KERRY AGONISTES

However mad I am at Bush, just a few minutes reading John Kerry’s foreign policy and cultural perspective makes me want to … well, it just spoiled my breakfast. Read this foreign policy discussion. Now imagine 9/11 had never happened. It isn’t hard. Al Qaeda is mentioned once. I repeat: al Qaeda is mentioned once. My stomach lurches at the thought of another terror attack while Kerry is president. What would be his first response: reach for a dog-eared copy of the early Sartre? Look, Eliot is a spectacular poet. I’ve read him year after year after year. I dramatized the “Four Quartets” at Harvard. But that’s not a qualification for the presidency. Then there’s this classic line of pretentiousness and self-regard: “I remember flying once; I was looking out at the desert and I wrote a poem about the barren desolation of the desert. I wrote a poem once about a great encounter I had with a deer early in the morning that was very moving.” Oh God. Four years of this?