During the course of telling Dems to chill a little re: their Kerry vision-thing worries, David Brooks says, this ayem:
The one big problem they are not addressing — and are actually making worse — is the creepy tone of prudentialism that envelops this campaign. Nobody is passionate about John Kerry. Primary voters embraced him in a calculating frame of mind. Party leaders talk about him ambivalently. Even Kerry seems coolly calculating about himself.
He has not communicated a consuming sense of mission that emanates from the soul and transcends political self-interest. You can position a candidate intelligently, and the Democrats are doing that. You cannot fake that sense of historic calling that actually inspires people.
So…he till sometime next month.