You may or may not be following this ginned-up "controversy" about some remarks by John Kerry. Yeah, he should have known better than to phrase his "joke" the way he did. Given the political climate, anyone in public life — Democrat, Republican, sane person — has to expect that his foes will twist statements into balloon animals to make them into something else, something they can use. In fact, one of the better arguments I've heard against John Kerry as President of These United States is that he lacks the p.r. skills necessary to get and do the job.
Then again, if Awkward Phrasing were a crime, George W. Bush would be getting the death sentence just before Election Day instead of Saddam. Almost every day, that man says something that he probably does not really mean or that could be spun as such…and sometimes, his opponents pounce on the opportunity. They shouldn't. We oughta cut all these guys a little more slack and try to deal with what they mean to say, not with what their enemies can turn it into.
Two things really bother me about the whole matter of Kerry's joke…three, if you count the fact that he seems to be growing a spine just when it won't do him or the country much good. One is the distraction of it all. At a time when we should be talking about what went wrong in Iraq and how to fix it, we're talking about what went wrong in John Kerry's mouth. And the other bothersome thing is seeing John McCain, the man who'll do anything for the Republican nomination in '08, stoop to piling on Kerry for insulting the troops when he knows darn well Kerry didn't insult the troops. This weblog post says it better than I can.