And so Kerry did a second take, and they used it! My friends. This opportunity has never been afforded me. It would never be afforded Bush. In fact, when it’s Bush they ask the same questions six times trying to trip him up to get the answer they want. With John Kerry they let him answer it as many times as he needs to get it right according to what they would like for him to say in a support sense.

So the Karen Tumulty piece here, “What Kerry Means to Say” is an attempt to tell us because we’re too stupid to understand what he’s saying, what he means; so that we’ll get it, so that we’ll like him, so that we’ll be dazzled and mesmerized and star-struck and impressed and eager to go to polls to pull a lever or punch the screen or whatever you’re going to do for John Kerry.

“Never had John Kerry encountered a more target-rich environment than the week that saw the Bush White House hauled in to explain itself to both the Supreme Court and the 9/11 commission. Not to mention the first anniversary of the aircraft carrier landing that turned ‘mission accomplished’ into a punch line. But what did the challenger, Kerry, find himself talking about for three days? The question of what precisely he tossed over a fence in front of the capitol during an anti-war protest 33 years ago?” Karen Tumulty, not happy. Karen Tumulty flummoxed. Karen Tumulty in dismay. Cannot believe that her candidate is such a dunce, is such a dolt, and so it can’t be that he’s a dunce or dolt, he’s just too far above us. And he can’t figure out how to get down to our level so that we understand his nuances and his brilliance. We’re all waiters at Tina Brown’s serious Manhattan dinner parties.

“The point of contention — back now no Karen Tumulty of “the media” — the point of contention was whether the much decorated Vietnam veteran who still carries shrapnel in his thigh threw away medals, as he told a local Washington TV station in 1971, or ribbons, which is how he subsequently described them makes it look like everybody else.

“Political hands of both parties expressed wonderment over how it was that any politician could find himself on the defensive about his own medals for valor and sacrifice.” Oooh, grab audio sound bite, what is it, it’s audio sound bite number 10. Did you see Dole yesterday on the tube? Bob Dole was on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. I watched a replay last night while I was on EIB 1 coming up here. And there’s a newspaper story from the Associated Press that goes along with what Dole said. It’s unbelievable. The headline of the story, “Dole rises to Kerry’s defense over Vietnam.” Now, I want to play you what Dole said, and you tell me if this sounds to you like Dole is rising to Kerry’s defense. A question from Chris Wallace, “In your view are ribbons and medals interchangeable, and does this matter, when we’re choosing a president?”

DOLE: I don’t think it matters. I don’t know what whether he threw away his ribbons his shirt or his medals, or whatever, but I’m proud of mine and I’ve kept them, and I think most veterans are. I don’t know what possessed John — I know he came back — came out against the Vietnam War, but he made his point, and he’s going to have to live with it. I think some of the things he said were probably not very good judgment, but he was a much younger man then without much experience in public life, but that’s the record.

WALLACE: And so that’s something people should take into account as they —

DOLE: Oh, I think so. When you come back, when first you brag about all the medals you have and being wounded three times and things of that kind, then you throw everything away and join the other side, it’s going to be fairly hard to explain, particularly to veterans.

RUSH: Does that happen to sound like Dole is defending John Kerry? Well, the headline here, who’s the infobabe? Jennifer Kerr, K-e-r-r, might be pronounced Kerr. “Dole rises to Kerry’s defense over Vietnam.” Uh-huh! Didn’t happen! You just heard it. There is no way that that’s a ringing endorsement or even a defense of what Dole said regarding Kerry. And here’s Karen Tumulty, she cannot believe that this is an issue, she doesn’t understand it, and we’re the stupid ones! We’re the ones out of touch, folks. We are the ones who think there’s something odd about a guy coming back bragging about his medals and then making a big show of throwing them and not throwing but making everybody believe they were his and it turns out his ribbons, and they, the media, don’t understand. And this is all because John Kerry’s too smart, just doesn’t understand how to talk to us.

Get this. Here’s more from Karen Tumulty of “the media.” “The flap was instructive about the kind of traps the Bush campaign is adept at setting for Kerry and the personality trait that makes Kerry walk right into them. That Bush allies would unearth and quite slip the ’71 videotape to two news outlets tells you that the Republicans are doing what the Kerry campaign had expected them to do all along, playing hardball; but that Kerry could be so ensnared in the ribbons vs. medals controversy tells you why so many Democrats started to getting nervous whenever the Massachusetts senator opens his mouth without a script.” So it’s Bush’s fault? I’m incredulous. It’s Bush’s fault that Peter Jennings aired that 1971 video of John Kerry? No, Karen, he aired it because Kerry lied to Peter Jennings last December. Unbelievable. “That Bush allies would unearth and quietly slip the 1971 videotape to two news outlets tells you that the Republicans are doing what the Kerry campaign had expected them to do all along.”

So it’s a Bush trick, folks. It was hardball tactics. It was street tactics. Bush slipped a video to Peter Jennings, and Peter Jennings was tricked into using it, too. Unbelievable. You know what the next thing we’re going to hear is? Bush is the reason the last episode of Friends airs Thursday night.
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RUSH: Just one little more additional quote from the Karen Tumulty piece. A piece offered in total frustration over the ineptitude and ineptness of John Kerry, meant to be transposed as the ineptitude of the audience to understand what he’s saying. “Kerry’s verbal meanderings are partly a reflection of a mind that sees complexity in almost every issue. The son of a diplomat, educated partly in boarding schools in Europe, Kerry learned to look at current affairs from multiple perspectives. Says an advisor, ‘It’s not like he’s trying to shade the truth, he just overintellectualizes his explanations.'” (Yawning.) Wake me up when it’s over. He doesn’t over-intellectualize anything. There’s the absence of intellectualization in his answers. Every answer is, [John Kerry sing-song voice] “I haaaave a better plan. I’lllll do it smarter. Weee’ve got to fiiiind a way to be better. I’m John Kerry.” And that’s it.
I mean, here the New York Times — this is actually late yesterday in the newspaper today– “Kerry is struggling to find a theme, Democrats fear. Two months after Senator Kerry effectively captured the Democratic presidential nomination, party officials say his campaign’s being regularly outmaneuvered by the White House as he struggles to find a focus, and to make the transition from the primaries to the fight with George W. Bush. Even while expressing confidence about Kerry’s prospects, Democratic Party officials said they’re concerned about what they described as his trouble in settling on a defining theme for his candidacy. ‘The pace of his advertising and his progress in setting up field organizations in battleground states. George W. Bush has had three of the worst months in his presidency, but they’re stuck and they’ve got to move past this moment,’ said Donna Brazile, meaning the Kerry campaign. They’re stuck, even though Bush is having the worst month of his presidency. While Ms. Brazile said she thought Kerry had the time and the political skill and the money to defeat what many Democrats described as a highly vulnerable president, she said this is a very crucial moment in the campaign. Here’s Senator John Edwards of North Carolina who wants to be the veep ostensibly, supposedly, “has told aides over the past two weeks that he is concerned by signs of trouble in Mr. Kerry’s campaign, advisors said. Mr. Edwards disputed that characterization of his views in an interview on Saturday saying he thought Kerry was running a strong campaign.” Folks, it’s really bad out there. They’re talking about it behind his back, and then there’s people leaking what’s being said about Kerry behind his back and then these people are confronted with what they’ve leaked and they’re denying it.
But overintellectualizes? He’s too smart for the room? What Kerry means to say? Karen, and all of the rest of you in “the media”, let me tell you what the problem is. And it’s real simple. It’s something called passion. And I’m probably going to be criticized by people for offering assistance here, but I feel confident that my advice will not be taken and acted upon by my good friends, the liberal Democrats that listen to this program. Your candidate cannot tell anybody why he wants to be president. I don’t think he knows. And until he finds out, or maybe he knows but it’s such a specious reason he doesn’t dare say: “I want to be president because I like the staff in the White House. I want to be president because I want a valet that’s mine and not my wife’s. I want to be president because I want to be able to tell the head waiter at the table what I’m having instead of listening to my wife do it.” Whatever his reasons are. “I want to be president because I’m entitled to it, because I was in Vietnam, and I have shrapnel in my left buttocks.” Whatever the reason is, he either can’t say or he doesn’t know.

But it comes across as no passion. If you are passionate about something, you don’t have any problem communicating your desire, because passion is the foundation of your desire, or could be the other way around desire, foundation of passion, like a chicken or egg thing, but the fact is clear that if you are desirous, you want something — and this is a trait that all presidential candidates have — you have to want it so badly you put up with all this media anal exam you get every day, and all the stuff that you go through, the end of your privacy, the delving in every aspect of your life, you’ve got to really want something very badly to put up with that; and part of your passion is you have to think the country can’t get along without you. Now, it may not be healthy, it may not be normal, but that’s what all these people have to one degree or another.

John Kerry has a central theme, and it’s futility! He looks futile; his campaign appears futile; his friends in “the media” are getting worried at the futility; and he looks at America and thinks all of us are feeling futile. He thinks that the outlook we have on all of our lives is futility and so I guess he tries to relate to us, but there’s no passion. In fact, the passion on the Democrat side period, is not for what they want to do for America, the passion they hold is we hate Bush, we’ve got to get rid of Bush. Beyond that, it’s a mystery.

So you can sit there, Karen Tumulty, and you can — I’m going to be helpful here — you can sit there and worry all you want and wring your hands that this guy’s got to figure out how to communicate to all the rest of us peasants, and you can try to translate what he’s saying for us since we’re too stupid to get it, or you can lean on him to try to get more common in his life and approach and speech pattern and so forth; but until this guy finds a way to act like he really, really cares and wants this more than anything in the world, in a healthy sense, I mean if you got some passion for it, all this is academic. And, yes, I do know what I mean by the definition of the word “academic,” as used in this context.
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