Mickey Kaus skewers Kerry (again):

I'm a Democrat, but I have two big fears about John Kerry. The first is that he'll lose. The second is that he'll win. Let's take the second possibility first. One reason Kerry might lose, after all, is an inchoate public intuition that he would not be a successful president.

...Name an issue on which Kerry has taken this sort of career-threatening risk. True, he was an early supporter of the Reagan-era Gramm-Rudman-Hollings budget-balancing law. But since even Edward Kennedy supported Gramm-Rudman, there are limits to how many heresy points Kerry gets for it. Kerry's supporters occasionally offer his vote for welfare reform as evidence of courage--but supporting welfare reform wasn't a risky vote for a politician with national aspirations. It was the only safe vote. Nor was Kerry a significant presence in the welfare reform debate.

...Jimmy Carter took several years to reach that point. But Carter came into office as a highly effective salesman. It's not inconceivable, I think, that Kerry could turn into a Carter after several months. (Imagine his 1992 race initiative played out on a national stage.) In a parliamentary system, where a no-confidence vote can quickly produce a new government, this might not be such a disturbing prospect. But we have fixed presidential terms. Four years is a long
time.

Ouch.