Winner Drew Strength From Study of Weaknesses

[Feanorcurufinwe]

John F. Kerry heard it when he went to Iowa and he heard it when he went to New Hampshire. He heard it from voters and from longtime confidants, the criticism couched in respectful but increasingly urgent language as last fall came and went along with Kerry's once-formidable advantages in the Democratic presidential race. There was a problem with his campaign, and it was him.

For a lifetime high achiever -- a war hero in his twenties, a successful prosecutor in his thirties, a U.S. senator in his forties -- it was not the easiest thing to be told that, as a presidential candidate, he was something of a clod. His message was muddled. His manner with voters was discursive, distracted, unpersuasive. Kerry said he welcomed the blunt reviews.

"All my life I've been capable of accepting criticism and advice," he recalled in an interview earlier this week. "All of us can always try to improve as people, and I try to. . . . I kicked into gear. I'm known as a good closer, and I brought my game up to what I have to do, and I brought the campaign up to where it needed to be."

So he did, measured by the verdicts of Democrats in Iowa last week and in New Hampshire on Tuesday. Starting in mid-December, Kerry engineered one of the most dramatic turnabouts in modern political history. The hurtling trajectory of the past six weeks -- Kerry's ascension, and former Vermont governor Howard Dean's stumble -- is a reminder of the powerful premium that presidential politics places on self-discipline and the penalties it imposes on impulsiveness.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54289-2004Jan27.html

[KissMyAsscroft]

1. Bullshit....

He won because of Dean and the media crucifying Dean.

[On the Road]

2. No, It's More Than That

I salute Kerry for doing this.

If Dean had done the same, he might have handled IA and NH differently. Seems uncharacteristic, since Dean's public record suggests moderation and rationality.