Kerry: "I didn't flip-flop on anything"

By far the funniest line I've read since the 2004 election comes from the conclusion of Michael Kranish's interview of Sen. John F. Kerry in today's Boston Globe (hat-tip to an alert reader who emailed me the link):

Asked what hurt him the most during the campaign, Kerry mused about how ''all of us are flawed as human beings" and ''I think I have a strong record" before raising his voice and declaring: ''One thing I know is that I didn't flip-flop on anything."

Surely that line must induce soda-through-the-nose chortling among even many loyal but clear-eyed Democrats. It would be like Dubya declaring, "One thing I know is that I don't have a Texas accent." It leaves one wondering — actually, it leaves me in a state of absolute conviction as to — whether John Kerry really does inhabit an alternate, not-quite-parallel universe.

But now that Sen. Kerry's a big-time national loser, previously friendly MSM interviewers like Kranish or Meet the Press' Tim Russert have become strangely, very belatedly interested in whether he'll finally sign Standard Form 180. Sen. Kerry responds exactly like a child who's already been grounded but is still being questioned about the neck of the broken cookie jar draped around his wrist (bracketed portion by the Globe):

The furor over military credentials hasn't ended with the campaign. Kerry pledged to sign Form 180, releasing all of his military records, but challenged his critics, including Bush, to do the same.

''I want them to sign it, I want [swift boat veterans] John O'Neill, Roy Hoffmann, and what's their names, the guys on the other boat," Kerry said. ''I want their records out there. They have made specific allegations about my record, I know things about their records, I want them out there. I'm willing to sign it, to put all my records out there. I'm willing to sign it, but I want them to sign it, too."

Kerry later confirmed that his decision to sign the form is not conditional on any others signing, but he expressed lingering bitterness over double standards on military service.

''Let me make this clear: My full military record has been made public," Kerry said. ''All of my medical records and all of my fitness reports, every fitness report involving each place I served, is public. Where are George Bush's still? Where are his military records? End of issue."

End of issue? End of issue?!? I suppose that's true in the sense that the 2004 election effectively destroyed John Kerry as a politician of national scope — to the point that I feel slightly frivolous in bothering to write this post.

But doesn't this sound a lot like the "Tommy was stealing cookies too" defense? Earth to Astronaut Kerry: The "guys on the other boat" — which boat, which "guys"? shouldn't it be "guys on the other boats" (plural), plus "the guy on my boat"? — and even your opponent weren't running for President as self-proclaimed war heroes. You were.

And Dubya's military records have been sliced, diced, puréed, and even (when the real records were not deemed sufficiently damning by his enemies) forged and promulgated worldwide through a mainstream media conspiracy that, thank goodness, the blogosphere exploded.

By contrast —

• An official Navy Department spokesman confirmed during the campaign that the Navy had "withheld thirty-one (31) pages of documents from the responsive military personnel service record as we were not provided a release authorization" — i.e., the now-finally-promised (but still-not-signed) Form 180.
• WaPo's Michael Dobbs wrote way back on August 22nd (and then seemed, conveniently, to forget he'd written) that only selected medical records had been shown (and then snatched back) from the press; that the Kerry campaign was "continu[ing] to deny or ignore requests for other relevant documents, including Kerry's personal reminiscences (shared only with biographer [Douglas] Brinkley) [and] the boat log of PCF-94 compiled by Medeiros (shared only with Brinkley)"; and that there were "at least a hundred pages" of records that the Navy Department had withheld on privacy grounds (again, no signed Form 180) in response to WaPo's Freedom of Information Act request.
• Kerry's own pet biographer, Douglas Brinkley, has said to the press of the "massive archive" of Kerry's private papers that he (Brinkley) had reviewed in writing his book, "go bug John Kerry" since "the papers are the property of the senator and in his full control."

In short, not only many details of John Kerry's active duty service record, but of his discharge status and his Paris trips (plural) to meet with the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese, still remain shrouded behind Sen. Kerry's very effective stonewall.

If the American public had come to believe that Sen. Kerry had the sort of passionate dedication to protecting us that I believe he has for protecting his own secrets, the guy might actually have been elected. To complete my backhanded compliment, I'll add that John Kerry could have taught Richard Nixon the true meaning of the terms "brazen" and "cover-up."

And yet John F. Kerry, the self-promoting "war hero" and former presidential candidate, has the unmitigated gall to suggest that the "guys on the other boat[s]" be put under the microscope he's repeatedly and successfully deflected from himself.

I suppose to have a sense of shame, one must first have a sense of reality — and John Kerry is so shameless precisely because he lacks any grip on reality. He's still living in the fantasy world of his Super 8 home movies and war diaries — the noble, tragically misunderstood Last Action Hero of his own peculiar alternate universe.  Of course, he's got friends who live there with him — Michael Moore, Garrison Keillor, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, Al Sharpton, etc. The question confronting the Democratic Party, however, is whether they all want to live there with him.