Kerry's narcissistic conceit

Toby Harnden:

The first time I met Senator John Forbes Kerry was shortly before 9/11, when I was sitting in the office of a Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee talking to a young staffer about European defence.

Suddenly, the Massachusetts senator strode into the room and plonked himself, hands on hips, between us. Then he just stood there, clearly expecting us to jump up because he had graced us with his hallowed presence.

He turned his back on me and I studied his perfectly arranged thatch – this was a man who has spent some time on coiffing his hair that morning (or maybe he had someone to do it for him) – as he barked questions and demands at the astonished aide.

Many people in Washington have similar DYKWIA – Don't You Know Who I Am? – anecdotes about Kerry that reveal his narcissistic conceit that it is all about him, all the time. This trait is the key to the kerfuffle over Kerry's comment at a California rally that: "Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

The words were clumsy and, yes, an insult to American troops. I have no doubt that he didn't mean to say that US soldiers in Iraq are dumb cannon fodder but that's what came out. He was trying to say that Bush was stupid (though the Texan's grade-point average at Yale was higher than that of Kerry) – a jibe that plays well in Europe but not in much of Middle America.

It would have been a minor blip in the final week of the campaign if he had apologised immediately and unequivocally and got the hell off the airwaves.

Instead, he wriggled and huffed and hit back and compounded his mistake with intemperate bad-mouthings of Republicans as "assorted Right-wing nut jobs" and "hacks who've never worn the uniform of our country are willing to lie about those who did". Having been, in his view, misrepresented by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in the 2004 presidential race and berated by his own party for not hitting back hard enough, Kerry went for the jugular. But his desire not to be "Swift Boated" (the attacks were so successful they coined a verb) and lack of political judgment meant that this time he overreacted.

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In contrast, on the stump this week Bush has shown that whatever his faults – and there are many – that he still has that indispensable political gift of speaking simply to ordinary people rather than talking down to them.

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I have sat in Humvees and Bradley fighting vehicles with black sergeants from Alabama, marines from Mexico and good ol' boy snipers from Kentucky in places like Fallujah and Ramadi as they described their hopes with an affecting optimism that belied the mortal danger they were in. In many ways, they embody what is great about America.

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There is more. This Brit shows a real understanding of how people in the US feel about the troops and about their politicians. Kerry would be better off if he showed more comprehension than posturing.