John Kerry is sort of like trigonometry; one assumes it all means something to someone, but nobody can quite put their finger on it.

According to Senator Kerry, we must support him on November 2 because:

– He will protect the Supreme Court from judges such as Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, while favoring judges in the tradition of Potter Stewart, author of the concurring opinion of Roe v. Wade. 

– Kerry admires pro-lifers, but will not oppose federal funding of abortions.  Instead, he will “counsel people.”  One only hopes that he’ll do a better job of this than he does with his other political endeavors.  (“Really, mom, it’s okay — President Kerry helped me decide!  I actually did choose abstinence, before I chose to have unprotected sex.”)

– Once again illustrating liberals’ clinical infatuation with the hypothetical, he will not “require a 16-or 17-year-old kid who's been raped by her father and who's pregnant to have to notify her father.”

Susan Estrich, whose painfully unsuccessful management of the Dukakis presidential campaign earns her almost daily TV spots, wrote recently that the party in a debate who says the debate is a “tie,” is the loser.  In other words, if the Bush people say Bush and Kerry tied, Estrich claims that this is a surefire clue that Bush lost.  Fair enough. 

Then the Los Angles Times, for which Estrich is a contributing editor, described the second debate thus:  “Reluctant to pick winners this time, many analysts simply described the clash as aggressive and intense.”  If we are to rely strictly on Estrich’s ardent observation, I think it’s safe to surmise that Bush mopped Kerry.

Liberals’ finest post-debate moment came when they cited a FactCheck.org column which shows that President Bush does, in fact, own shares in a timber company, just as Kerry said he did.  (Feigning shock at Kerry’s pointless banter about the company, Bush jokingly asked, “Need some wood?”)

So now you know, America:  Bush really did make $84 off part ownership in a timber company.  The question we must now be asking is:  What’s Kerry’s point?

In the name of integrity and intellectual honesty, two attributes about which Kerry knows nothing, I will proclaim that Bush was wrong and Kerry was right about this measly, insignificant point.  But, again, why did Kerry bring it up? By the Republican definition, as Kerry correctly said, Bush would qualify as a “small business owner” because of the $84 he made in 2001 off the aforementioned timber business.  But — and Kerry did not mention this — 99.99% of Bush’s income for that year, according to FactCheck, came from other sources. 

This may be the key to Kerry’s debating style.  In fact, it is unquestionably the key.  Between Bush’s stutters and smirks he makes complex arguments about real issues.  Kerry is articulate and excels at using words like “Orwellian,” but he doesn’t actually say anything.  He’s like a trigonometry class; one assumes it all means something to someone, but nobody can quite put their finger on it. 

Take the “nuisance” quote that Republicans are rightly heralding as another example of Kerry’s pitiful worldview.  Kerry’s been in politics most of his life.  The New York Times has written about him hundreds of times.  They featured him, in their weekly magazine, three weeks before the election.  It was an amazing opportunity for him.  But what did he do? How did he take advantage of that 8,000 word lovey-dovey sleeping pill? He said he’d like terrorism to become a “nuisance.” 

In other words:  we’d better learn to deal with it.  Like underarm hair. 

Senator Mark Dayton, Democrat of Minnesota, says that he wouldn’t bring his two sons to the Capitol Building before the election out of fear of terrorism.  If terrorism was dropped to the level of a “nuisance,” as his candidate hopes, would he feel safer? Then could his boys come to Washington with daddy?

Perhaps Kerry’s nothing like trigonometry.  The sine function is always opposite-over-hypotenuse, and a triangle always has three sides.  But Kerry can’t be predicted at all.  We’re on the eve of an historic election, and no one knows what he’ll do next.  You might say he’s kind of a nuisance.