The Mugging of Ann Althouse

"That's the downside of not being an ideologue," wrote the estimable Madison, Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse -- one of three InstaPundit stand-ins while the big guy is out of town --  in a gripping series of flashbacks of her life as an undecided during the last six months, posted at her own blog, Althouse, a month ago to the day.  In a thrilling recap of prescient eureka moments, Althouse reveals how Kerry cooked his own goose:

I've said many times that I'm not going to pick my candidate until October. Yet I find myself expressing an increasing amount of hostility to Kerry, so I thought I'd go back and trace the arc of my antagonism through my various posts.

[In mid April] I got irked at him for the first time, for saying "You're not listening" to a man who wanted to know what his position on Iraq was. Back then, Kerry was saying things like "We shouldn't only be tough, we have to be smart. And there's a smarter way to accomplish this mission than this president is pursuing." My question was: "If you still don't know what he would do differently from Bush, do you deserve to be snapped at for 'not listening'?"

As a small-government/big-stick ideologue ourselves, we were reflexively repulsed by Kerry's condescending remark to a potential supporter. But when a thoughtful non-ideologue like Ann Althouse gets irked, Mr. Kerry, you should be paying attention.  The lady continues:

I agree with Kerry that it's pointless to quibble about whatever it was he threw away when he was an young man with an issue to fight for. But let's make a deal then: stop using Vietnam as an argument for why you should be President. The whole issue is a waste of time. I'm willing to accept that both Bush and Kerry are good people with good character [That's debatable, but no matter.] Now, get on with it! Give me some substance!

[May 1] Little did I know then that he would keep robotically delivering clips from the stump speech and would make Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign!

I have worried that he would pursue the strategy of uniting Bush and the war in the public's mind, creating a single entity (BushWar), and then use every opportunity to find fault with something done in the war to attack BushWar. What a disaster that would be.

Kerry's lame attempt to trash GW with a misleading NYT story about disappearing Iraqi weapons stashes yesterday ("If you want to know how John Kerry will attack the President in the afternoon, just read the Times in the morning.") -- blogged here and here -- is only the latest example of what Professor Althouse sensed last May.

In June, two things happened that I wrote a little about: Reagan died and received a lavish funeral, and "Fahrenheit 911" came out and was loved and hated. I watched a bit of the funeral and avoided the movie. Various people used the occasions to stoke extreme partisan feeling. I felt my usual aversion to all of that.

Right after the convention, in early August, I questioned the assumption that Kerry is especially smart and call him "a cipher who went to Vietnam": My questions are also based on his exasperatingly convoluted and unclear manner of speaking. This has been excused as a propensity for "nuance" and "complexity" but could also be caused by a lack of mental capacity.

Again, ideologue that we are, we watched lots of the Reagan memorials, noting the lack of class of his kids' -- Patti's and Ron's -- taking the opportunity of our grieving state to tout their own pro-stem-cell-research projects (not that we have anything against stem-cell research, but, rather, against cheap shots when folks are most vulnerable) -- and would never DREAM of watching a Michael Moore movie (we were dragged to "Roger and Me" by a dear but deluded liberal friend years ago and had to walk out when the unspeakable Moore kept the cameras rolling as a woman skinned a fellow sentient being, a rabbit, alive.).

As for Kerry's vaunted nuanced intelligence, we read Professor Althouse's assessment back then -- thanks to an InstaLink  -- and totally agreed.  As our fondly remembered eighth-grade English teacher, Miss Wood, used to say, "Muddy writing [read muddy rhetoric] reflects muddy thinking."  She inculcated in us, at a tender age, a deep and abiding respect for the tenets of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. One more excerpt from The Mugging of Ann Althouse, and then -- as they say -- go read the whole thing:

In these last few weeks, he has battered us with negativity about the war, but still without offering any realistic positive solutions that are different from Bush's, and raising worries that he will simply give up on Iraq. And then he disrespected Prime Minister Allawi when the man was in the country and speaking to Congress. Yesterday, I wrote of Kerry's treatment of Allawi as his final, fatal mistake.

Exactly what this ideologue said at the time.

Update: Thank you, Professor Althouse, for the lovely link. What could be more delightful to a blogger than an InstaLanche of a lazy Tuesday afternoon?

Comments

[Miguel]

About clarity in ideas and thus in speech: I read Kant when I was about 18 (Critica de la razón pura, guess it must be like Critics of Pure Reason or something of the kind) and thought: Wow! this guy must have been really smart, I don't understand most of it. (LOL) Then I read that book again when I was like 35 and concluded: What a moron! He was so stupid that he couldn't even lay his philosophy clear enough for me to understand. By then I had read Jesus Christ speaking in the Bible and, sure, I could understand what HE was saying. So, this goes to support your take on French Waffles. Well, my two cents. God bless all at home. :)

[Sissy Willis]

Good thoughts, Miguel. Amen