ALL THOSE FLIP-FLOPS TAKE A LOT OUT OF A GUY:

Amid Natural Splendor in Idaho, a Weary Kerry Gets Away From It All (DAVID M. HALBFINGER, March 19, 2004, NY Times)

His getaway came at a particularly rough time for the senator, the expected Democratic presidential nominee. For more than a week, he has had to defend himself from an onslaught of attacks by President Bush and millions of dollars in negative advertising, while taking criticism for calling Republicans "crooked" and "lying" and claiming to have the support of leaders whom he has not named. Moreover, a New York Times/CBS News poll indicated that many Americans were beginning to see him as the kind of politician who says what he thinks people want to hear.

Several Democrats and Kerry aides said some of his missteps were a result of exhaustion. They and some of the senator's friends said the vacation could not have come too soon. "He needed it about as badly as anybody could need it," said Sam Grossman, a real estate developer who has skied with Ms. Heinz Kerry here for decades, and with Mr. Kerry for years. "The best thing that can happen is he'll sleep, relax, eat some good food, and then, in a couple of days, he'll be back firing again."

Another reminder of how badly Mr. Kerry needed a break was provided by the Bush campaign, which released a commercial skewering him for saying Tuesday that he had voted both for and against the $87 billion appropriation for military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it," he said, referring to an amendment he favored that would have rescinded some tax cuts to help finance the Iraq war.

Mr. Kerry's staff back in Washington was working in overdrive, meanwhile, marshaling surrogates to defend him and punch back at Mr. Bush. They were also compelled, however, to reject an endorsement from one foreign leader: Mahathir Mohamad, former Malaysian prime minister — "an avowed anti-Semite whose views are totally deplorable," Rand Beers, a foreign policy adviser, said in a statement.

But Mr. Beers added that Mr. Kerry would shun as inappropriate the endorsement of any foreign leader at all.

You have to be deeply delusional in order to believe that the Senator makes better decisions about what foreign leaders he beds down with when he's well rested.

He's been wrong on every foreign policy question for thirty years and they think a couple naps will help?

MORE (via Tom Corcoran):
The Treason Temptation: In their growing disdain for their own country Democrats increasingly rely on foreign opinion -- and think this won't cost them politically. (George Neumayr, 3/18/04, American Spectator)

Democrats bristle at the suggestion that they are out of touch with mainstream America. But their rhetorical reliance on opinion from outside the country -- whether it is John Kerry citing support from foreign leaders or Democratic activists citing Scandinavian jurisprudence as they try to topple marriage -- proves it. The more they alienate themselves from mainstream America, the more they rely on foreign cultural currents to push their agenda.

Modern Democrats are peculiar in American political history in that they actually brag about non-American support. This is a political boast the Founding Fathers and early Federalists would find puzzling if not shocking. Independence from foreign opinion and influence is one of the founding marks of America. The Federalist Papers contain chapters entitled "Concerning Dangers From Foreign Force and Influence." John Kerry's foreign-leaders-are-pulling-for-me talk would sound to the American founders like the beginnings of treason.

Democrats loudly emphasize their foreign support, then wonder why they are caricatured as the party that tends toward anti-Americanism. After it turns out that an accused traitor, Susan Lindauer, was a serial employee for Democrats -- hopping from the office of Rep. Peter Defazio to Rep. Ron Wyden's to Senator Carol Moseley Braun's to Rep. Zoe Lofgren's -- one would think the Democrats might show some reluctance to hawk foreign endorsements. But they don't. They consider them useful political props.

They rush to defend the veracity of Kerry's declaration of foreign support, as if the political problem is that it might be false when the real political problem is that it is true. Dem diplomat Richard Holbrooke's defense of Kerry -- "In the last six or seven months, I've been in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe. I've met with leaders in all of those regions, and they have overwhelmingly -- not unanimously but overwhelmingly -- said that they hope that there's a change in leadership" -- supplies Americans with an urgent reason not to vote for Kerry. He is more in tune with the views of foreign leaders than with mainstream America.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 19, 2004 10:53 AM