Looks Like Rocky Dennis, Acts Like Baby Jane Hudson

New at Reason: Al Gore is back, only now he's named John Kerry. Nick Gillespie probes the mind of the Democratic hopeful.

Comments

[Jason Ligon]

I dunno about the Gore comparison. Gore had to be more compelling, because he compelled me to vote against him. The whole Earth in the Balance thing was truly terrifying, as was the campaign against that nastiest of beasts 'the top 5%'.

Kerry is not Democrat enough to scare me. He is 100% Not Bush. If he wins and the comparison is moot, does anyone know what this guy wants to do?

[Sheesh]

Wow. A blathering of unREASONed opinions. You call this a mind probe of Kerry? More like a mind probe of Gillespie, revealing his negative feelings of Kerry.

[joe]

Kerry doesn't boast about himself. He doesn't name drop. He hasn't spent his carrer plastering his name all over bridges, buildings, and bills. He prefers to talk about issues, rather than about himself. His policy positions don't fit on a bumper sticker.

The reasons Gillespie gives for disliking Kerry are exactly the one's that have led me to admire him since I was 11.

How did he win the nomination? Could it be that Democratic primary voters make their decision using criteria a little deeper than which movie character the candidates look like?

BTW, one of the reasons Kerry's name doesn't appear on many things, is because he hasn't done shit to bring pork back to Massachusetts.

[Jason Ligon]

"Could it be that Democratic primary voters make their decision using criteria a little deeper than which movie character the candidates look like?"

Nope. He was the least kooky of presented options.

[Russ D]

WTF is the "big dig"? Or are you now in favor of massive road projects now?

[joe]

The Big Dig is the last piece of the Eisenhower National Highway System. Massachusetts, having foot the bill for its own urban highway project in the 50s, was gracious enough to go to the back of the line, and let Florida and Illinois and Montana get their projects done first.

Say what you want about the Interstate Highway project (and I've said plenty), but to call it pork is stretching the definition beyond recognition. It was a national project with national objectives.

[joe]

The greenbelt over the buried Central Artery is to be called the Rose Kennedy Greenway, which should tell you something about the project's legislative history.

[dhex]

"I mean, you can go to New York City and you can be in a restaurant and you can meet a foreign leader. There are plenty of places to meet people without traveling abroad."

yes, indeed. i ran into several heads of state just last night at my local falafel shack.

[joe]

You can meet numerous African and Latin American secret police officers wearing security guard uniforms in the malls throughout the DC Metro area.

[shanep]

joe, most projects declared "pork" in highway bills have little to do with interstate.

Kerry is the invisible man.

[shanep]

joe, most projects declared "pork" in highway bills have little to do with interstate.

Kerry is the invisible man.

[shanep]

joe, what national objective do the 7,700 items in the last bill have to do with "national objectives" or interstate highways?

Fixing I-15 is one thing. But spending 1 million on my local bridge is something else.

[Douglas Fletcher]

"Kerry doesn't boast about himself."

I heard somewhere he was in Vietnam. Has anyone else heard about that?

[Aliens at large]

Forget about his mind!! Shove that probe in his
$^%%$^&.

[Russ D]

"gracious enough to go to the back of the line"

joe, I can't believe that even you would believe that bullshit. Gracious my ass. There were plenty of national highway projects Boston had federal dollars all lined up for, the main one being the Inner Belt; local politics held everything up and the funds were diverted to T projects. Whatever side of those local politics you're on, there is no honest way you can call it graciously going to the back of the line.

[db]

"Kerry is not Democrat enough to scare me. He is 100% Not Bush. If he wins and the comparison is moot, does anyone know what this guy wants to do?"

Kerry is only about 75% Not Bush. The rest of him agrees with Bush but just wants it sooner: Anything that Bush does that increases entitlements, reduces personal responsibilities and liberties, Kerry is right up there with Bush, just egging it on faster.

[db]

"Kerry is not Democrat enough to scare me. He is 100% Not Bush. If he wins and the comparison is moot, does anyone know what this guy wants to do?"

Kerry is only about 75% Not Bush. The rest of him agrees with Bush but just wants it sooner: Anything that Bush does that increases entitlements, reduces personal responsibilities and liberties, Kerry is right up there with Bush, just egging it on faster.

[joe]

shanep, Russ, you're confusing TEA-21 (the modern highway bills) with the old Interstate Highway projects. The Central Artery/Tunnel Project was the last of the old time highway projects. TEA-21 is mainly about local bridges etc, but expanding/improving I-93, the Interstate that brings traffic from I-95 (which becomes a circumferential route around Boston), and connecting it with I-90 and Logan Airport, is exactly what the Eisenhower highway program was all about.

[Matt XIV]

The thing that worries me the most about a Kerry presidency isn?t Kerry himself, but that the Republicans in Congress might draw the conclusion that Bush lost because they didn't spend enough on domestic programs and react by green-lighting every spending proposal that Kerry can think of.

In order to keep the issues fresh for the Dems during the midterm elections Kerry will need to propose even more extravagant spending, which, in order to neutralize the issues before the elections, the Republicans will pass. Rather than gridlock, we get a vicious cycle in which the parties compete to see who can outspend the other.

I?m not totally committed to this theory myself, but given how enthusiastically the Republicans passed the Medicare prescription drug benefit I wouldn?t rule it out.

[joe]

Matt, passing bills offered by Bush helps Bush. Passing bills offered by Kerry would help Kerry. Stopping them, on the other hand, would allow President Kerry to be tarred as an ineffective do-nothing. Remember 1994? Despite majority support for Hillarycare, the Republicans killed it. So did they face retribution in the next election? No, Democratic voters stayed home out of disgust for that lousy bumbler who couldn't even pass a popular bill, and the GOP swept Congress.

[Matt XIV]

joe,

That was a factor in 1994, but there are some major differences. The Republicans didn't control Congress at the time, so the argument that the Democrat?s couldn?t get anything done even when the odds were in their favor rang true, while seeing a Democratic president?s proposals spiked by a Republican-dominated legislature wouldn?t lend itself to that conclusion.

Also, the Repubs actually had something resembling an ideological commitment to controlling spending at the time. Remember, the first act mentioned in the Contract with America was a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

I see spending increases playing out a lot like drug control policy. One party has a strong ideological commitment to it, and the other seeks to neutralize the issue by appearing just as strong. Thus, we get incrementally more absurd policies that will likely end only when they become so self-evidently destructive that a grassroots movement against it emerges and is assimilated into one of the major parties.

[Ruthless]

Reading Nick's piece, I kept thinking how else could Kerry make his point that foreign leaders think Bush is an idiot?
To me it's irrelevant what your leader thinks of my leader, but it's relevant for Kerry, because he's trying to make an issue of being better able to be a coalition-builder.
To me, it may not even be relevant that my leader is an idiot. What's relevant is whether his actions are good or bad. Bush's are bad.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Yeah, but you're a nut.

[Russ D]

joe, the Inner Belt was designed a part of the Eisenhower project. For whatever reasons, Mass. diverted those funds to T projects. The big dig wasn't even on the drawing board until after 1981, which was part of the reason Reagan (in 1987) vetoed the bill it was a part of as the Eisenhower Intersate projects were supposed to have their designs in by then (which itself was an extension of the 1969 deadlines). Even Bostonians call it "the Big Pig"!

TEA-21 was 1998, way beyond anything I mentioned. The Big Dig is only claimed as part of the Eisenhower system as a result of a pork extension. There was no foregoing of the money appropriated to Boston/Mass in order to let other states get their projects done first, the money for the Inner Belt was appropriated and used on the T.