Brain Fertilizer

Check out this letter and compare it to My post here.

Since there's alot there, I direct you to this specific section:

Because by any rational measure, Kerry was toast before he even ran.

The Office of the President is the head of the Executive Branch. As such, you need to convince people that you are the best executive for the job. There are exactly two ways to do this:

1) Provide an excellent example of your executive leadership ability.
2) Be charismatic enough to overcome a weak executive resume.

Every single President over the last 40 years was either a state governer or a Vice President, right? Take that back to Herbert Hoover, and the only exceptions were John F. Kennedy (won on charisma) and Dwight D. Eisenhower, who held the highest military positions (clearly executive excellence).

What on earth convinced the Democrats that they could blaze trails with someone as obviously non-charismatic as John F. Kerry?

Aside from all that, however, John Kerry needed to show the United States public that he has the executive skills to guide the nation more ably than George Bush through any difficulty the nation might encounter. He needed to demonstrate, with examples from his past or clear and specific plans for the future, exactly why he would make a better President, executive, leader, and Commander-In-Chief than PResident Bush has. They dropped the ball when they tried to make a four-month stint as commander of a Swift Boat be the main testimony to his leadership and executive skills. They made further mistakes when they merely criticized how President Bush has handled things and gave vague mumblings of, "I would do better."

No. Not good enough. Since the choice is between someone who has years of executive experience and someone who has little to none, John Kerry should be trying to demonstrate that he has the intelligence, flexibility, humor, aplomb, grace, decisiveness, courage, innovation, etc, to handle any situation. Not only better than Bush, but better than the voters themselves. Because few people really know what it is like to be President, to deal with the leaders of other nations who will do anything to undercut and backstab the United States if it will help their position in the slightest. John Kerry has not demonstrated he even understands that, much less can help the voters understand that.