I just saw this from a Yahoo alert in my Inbox, and had to share.
It starts with a nice "round-up" piece in the Columbia Journalism Review,
Kerry On:
John Kerry gave an effective speech at the DNC last night that skillfully bridged his friendship with McCain, with a critique of his policies.
The speech has gotten many tablespoons of gooey praise—here, here, and here (and here and here and here). It’s one big blogospheric hug for Kerry. (All of which doesn’t negate the praise, but if you want just a tad more perspective than “Best Speech of Convention” or “awesome, like totally rad, he blew me out of the water,” here’s a more sedate, two-steps-back take on it.)
So I thought hmmm, let's take a look at that
"more sedate" link (Matthew Yglesias' blog at ThinkProgress). I was pleasantly surprised, not just by the article, but especially by the comments. (Is anyone from here commenting there? Because there's definitely people who "get it" there.) (emphasis is in original)
One thing I don’t think people always understand about Kerry is that he was talked about as a likely presidential contender as far back as the early 1970s. Consequently, his entire political career in Massachusetts was understood as a precursor to a presidential run. This, in turn, led to a tendency among other Massachusetts Democrats to unfairly assume that each and every case of Kerry doing something they weren’t thrilled with reflected his opportunistic drive for the White House. For the past two years or so has been the first time in decades when it’s been clear that Kerry won’t ever be president, so his action can be — and be seen as — merely the actions of a United States Senator with a safe seat and a passionate concern for certain issues and causes. As with Al Gore’s somewhat similar liberation from Presidential ambitions, I think in part it’s about letting him find his own voice but also in large part about his voice finally being heard as his own rather than read through the lens of devious ambition.
I think that last line is a really important point. I get so frustrated with people instantly imposing negative interpretations on other peoples' actions when in fact they don't really have any solid evidence for those interpretations. I've seen so much of that with the bashing of JK in the blogosphere that's it's good to see someone who gets it.
Maybe that's one reason JK seems so happy lately? Less people automatically assuming the worst of him every time he turns around, because one of the reasons (unsubstantiated as it was) has gone away?
Oh and about those comments. There is a surprisingly high ratio of good, intelligent comments there. For one example, this fellow Petr (comment #3) knows what's what:
I think Kerry ran an excellent campaign in 2004 and would have won if A) Democrats weren’t continually sniping him (Carville and Coehlo most egregiously… causing him to run flanking maneuvers all the way up to the election) and 2) Bush/Cheney/Rove hadn’t used the entire apparatus of the government (Terror alerts anybody? Haven’t seen but one or two since…) It’s kinda unfair to put anything on Kerry when his allies tried to trip him up and the opposition didn’t succeed on legitimate terms.
It’s also worth noting that, in a call to President Clinton, Kerry refused Clintons advice to embrace the anti-gay marriage amendment cause as a means of triangulating against Bush. From a purely Machiavellian POV, this is advice that would almost certainly have given Kerry the push over the top. That Kerry refused to do so may have cost him the election but saved him his soul. That America still produces men like John Kerry gives me hope.
"That America still produces men like John Kerry gives me hope." Yeah, me too. And when I find a few comments in the vast blogosphere wasteland that recognize what's special about men like John Kerry, that gives me hope too.
:patriot:
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