According to his vainglorious wife, TEH-RAY-ZAH, his interests are “insatiable,” and according to the equally supercilious Maureen Dowd, he has a “vast palette of cultural preferences,” in addition to “an almost comically vast palette of aggressive masculine sports and hobbies.”  (He married all members of the latter group.)

Apparently he has a “phantom Irish side,” and he can even be a little “corny.”  He likes The Deer Hunter – I’m surprised he didn’t say he was the movie’s inspiration, as Al Gore said of “Love Story” — and he loves “Keats, Yeats, Shelley, and Kipling.”

“When I gave George W. Bush a culture quiz in 2000,” Dowd writes, “he gamely struggled to come up with one answer in each category, calling baseball his favorite ‘cultural experience.’  Mr. Kerry, on the other hand, struggled to stop coming up with a cascade of things in each category, rarely settling on a definite favorite.”

Make no mistake, Dowd says:  “Mr. Kerry is not a simple brush-clearing, ESPN-watching fellow.”

Kerry may not be, but unfortunately for his campaign, a lot of people are.  He probably doesn’t know any of them — and certainly Dowd doesn’t — but there are many Americans who both clear brush and watch ESPN.  In fact, I’d venture to guess that more people watch the various sporting events than have ever read Trinity, Kerry’s favorite novel.  (Incidentally, according to its publisher, the book is “…a masterful portrait of a beleaguered people;” had Kerry written it, he would have been writing about America.)

If Kerry was an overbearing nincompoop only when it came to his “vast palette” of cultural interests, it wouldn’t be so bad.  But when it comes to the War on Terrorism, I prefer the national anthem to The Rain in Spain.

Making what I hope will go down in history as the most telling — and most damning — words of this election, one of Kerry’s advisers said recently, "It's hard to imagine John banging his fist and declaring that countries are `either with us or against us.'” 

Perhaps the Bush Doctrine lacks the nuance of an Andrew Lloyd Webber hit (i.e., no singing pussy cats), but it seems to have worked thus far, inasmuch as the number of terrorist attacks against the United States since September 11, 2001 is precisely zero. 

Also unfortunate for Kerry is that he has a voting record longer than his face, chock-full of anti-defense positions.  As has now been widely reported, he voted for the cancellation of no fewer than 27 weapons systems that our military now uses to fight terror.  He voted against the B-1, the cruise missile, the M.X. missile, the Trident submarine, the Patriot antimissile system, the F-14A, the F-14D, and the F-15. 

Twenty years ago, Kerry called for an end to President Reagan’s military buildup — the military buildup that won the Cold War — and, rather astoundingly, a $50 billion cut in the Pentagon’s budget.  He was also for the nuclear freeze, and, a few years later, he opposed the first Gulf War.

Liberation is evidently not his strongest suit.

Today, when reporters ask him to defend his record, Kerry notes that he was “ill-advised” and “stupid.”  He’ll get no argument from me.  But the question then becomes how we’re supposed to know he’s gotten any smarter.  (He has, after all, consistently voted against intelligence.)