by JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, March 3, 2004 3:51 P.M. EST

Bye-ku for John Edwards

Two Americas:
One prefers President Bush;
One likes John Kerry

(Earlier bye-kus: Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, Joe Lieberman, Dick Gephardt, Carol Moseley Braun, Yasuhiro Nakasone and Bob Graham.)

One Little Victory
This has got to be the most anticlimactic campaign of all time. Howard Dean riled up the Angry Left, rocketed to first place in all the polls, then lost Iowa, screamed and lost New Hampshire. Then he lost South Carolina and Oklahoma and Arizona and North Dakota and New Mexico! He lost California and Texas and New York! And he lost South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan! Somewhere along the line he also lost Wisconsin and dropped out of the race. Then he went home to Vermont! And he won!

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Hey, if Vermontians like Dean so much, maybe he should scale back his ambitions and run for statewide office. There's a Republican governor seeking re-election in the fall; perhaps Dean ought to challenge him.

(Alert readers will note that Dean hasn't actually lost Texas, South Dakota or Oregon, which vote next Tuesday, June 1 and May 15 respectively. But journalism is the first draft of history, and we're confident that by the time our final draft is due, history will have caught up to us.)

Kucinich Surges in Cambridge
John Edwards's departure from the presidential race leaves us with a two-man race between John Kerry and Dennis Kucinich. (We know what you're thinking, but give us a break: Al Sharpton simply is not a serious candidate.) "Kucinich is not dropping out of the Democratic presidential race," the Associated Press reports. "Kucinich tells The Associated Press he wants to force a debate within the party on such issues as Iraq, health care and trade. And he says that debate will occur only if he stays in the race."

Realistically speaking, Kucinich would have to be reckoned an underdog at this juncture; the AP says Kerry has more than 1,100 delegates, against just 18 for Kucinich. And unlike Howard Dean, Kucinich wasn't able to manage a victory in his home state of Ohio. Actually, as the AP notes, he managed a victory, in the primary for the House seat he already holds. In the presidential race, however, he finished a distant third, with 9% of the vote. Then again, if Edwards's 34% had gone to Kucinich instead, the latter would have finished a surprisingly strong second. Kucinich also did well in Kerry's own backyard, pulling an impressive 13% of the vote in Cambridge, Mass.

Another bad omen from Kerry country: the Boston Herald reports Republican Scott Brown beat Democrat Angus McQuilken in a special election for a state Senate seat. McQuilken is demanding a recount, but the margin is 291 votes out of only 40,000, so he's unlikely to prevail. If Kerry doesn't have the coattails to help a fellow Democrat to victory, in his home state and on a day when Democrats but not Republicans are voting in a presidential primary, it's hard to see how he can win nationwide. And McQuilken, as we noted last month, built has campaign around an issue that seemed a sure winner in the Bay State: taxpayer-subsidized "sex change" operations.

F Is for Fogbound
John Kerry fancies himself another JFK, so we're going to give him a nickname that corresponds with those initials: "Fogbound." We call him this for his inability to take a clear positions. In an interview with "On the Media," a show on New York public radio station WNYC, the Boston Globe's Tom Oliphant says Kerry's problem is one of self-expression:

It is his habit of speech in talking in the public square. He tends, like a lot of people, to go around topics rather than straight at them. I mean he has positions, very clear ones, in fact. But often his rhetorical approach is almost elliptical, and the danger is that clarity is sacrificed, and reporters cannot stand having to wade through prose either at a press conference or an event or a speech or in a debate that isn't immediately clear. Kerry can come up with sentences that have a dozen subordinate clauses in them that you couldn't diagram on five blackboards.

ScrappleFace.com, a satirical site, characterizes the race as "Kerry vs. Kerry":

"I think we're going to see them go at it hammer and tong until the convention," said Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democrat National Committee. "We couldn't hope for two men who offer more contrast; the war hero vs. the peace protestor, the wealthy husband of an heiress vs. the assailant of the privileged class. One backed the attack on Iraq, the other opposed it. One voted for the USA Patriot Act, the other denounces it. One supported the president's 'No Child Left Behind' education plan, the other is harshly critical of it."

Mr. McAuliffe said his main job as party chairman over the next six months is to "keep the two John Kerrys focused on attacking President Bush, rather than sniping at each other over character issues."

In its editorial endorsing Kerry last week, the New York Times strained mightily to discern a shape in the cloud:

What his critics see as an inability to take strong, clear positions seems to us to reflect his appreciation that life is not simple. He understands the nuances and shades of gray in both foreign and domestic policy.

Maybe Kerry should forget about JFK and instead pattern himself after that other great 20th-century Democrat, Vice President John Nuance Garner.

John Kerry, Bath Toy for Dictators
Eighteen years ago, during the democratic revolution that overthrew Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, a certain haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat, who by the way served in Vietnam, arrived on the scene as part of a congressional delegation of election observers. In an article for Rolling Stone, later reprinted in his collection "Republican Party Reptile" (and excerpted last year by blogger Mitch Berg), journalist P.J. O'Rourke described the scene:

Most of the Potomac Parakeets were a big disappointment. Massachusetts senator John Kerry was a founding member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, but he was a bath toy in this fray.

On Sunday night, two days after the election, thirty of the computer operators from COMELEC [the Philippine election commission] walked off the job, protesting that vote figures were being juggled. Aquino supporters and NAMFREL [opposition party] volunteers took the operators, most of them young women, to a church, and hundreds of people formed a protective barrier around them.

Village Voice reporter Joe Conason and I had been tipped off about the walkout, and when we got to the church, we found Bea Zobel, one of Cory Aquino's top aides, in a tizzy. "The women are terrified," she said. "They're scared to go home. They don't know what to do. We don't know what to do." Joe and I suggested that Mrs. Zobel go to the Manila Hotel and bring back some members of the Congressional observer team. She came back with Kerry, who did nothing.

Kerry later said that he didn't talk to the COMELEC employees then because he wasn't allowed. This is ridiculous. He was ushered into an area that had been cordoned off from the press and the crowd and where the computer operators were sitting. To talk to the women, all he would have had to do was raise his voice. Why he was reluctant, I can't tell you. I can tell you what any red-blooded representative of the U.S. government should have done. He should have shouted, "If you're frightened for your safety, I'll take you to the American embassy, and damn the man who tries to stop me." But all Kerry did was walk around like a male model in a concerned and thoughtful pose.

Just the kind of guy you want facing down America's enemies, isn't he?

(If Amazon allows us to link, you'll be able to read the passage in the book starting here.)

John Kerry After Dark
"President Clinton was often known as the first black president," the Associated Press quotes John Kerry as telling the American Urban Radio Network. "I wouldn't be upset if I could earn the right to be the second."

OK, two questions: One, how come we got yelled at for calling Kerry's better half "African-American," when she actually is a native of Africa, but Kerry, a person of pallor if ever there was one, can go around saying stuff like this?

Two, don't the Democrats have any actual black politicians in their ranks?

The AP also reports Kerry told a TV interviewer: "Boy, wait until you see the fire in my belly." Message: He cares.

Profiles in Courage
Boy, that junior senator from New York is a real risk-taker, isn't she? Yesterday, the Associated Press reports, she issued a presidential endorsement:

"This is going to be a year, I believe, for Senator Kerry who will be our nominee and I will do everything I can to get him elected. So I hope that next year we will have a Democrat in the White House," she told Japan's Nippon Television Network Corporation.

Not only does she withhold her endorsement until the contest was over, but she decides to tell the Japanese.

Meanwhile, Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, offers some advice to Kerry on his choice of a running mate. Gillers urges a Kerry-Clinton ticket. Bill, that is. But isn't that unconstitutional? Not according to Gillers's tortured reading:

The 22nd Amendment, which became effective in 1951, begins: "No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice." No problem. Bill Clinton would be running for vice president, not president. Scholars and judges can debate how loosely constitutional language should be interpreted, but one need not be a strict constructionist to find this language clear beyond dispute. Bill Clinton cannot be elected president, but nothing stops him from being elected vice president.

Gillers, however, does not mention the 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, which provides that "no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States." Is Bill Clinton ineligible to the office of president? As always, that depends on the meaning of is.

Harvard Square
"A Harvard political institute criticized the hip retailer Urban Outfitters for a new T-shirt campaign declaring that 'Voting is for Old People,' " the Associated Press reports:

"The shirt's message could not be further from the truth," wrote Harvard Institute of Politics director Dan Glickman, the former congressman and Clinton administration agriculture secretary, and student chairman Ilan Graff in a letter to Urban Outfitters CEO Richard A. Hayne.

"We would be eager to work with you to suggest alternative products that send the right message to America's young people, and better reflect the considerable social conscience and political participation of today's youth," the letter said. "You might consider 'Voting Rocks!' "

How about "Get a life, Glickman!"?

Opposites Attract
Blogger Andrew Sullivan hands columnist Dennis Prager a "Derbyshire award nomination" (for "right-wing hyperbole, hate-speech or manic paranoia") for a column in which Prager links same-sex marriage with Islamic totalitarianism. Here's Prager:

America is engaged in two wars for the survival of its civilization. The war over same-sex marriage and the war against Islamic totalitarianism are actually two fronts in the same war--a war for the preservation of the unique American creation known as Judeo-Christian civilization.

One enemy is religious extremism. The other is secular extremism.

One enemy is led from abroad. The other is directed from home.

Writes Sullivan: "So now gay people--many of whom are conservative and people of faith and are fighting simply to commit to one another under the law--are the moral equivalent of Osama bin Laden. This is Jerry Falwell territory."

Fair enough. Prager's comparison is indeed over the top. But it's worth noting that both sides of the same-sex marriage controversy have employed the rhetorical device of likening their opponents in the debate to America's enemies. Here's what one proponent had to say late last month:

The religious fanatics of 9/11 despise the American Constitution exactly because it guarantees equality under the law, freedom of conscience and separation of church and state. The war I have supported is a war, ultimately, in defense of that Constitution. . . . The sanctity of the Constitution is what we are fighting for. We're not fighting just to defend ourselves. We are fighting to defend a way of life: pluralism, freedom, equality under the law. You cannot defend the Constitution abroad while undermining it at home. . . .

It's the president who has to answer to the charge that in wartime, he chose to divide this country over the most profound symbol there can be: the Constitution itself. I refuse, in short, to be put in a position where I have to pick between a vital war and fundamental civil equality. The two are inextricable. They are the same war. And this time, the president has picked the wrong side. He will live to be ashamed that he did.

The author of those ugly, intemperate words? Andrew Sullivan.

Speak for Yourself, Steve
"In the two and a half years since they occurred, the events of Sept. 11, 2001, have become so enmeshed in politics, speculation and debate that in looking back one can be distracted from the trauma of the terrorist attacks themselves."--New York Times movie critic Stephen Holden, March 3, 2004

72 Virgins? Thank Heaven for 7-Eleven!
"American and British forces have launched a dramatic new effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan," reports PakTribune.com, which styles itself "the first and the only dotcom in Pakistan for free, complete, and unbiased news."

This story has been reported elsewhere, but what's interesting about PakTribune's treatment is the accompanying photograph. As American reader Jesse Parent asks in a comment at the bottom of the page: "Do you realize that the picture you are using is from a satirical Web site and that Bin Laden's head has been superimposed on top of a store clerk's body? The shirt he is wearing has the 7-Eleven store log [sic] on it. Here is the Web site it came from: http://charliesmagic.com/osama-bin-laden.htm."

We Get Results
Our effort to popularize the word kerfuffle has made it all the way to the White House press corps. This is from the transcript of Monday's press briefing with Press Secretary Scott McClellan:

Q: . . . Does the President agree with the argument made by some economists that the effect of outsourcing on the overall job market in America is negligible and may, in fact, lead to more high-paying jobs in this country?

McClellan: John, I think we've been through this issue, when this came up a couple weeks ago, and I think I addressed it at that point.

Q: But since then, some economists are going back and looking at the statements that have been made and saying what's the kerfuffle about, because this really does have a negligible impact on American jobs and may, in fact, lead to the creation of more high-paying jobs here in America.

Homelessness Rediscovery Watch

"If George W. Bush becomes president, the armies of the homeless, hundreds of thousands strong, will once again be used to illustrate the opposition's arguments about welfare, the economy, and taxation."--Mark Helprin, Oct. 31, 2000

"A homeless couple protesting a lack of housing in Stockholm placed a bed in the middle of a downtown square and had sex in front of numerous spectators, police said today. The demonstration took place yesterday, and was the culmination of a week-long campaign by a group of Swedish homeless people demanding adequate shelter from the winter chill."--Agence France-Presse, March 2, 2004

Thanks for the Mammaries
"Liz Book believes exposed breasts are a part of motorcycle culture, so the Volusia County mother plans to lead a protest of topless women on the last day of Bike Week," the Associated Press reports from Daytona Beach, Fla. "Book hopes to lead 1,000 'top-free' women and men along a half-mile of Main Street at noon Sunday."

"City officials and police are taking a wait-and-see approach," the AP adds. We'll bet they are.

New Frontiers in Civil Rights
Did you know that chess is racist? Sure enough, it is, according to the Southern Digest, the student newspaper at Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, La.:

Everyone knows that in a chess game white moves first.

This abstractly implies that white has a distinct advantage over black because black has to always take a defensive stand. Some see this as a continuing form of racism and want to change the rules of the game.

A man named Bill Ware has a "plan of attacking racism in chess":

Ware plans on removing color superiority by allowing the pieces to either be the same or different colors such as red, blue, green, etc. The determining factor on who moves first depends on what square the queen sits on.

Chess is played on a grid and each square has a variable of A-H, and a number of 1-8.

According to Ware, whichever queen sits on the square D-1, that is the team that moves first. This way, nether color has priority or an inherent right to move first. . . .

Ware said he wants the students he helps to teach the skills they learned to others. He also wants to eliminate the stereotype that if you're white you're right and if you're black, step back.

This is a good opening move, but it's not nearly enough. Chess is not only racist but sexist, classist and homophobic. How come you can sacrifice your queen, but if you lose your king, the game is over? Why is there an underclass of "pawns"? Oh sure, they're promised they can be upwardly mobile if they only play by the rules, but how often does a pawn actually become a queen? And why are rooks only allowed to move straight? The time has come to demand equality for all chess-Americans and free the game from its checkered history!

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Today on OpinionJournal:

• Christopher Hitchens: One good thing about gay nuptials is it'd drive the mullahs mad.
• Joshua Muravchik: Inside the mind of George Soros.
• Lucette Lagnado: How The New Yorker's William Shawn drove the New York Times' Arthur Gelb crazy.