Kerry pries foot from mouth; sound-bite politics escalate

John Kerry said something truly foolish on Monday, suggesting to college students that if they didn't get an education, they'd get "stuck in Iraq." Taken at face value, it was demeaning and offensive, implying that the soldiers fighting for their country are stupid and uneducated.

(Kerry: Has apologized. / AP)

Under fire from outraged-but-gleeful Republicans, Kerry says that he intended nothing of the kind, that he really meant to make a joke about President Bush, a self-admitted C student who got the nation mired in Iraq. Maybe so. But the Democratic senator from Massachusetts, who has endured a presidential campaign and knows the price for loose talk, compounded the initial error by lashing out at critics and taking two days to apologize.

What to make of the uproar?

At one level, in the maddeningly bland discourse that often passes for political dialogue, rare unscripted moments can offer a revealing window into a candidate. In 1968, Republican presidential hopeful George Romney's admission that he had been "brainwashed" during a military tour of Vietnam suggested a lack of mental toughness. Four years later, when Democrat Ed Muskie appeared to cry in New Hampshire, it raised questions about his emotional stability.

In today's age of talk radio, bloggers and YouTube, such moments just reverberate more loudly and quickly.

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean's scream after he placed third in the 2004 Iowa caucuses suggested an angry man who lacked self control, torpedoing his campaign. This year, in Virginia, Republican Sen. George Allen's calling an Indian-American Democratic operative "macaca" and singling him out for derision at a campaign event suggested a racially insensitive bully. His re-election, once seemingly assured, is in doubt, as are his presidential aspirations.

Kerry could find his 2008 hopes similarly impaired. His comments reinforced his reputation for having a tin political ear. His initial reaction suggested he was more interested in displaying bristling toughness under fire than in expressing regret for disparaging the troops, including highly educated ones, who volunteered and are proud to serve. Kerry was, after all, once just such a soldier himself. Botched joke or not, the right thing to do was to apologize, which Kerry belatedly and grudgingly did Wednesday.

At another level, the Kerry flap is sadly typical of the sound-bite politics dominating the closing days of a brutally negative campaign.

Future historians might well shake their heads that with the nation bogged down in a failing war and threatened by terrorism, three of the days leading up to a crucial election were dominated by a gaffe by someone who's not even running this year.

Aren't there more important things to talk about? Does any candidate, for instance, have a workable plan for what to do next in Iraq? Or a way to fix the federal budget, immigration policy and the health care system?

These are tough issues. Maybe it's just a lot easier to play "gotcha" politics.