I stall for time by watching John Kerry

There is so much that I want to write about art and politics, that I don’t even know where to begin (I have a rant on my computer that I’m halfway through and then going to revise etc.) so I thought I’d turn to just politics for a moment:

I was watching some of John Kerry’s town hall meeting in Wisconsin and I have to tell you… this Presidency is really Bush’s to lose, not Kerry’s to win. I mean, that’s always to a certain extent true with incumbent Presidencies, but Kerry is just not very good at making the case that Bush is bad and that Kerry would be better.

A large amount of this is, unfortunately, purely stylistic. My dog Ramona napping next to me was far more interesting than the lockjaw up on the screen, and his audience knew it. They stared like zombies until he said something that was supposed to get applause, and then they passionately applauded and settled back in.

Personally, I just feel like Kerry needs to fire some of his staff and get people who can write great speeches out there. His speech today, what I heard of it, anyway, was at least 45% about a speech he made three days ago. He’s day “I was talking three days ago about pudding pops [or whatever], and I was giving this speech and you know what I said at that speech? I said `President Bush should spend more time looking at the economy and less time doing what Bill Cosby tells him to do [or whatever, usually by the time he got to the punch line, I had forgotten the set up]”.

I’m sure any of the playwrights out there who read this blog will recall somewhat at some point someone saying that one of the first rules of drama is show it don’t say it. In other words, Kerry, don’t reference the time when no was paying attention but you were pithy and passionate and wise just be pithy and passionate and wise and a good leader. You don’t have to be “one of us” to be a good leader—that’s W’s (and America’s) fallacy, you can be John Kerry and still be a good leader, you’re just choosing not to.

I wish they'd hire a director to take him through his laborious monologues, is what it basically comes out to. They should hire some good writers and a good director and just rehearse him non stop. Take him to some Alexander classes, or have him study Balinese mask work with Per Brahe, or some Suzuki method or biomechanics or even Bolislavsky and Meisner I don't care just get him to do something so that it looks like he's a human being and that he's worthy of our vote.

Luckily for us lefties, W could easily lose the election just based on (de) merit alone. Kerry could easily craft a strategy of getting surrogates out there in the mud constantly pointing out Bush’s total failure to do anything worthwhile. Let’s hope, however, that Kerry can paint a picture of why he deserves the job, not why W doesn’t.