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George Bush: a man of the people?: With six weeks until the US election, Ros Davidson finds frustration among Democrats as Kerry fails to seize the initiative (Ros Davidson, 9/19/04, Sunday Herald)

When John Kerry started to gallop to victory during the primaries, national reporters tracked down contemporaries from his prep school in New England. Who were his best friends at St Paul’s School for boys?

The response was notable: nobody could quite recall. The candidate was better remembered as “Keep-the-puck Kerry”, because he would seldom pass to ice hockey team-mates before scoring.

Other times he would crash a kids’ informal game, steal the puck and shoot it into the woods. In later years, some of Kerry’s political colleagues from Massachusetts would dub him “Live Shot” not because of his war record, but because he often hogged the limelight.

Kerry was perhaps equally telling shortly after he finally announced his running mate several months ago: the charismatic and younger John Edwards. A few days later the two men were interviewed on the television news magazine, 60 Minutes. Whenever Edwards started to respond to a question, Kerry would interrupt and answer instead.

The tales are all part of a continuing theme, as are sniggers about President Bush’s mangled syntax. Is John Kerry too solitary and awkward to win in America’s populist down-home presidential politics?

This is a better analysis of Senator Kerry's problems--coming from a Scottish newspaper for cripesakes--than he's getting from any of the thousands of folks officially advising his campaign.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 19, 2004 12:13 PM