Ineptitude

Mark Steyn continues pounding away at John Kerry and his campaign's ineptitude at handling the SBVFT scandal.

I have no views on whether one or more of John Kerry’s bemedalled wounds from the Mekong Delta 35 years ago were self-inflicted — though the Kerry campaign, in its second big concession to his chastisers, now says his first Purple Heart-earning wound might have been ‘unintentionally self-inflicted’. But there’s no doubt every wound from the last 35 days is self-inflicted, beginning with the candidate’s disastrous decision at the Democratic Convention to play up Vietnam and play down Iraq, 9/11 and anything else that happened in the last 30 years. Since then Kerry’s shot himself in the foot so many times he ought to put in for a good dozen more Purple Hearts.

The flaw in the Senator’s strategy to run for president as a plucky 24-year-old Swift boat lieutenant was an obvious one. The argument that his Swift boat command demonstrates his superb qualities of leadership falls apart once you notice his striking lack of the first ingredient of leadership: followers. Aside from the three or four Swiftees who’ve been persuaded to travel around the country with him, all the hundreds of other Swiftvets loathe him, and many of them are determined to stick to him like DNA to Monica’s dress.