From the WSJ Opinion Archives
A
C Man in the Navy
On Jan. 30, John Kerry* told NBC's Tim
Russert that he would release his full military records to the public, something
he had refused to do during last year's campaign. It took 128 days, but today
the Boston Globe reports that he had done so. The records revealed what many of
us had suspected: Kerry served in Vietnam. But according to the Globe, "the lack
of any substantive new material about Kerry's military career in the documents
raises the question of why Kerry refused for so long to waive privacy restrictions."
A second Globe story, however, answers that question. Included in Kerry's military files were his transcripts from Yale, which were part of his application for officer training. Kerry, it turns out, had a 76 average for his years at Yale--the equivalent of a C and one point below George W. Bush's 77 average. Kerry had a difficult freshman year, scoring four D's, though he did manage a C in French.
So Kerry was almost as distinguished a scholar as the schoolmate who went on to become president of the United States. That doesn't seem so bad--but for candidate Kerry, it would have been devastating. After all, much of Kerry's appeal, such as it was, rested on intellectual snobbery. His supporters described him, in the words of a March 2004 New York Times report, as "an intellectual who grasps the subtleties of issues, inhabits their nuances and revels in the deliberative process." In this view, Kerry's nose for nuance contrasted favorably with Bush's simplisme.
But what if Kerry simply lacked the ability to express himself clearly? Consider
his answer when asked in a September 2003 debate to reconcile his vote for Iraq's
liberation with his subsequent opposition: "The vote is the vote. I voted to
authorize. It was the right vote, and the reason I mentioned the threat is that
we gave the--we had to give life to the threat. If there wasn't a legitimate
threat, Saddam Hussein was not going to allow inspectors in. Now, let me make
two points if I may. He went on in this vein for 248 words (quoted in full here),
and only someone with a superior intellect and too much time on his hands could
possibly have made sense of his answer. "People will often be misled into thinking
someone is brighter if he says something complicated they can't understand,"
IQ expert Linda Gottfredson told the Times' John
Tierney last year. The revelation that Kerry was no better a student than
Bush suggests that this is just what happened.
Kerry's appeal to intellectual vanity was in any case a politically dubious
one. The last egghead to win the White House was Woodrow Wilson, and he was
a genuinely accomplished scholar. In 1956, a supporter is said to have told
Adlai Stevenson, "You have the support of every thinking person." He replied:
"That's not enough. I need a majority."
Still, let's not sell Kerry short. He is, after all, a United States senator--which
isn't bad for a C student. At least no one will ever again call him an underachiever.
* No footnote today. Why pile on?
Filibuster
Ends, Apology to Follow Meanwhile, USA
Today reports (penultimate item) that the Senate will pass a resolution
next week in which it "belatedly apologizes for failing to pass anti-lynching
legislation":
Doria Dee Johnson, an author and lecturer on lynchings, says she will be
in the chamber next Monday when the Senate will take up a resolution expressing
remorse for not stopping a crime that took the lives of at least 4,742 people,
mostly blacks, from 1882 to 1968. . . . The Senate resolution, sponsored by Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and George
Allen, R-Va., notes that nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in
the first half of the 20th century and that seven presidents petitioned Congress
to end lynching. But Senate filibusters blocked anti-lynching legislation
for decades, Johnson said. It's a shame the apology didn't come up a few weeks ago, when Democrats were
still touting the filibuster as one of the glories of American government. Piety:
The New Patriotism? The comments came at a fund-raiser that was intended as a base-stroking exercise,
but one comment in particular struck us as potentially problematic for her: Referring to the Congressional leadership, she said, "Some honestly believe
they are motivated by the truth, they are motivated by a higher calling, they
are motivated by, I guess, a direct line to the heavens." This sounds strikingly similar to Sen. Tom Harkin's comment, which we noted
yesterday. Referring to Christian broadcasters, the Iowa liberal said, "They
have a direct line to God. And if you don't tune into their line, you're obviously
on Satan's line." Last year we
observed that "the Democratic Party has a problem with patriotism."
For years Democrats have defensively denied being unpatriotic, and last year
they lashed out in comical fashion against Republicans' patriotism. It looks
to us as though the Dems may be doing the same thing now with respect to religious
piety--and Hillary, having never fallen into the patriotism trap, looks to be
falling into this one. Cold
Warrior It's getting to be a good way to predict the weather: If Al Gore is coming
to town to warn about "global warming," you can expect it'll be cooler
than usual. He must suck up all the heat before spewing it out in his speeches.
Frisco's high on Saturday, according to the Weather
Channel, was just 66 degrees, 3 degrees cooler than average for June 4,
and a whopping 26 degrees below the record of 92, set in 1949. Meanwhile, here in New York it's almost 90 degrees today. Why couldn't Gore
have come here today rather than in the bitter
cold of January? People
Who Live in Class Houses This is not about giving wealthy people more money to invest back into the
economy. At this level, it's really about giving more money to those who have
nothing to do with it except amass enormous estates for their heirs. As reader John Steele Gordon asks, "If the rich don't invest this money
back into the economy, what do they do with it? Does the Times think that, like
Scrooge
McDuck, they keep their wealth in a three-cubic-acre money bin and swim
through it?" Janet
Nester is a journalism student at Ohio University, and in a letter to the
editor of the school paper, she reflects on how a sewage leak in her apartment
(which she describes in far too much detail) got her to thinking about the plight
of the "working class": As my roommate and I were sitting out on the porch discussing how horrible
a job it would be to clean the city's collection of human excrement off the
floor, I got to thinking. While it wasn't pity, as I truly appreciated what
they were doing, I honestly felt bad for these men--that is their day-to-day
job. I am sure everyone might dismiss the instance, saying "someone has
to do it," but it seemed like a perfect example of classism. There I sat, on the porch of a house my parents are paying rent for, getting
a college education with full financial support from them, only to watch those
two men slave away to clean up watered-down poop. For all I know, the two
men cleaning up could have very well had college degrees, and that could have
been a part-time job, although I doubt it. It seems as though the class divisions
are getting more divisive, and the future is looking bleak. Something tells us Nester has a big future ahead of her at the New York Times. More
Trouble for West Virginia's Senior Senator 'I'm
Just Resting, Honest!' If
It Improves Enough, They'll Pronounce Him Dead This
Just In 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 "Homeless Fla. Man Accused in Parking Scam"--headline, Associated
Press, June 6, 2005 A
Kiss Is Still a Kiss Least-Loved
Bedtime Stories Homer Nods Another error appeared in an item about surrender
monkeys of the Napoleonic wars--but it wasn't ours. Agence France-Presse
said that a foot is equivalent to 15 centimeters. We're told it's actually almost
30.5 centimeters. It seems the French find the metric system as confusing as
we do. Or maybe they just have little feet. (Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Ethel Fenig, Drew
Anderson, Jerome Marcus, Doug Levene, Charlie Gaylord, Patrick Keel, Thomas
Dillon, Michael Dowding, Jim Orheim, Barak Moore, Michael Segal, Kathleen Myalls,
Monty Krieger, Edward Tannen, Dan O'Shea, Steven Snider, Matthew McInteer, Charlie
Margolis, Paul James, Sean Hayes, Paul Dyck, Jonathan Rothenberg, Michael Napier,
Christopher Larkins, Vilmar Tavares, Richard Brum, Ronald Coleman, James Dwight,
John Lord, C.E. Dobkin, Stephen MacNamara, Tom Shumaker, Richard Miniter, Julie
Beck, Royal Dellinger, Karol Sheinin, Creighton Smith, Michael Nunnelley, Mark
Van Der Molen, Eric Ruegg, Joshua Wirth, Kevin Schmidt, Michael Britton, Daniel
Goldstein, Chris Kwak, Patrick Ruffini, John Hartness, John Leo, Shawn McBurney,
Greg Kiely, Jena Olsen, Abe Beyda, Jeffrey Shapiro, Gerry McCracken, Mark Van
Der Molen, Peter Pullen, Timothy Junio, David Shapero, E.B.S. Hirsch, Conor
Friedsdorf, Philip Newman, Pat Rowe, Larry Larsen, Ed Lasky, Fred Medero, Rick
Marsh, Phil Borger, Steve Prestegard, Jonathan Zimmer, Douglas Mooney, Charles
Kingery, Mark Davies, Warren Jones, Robert Nolan, Paul Jones, Hampton Stevens,
Michael Kingsley, Dennis Powell, Ray Hendel, Peter Huntsman, Paul Wood, Steve Klein, David
Warnock, Stu Gittelman, Avram Schacham, Michael Ringle, Dave Ferris, Edward
Humphrey, Eugene Dillenberg, Aaron Cummins, Tom Park, Howard Brown, Jeff Kerner,
Bill Kelly, David Hecht, Marty Robinson, Joseph Bushra, Steve Oglesby, Mark
Swierczek, Ami Avivi, Joseph McDonald, Lawrence Greenberg, Richard Stoner, Anne
Fox and Mark Rosaaen. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com,
and please include the URL.) Today on OpinionJournal:
By a 65-32 vote, the Senate today ended the filibuster, begun in 2003, against
the nomination of Justice Janice Rogers Brown of California's Supreme Court
to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
A confirmation vote is expected tomorrow. Ten Democrats joined all 55 Republicans
in voting for "cloture" (60 votes were needed): the seven compromisers
plus Tom Carper of Delaware, Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Bill Nelson of
Florida--all of whom are up for re-election next year.
So much for the Democrats' moderate hope. "Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
castigated President Bush and Congressional Republicans yesterday as being mad
with power and self-righteousness, complained that the news media have been
timid in taking on the administration, and suggested that some Washington Republicans
have a God complex," reports the New York Times.
"Former Vice President Al Gore urged an assembly of international mayors
to fight global warming Saturday, warning of catastrophic consequences for the
planet if governments fail to act," the Associated Press reports from San
Francisco.
The New York Times has been running a silly series of articles on "class"
in America. (In the interest of fairness, we should note that The Wall Street
Journal, publisher of this Web site, has been running a series on the same topic.)
The Times editorial board has been using the class series as the springboard
for an even sillier series of editorials, the silliest of which appears today
and inveighs against tax cuts, concluding as follows:
"Byrd Is Ejected in Nats' Win"--headline, Washington Post, June 5
"Paper: Mugabe Denies He Is Dead"--headline, CNN.com, June 7
"Saudi King Health 'Steadily Improving'--Crown Prince"--headline,
Reuters, June 6
"Health Experts Denounce Tobacco"--headline, Daily World (Helena,
Ark.), June 6
"Europe Is Still Europe"--headline, New York Times, June 7
"Harry Potter and 'Deep Throat' "--headline, CNN.com, June 7
Two small errors (since corrected) we made yesterday: In our item
on Sen. Robert Byrd, we should have said "his state was shifting
away from the Democrats," not his party. And we misquoted a headline
about a North Carolina house of worship. It should have read: "Charlotte
Church: Bush Is a Weirdo," not wacko.
