In 2004 many people, including me, felt like they’d been kicked in the stomach and then run over by a cement mixer when George Bush won a second term in office despite running the country like a spoiled, underachieving alcoholic for four years and leaving us worse off in every respect, unless you were a fundamentalist Muslim or Christian, in which case you were pleased because you had a great deal more to be angry about than before he took office.  Despite being upset about his win, I was not exactly shocked by the outcome because the guy the democrats put forth was a bozo without equal named John Kerry who impaired his own chances at victory with such campaign highlights as taking a windsurfing lesson, using the word lesbian during a debate in a way that made America want to take a shower, and then in a bit of political theatre, disgraced his own laudable military service by “reporting for duty” at the Democratic Convention, which had the immediate effect of making everyone hate him a little more than they did before.  

Given that George Bush, who spent most of Vietnam telling penis jokes, doing cocaine and not showing up for National Guard duty, had pushed the country into wars in two different places, one would have assumed Kerry would have sought to exploit the one situation in which he had roughly a bazillion to zero credibility advantage.  It’s true that a bunch of dishonest soldiers decided to put their interest in constructionist judges and lower taxes ahead of honesty and integrity in the form of “swift boat” ads, but if Kerry weren’t a total blockhead, he’d have managed to make them look treasonous instead of reasonable.

Despite Kerry’s considerable shortcomings as a candidate, I was still sort of surprised he lost – at least until four months later when I saw him turn a softball interview on Imus In The Morning into a confusing mess, after which I wrote a piece entitled Mystery Solved, where I described him as having the subtlety of a “moose with an antler grown in his eye” and the “situation-reading prowess of a person sewn inside of a mattress”. 

This week, Kerry stuck his head out of the mattress just long enough to buy a 7 million dollar sailing yacht with his wife Teresa, who he annoyingly calls “Ter-ayze” as though everyone wants to refer to her by her weird nickname that’s almost her regular name only more awkward.  Anyone who reads the paper knows that Teresa has a lot of money and all of the airplanes and other expensive bullshit that come along with her inheritance, but what makes this obscene display of wealth from a liberal senator more insulting than usual is that the happy couple has managed to make the boat’s home port somewhere in Rhode Island.  Aside from the fact that Kerry is the senior senator from a neighboring state with 4,000 times as much coastline as Rhode Island or the fact that he and Ter-Ayze have a summer mansion on one of Massachusetts’s most prestigious islands, this move is odd because it saves the owners hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes that would be paid to Kerry’s home state if he were to keep it harbored there.

This certainly wouldn’t be the first time Kerry, or another politician has done something politically tone deaf in the interest of saving money on the use or purchase of luxury items that their constituents have only seen in movies, but it’s Kerry’s response to the issue that makes it both uniquely damaging, and uniquely Kerry.

So far, Kerry has responded to the allegations with his legendary PR savvy by a) issuing a series of vague statements such as “taxes will be paid if taxes are owed”, b) storming away from reporters and leaping into a black SUV following a public appearance, and later c)  introducing trademark nuance and insulting technicality to a black and white situation by suggesting that television reporters ask his wife about the boat issue, since she is the majority shareholder of the corporation they created to own the boat.

What Kerry doesn’t realize is that most people have marriages, lives and budgets and work hard every day to make ends meet.  Most people don’t own several million dollar recreational items apart from their spouse or spend time around the dinner table holding shareholder meetings to discuss the use and maintenance of family assets.   Watching Kerry handle this situation like a jackass is fun, but it makes me feel bad for America.  Even though we voted convincingly not to have him as our president, the people in my state continue employ him as our voice in important decisions. 

That John Kerry remains a powerful force in American government is a frightening prospect.  Fortunately for us he’ll never get out of his own way long enough to do any real damage.  Anchors aweigh!