Do you want some cheese with that whine?

Nicholas Von Hoffman makes some excellent points in his NY Observer article “Kerry’s ‘Me Too’ Campaign seems destined for failure”

The Republicans have been saying that Mr. Kerry is too weak and wishy-washy to be commander in chief, and this recent performance goes a long way to confirm it. Nobody ever got elected to anything running around crying, "Mama, he hit me!" Politics, as they still say, isn’t bean bag.

But then he slips into delusion:

The tactically correct answer to the Republican attack was to reply in kind. To counter the Swift boat ad, the Democrats ought to have gotten one of their own front groups like MoveOn.org to run a TV spot beginning with a voice-over saying, "When the going gets tough, President George Bush gets going to the bunker. In the Vietnam War he hid out, and on 9/11 he fled to an underground bunker in Nebraska, where he stayed until he got the all-clear signal."
The Republicans would split their spleens over such an ad. They would be the ones whimpering over at the Federal Elections Commission to put a stop to the Democrats’ outrageous low-roading.

Oh no no no no no. Please, oh, please Democrats, run ads just like this – Karl Rove would rejoice. Kerry has so overplayed his Vietnam card, it is now starting to backfire as a stand-in for any genuine, forward-looking policy. And any reminders of 9/11 always help President Bush. “Split a spleen?” “Whimper?” Please. MoveOn and other 527 groups have been spending millions on anti-Bush ads for months with nary a word from the White House. The Swift Boat Vets run a couple ads in Ohio and Kerry screams like a girl with a pigtail caught in the pencil sharpener.