LESSON--DON'T DRAW A CONTRAST YOU AREN'T WILLING TO MAINTAIN:

No questions right now; he's gotta run: Kerry hasn't been chatting much lately with the media traveling with him (Jill Zuckman, September 10, 2004, Chicago Tribune)

Who knows what lurks in the heart and mind of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry?

Not the traveling press corps, that's for sure.

Kerry has been under wraps for the last month, declining to subject himself to what must surely be the painful process of answering national reporters' questions.

Kerry used to regularly assure his audiences that, if elected president, he would hold a press conference every month to communicate with the nation's citizenry. (That was a not-so-subtle dig at President Bush, who has held only 12 formal press conferences during his four years in office, a record low number.)

"I have pledged that I am going to have a press conference at least once a month to talk to the nation about what I'm doing because I don't have anything to hide," Kerry said during a campaign stop in Beloit, Wis., after the Democratic National Convention. "I want America to know what I'm doing. I want you to know what I'm fighting for. I want you to ask me questions."

But Kerry doesn't make that promise anymore.

We all know why George Bush hides from the press--he's a babbling idiot who's strings are being pulled by a diabolical cabal of Luddite Christian Zionist oil men--but John Kerry, as we're often told, is a super-genius who could talk nuanced rings around the ink-stained drudges of the press corps. Why's he making like D. B. Cooper?

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 10, 2004 12:17 PM