Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[wstera2]

Jonah Goldberg sums up the Mary Cheney issue (and its implications for Kerry) nicely: (Hat tip to Gina Vener)

..What is important and revealing is not what Kerry said about Mary Cheney but what Kerry's comments about Mary Cheney say about him. Andrew Sullivan, Hilary Rosen, and others can complain all they like about double standards and false outrage — none of that changes the fact that what Kerry did was creepy. Think of it this way: If Kerry had said that Dick Cheney's daughter is a "deviant," Andrew Sullivan would be furious at Kerry and he wouldn't care one whit if Dick and Lynne Cheney were upset with Kerry. Because it is Kerry's actions that are at issue, not the Cheneys' reactions.

So what did Kerry do? He tried to score political points by using the status — for want of a better word — of his opponents' family. He claimed to know the mind of someone else's child as a way to hurt the parents. It's the ultimate wedge issue, trying to divide or ridicule a family because of an abstract or partisan political point.

Bill Safire says that it was all premeditated. Bob Novak's reporting seems to indicate it was off-the-cuff. I suspect that it was Kerry off-the-cuff — which is the more damning interpretation if you ask me. If you actually watch the tape of Kerry's comments, you can see he's struggling to say something profound. You can tell that he was on the defensive — as he was on all the values questions — and, I think, you can tell that he was searching for a way to put Bush on the defensive instead. That was clearly John Edwards's intention when he mentioned Mary Cheney in the vice-presidential debate. All of the attention, by the way, to Cheney's graciousness in response to Edwards also misses the point. Cheney's motives for taking the high road were surely political. But Cheney's feelings and motives don't change the objective fact of the Kerry camp's intent.

I cringed when Kerry explained, "We're all God's children, Bob. And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as." Others in the room groaned. But it was obvious to everyone that Kerry was searching to score points, to twist the knife, to use Mary Cheney as a cudgel. The fact that Kerry used Mary's homosexuality was secondary. Gay rights, gay marriage, etc. — all of that is incidental to the fact that Kerry relished the opportunity to use Mary Cheney.

I'm no huge poll watcher, but the polls clearly show that most Americans "got it." Kerry can't resist the gravitational pull of a political opportunity. Indeed, as Brit Hume noted on Fox News Sunday and as I've written before, I think this goes further in explaining Kerry's flip-flops than anything else. He has terrible political instincts. And I don't think anyone can deny that his comments were driven by political instinct and not the "integrity, integrity, integrity" he claims his mother drilled into him.

When trying to explain why it was wrong, people have offered hypotheticals of Kerry mentioning an alcoholic or drug addict in his opponents' family. Kerry's defenders take immediate offense at the suggestion that being gay is like being a drug addict. We can discuss all that another day. But what if George W. Bush had said "divorce is a difficult issue. On one hand we all think society is healthier when marriages are healthier. On the other hand, we understand that good and decent people sometimes have irreconcilable differences. I'm sure if you asked John Kerry's first wife, she would tell you that there are no easy answers..." Or if he had said, "I'm sure if you asked John Kerry's lovely daughters whether it was easy for them to cope with their parents' divorce..." Or what if Bush had said, "America is a land of great opportunity for immigrants. I'm sure John Kerry's second wife Teresa, who was born in Africa, would agree..."

In any of those scenarios, I guarantee you that "getting it" would not have been a problem for the press.

http://nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200410190836.asp