Kerry: Man of the Present (only)

Drudge already has the goods on Kerry's latest blunder.

The hated Instapundit is also joining in the mirth at Kerry's expense.

What can the Posse add but to note that many politcians are hypocrites, but Kerry is part of that select group that is not only hypocritical but stupid about it.

An intelligent person has to wonder what the hell is going through Kerry's mind when he does this stuff?

The Posse has repeatedly tried to get inside the nuanced brain of John Forbes Kerry, but just when we think we may have an angle, he pulls a stunt like this.

It is, to be sure, one thing to flip-flop. It is another to build a career on gun control and subsequently campaign like Charleton Heston.

Is this an admission by Kerry that gun control is an electoral failure? Perhaps.

More likely the man is simply incapable of thinking that far ahead - or back.

Indeed, maybe the key to the enigma that is John Kerry is that the man exists entirely in the present.

The consequences of his actions have no hold on him for he reserves the right to repudiate them. Similarly, his past is whatever he decides it is.

Kerry simply doesn't trouble about consistency. This has less to do with political calculation than personality. Frankly, we don't think Kerry is bright enough to calculate his moves. For a man with his finger in the wind, he's amazingly tone-deaf.

No, the key to Kerry is that he simply doesn't trouble about what he said before, it is what he is saying now that matters to him.

Thus: he opposes Vietnam, but decides to serve. He creates himself a war hero, but casts away his medals and denounces his comrades upon his return. Later, he is the anti-war warrior, until 2004, when he becomes the proud veteran of a just conflict.

If Kerry were capable of calculation, he would have stepped away from his anti-war remarks and downplayed Vietnam in general, leaving it as a powerful but unspoken attack on George W. Bush.

Instead, he turned an advantage into a crippling disaster. Kerry may not just lose the election: he may lose some medals, too.

Only a man alive to the present, heedless of the future and indifferent to the past could act this way. It speaks volumes of his judgement and fitness for higher office.