Supercilious/Smarmy

Conservative readers of InstantReplay will tell you that I am too far to the left, and perhaps that I am supercilious and smarmy. However, as "liberal" as I may be, it's a rarity that I agree with Maureen Dowd of the New York Times. Ms. Dowd is liberal; on the political spectrum she's situated halfway between Michael Moore and Fidel Castro.

Nonetheless, I must concur with her assessment of the Kerry campaign in light of Al Gore's "virulent attacks" on President Bush at NYU last night.

Couldn't the Democratic standard-bearer use a William McKinley front-porch strategy, talking only to those who bother to show up at his front porch? Mr. Kerry, once a critic of campaign financing abuses, had toyed with the idea of not accepting the nomination at his nominating convention so he could spend even more in contributions. While he announced yesterday that he had dropped that belittled idea, maybe he just didn't take the plan far enough. Maybe he shouldn't go down from his town house on Beacon Hill to the Fleet Center at all. The conventioneers may be more galvanized if they focus on vividly vivisecting Mr. Bush, instead of being dulled to distraction by Mr. Kerry, waving stiffly in his Oxford-cloth shirt, trying to be all things to all people all the prime time. Mr. Kerry has made a huge $25 million ad buy in recent weeks, believing that the better voters know him, the more they'll like him. But many Democrats fear he's one of those supercilious/smarmy candidates (like Al Gore) for whom the opposite is true: the more you know him, the less you want to see him.

Yesterday, in Coolidge Corner (aka liberal heaven) I was asked by somebody wearing a DNC jacket and holding a clipboard if I would like to help get rid of George W. Bush. I said, "Not really, but I'd like to get rid of the Democratic National Convention".