Don’t pay the New York Times

A pox on TimesSelect: here’s yesterday’s column by David Brooks:

John Kerry and John Edwards ran for office together and they lost together, and they both gave major speeches about Katrina this week, but there the similarity ends. The two men might as well live in different worlds.

Kerry began his speech by making the point that Bush and his crew are rotten. He then went on to make the point that Bush and his crew are loathsome. In the third section of the speech, Kerry left the impression that Bush and his crew are evil.
Now we all know people so consumed by hatred for George Bush that they haven't had an unpredictable thought in five years, but in Kerry's speech one sees this anger in almost clinical form.

In the first place, not even Karl Rove's worldview is so obsessively Bush-centric as John Kerry's. There are many interesting issues raised by Katrina, but for Senator Ahab it all goes back to the great white monster, Bush. Bush and his crew should have known the levees were weak. Bush and his crew should have known thousands in New Orleans would be trapped. (Did I miss Kerry's own warnings on these subjects?) All reality flows back to Bush. All begins with Bush, ends with Bush, is explained by Bush and is polluted by Bush, cursed be thy name.

Brooks compares the speeches by John Kerry and John Edwards and concludes that it’s Edwards who actually has some ideas while Kerry is stuck in red-meat mode. One thing that always annoys me about Kerry is he’s masterful at proclaiming that “somebody should do something” but he’s spent twenty years in the Senate with nearly no accomplishments to call his own. Some leader he is.

Extra: A heap of scorn is piled on Kerry over at Hub Politics.