Matt Yglesias wonders if Bush really ought to question Kerry's alleged dearth of achievements:

While John Kerry was serving as an officer in the United States Navy, leading men in a shooting war and winning an armful of medals in the process, Bush was a male cheerleader and fraternity president at Yale. He later went on to use family connections to land a spot in the Air National Guard, duty from which he took ample time off to run losing political campaigns. Kerry became a leader in an influential movement, a candidate for office, a successful prosecutor, the Lieutenant Governor of a medium-sized state, and then a U.S. senator during a period when Bush was letting alcoholism nearly wreck his marriage, doing something with drugs he refuses to answer questions about, and running a variety of businesses into the ground, losing his dad's friends a bundle of money in the process . . .

The president, meanwhile, doesn't read the newspaper. Or his daily intelligence briefings. Or the reports of government commissions. Not even the executive summaries!

I thought being a faux-cowboy underachiever was the whole schtick that Bush was running on anyhow? [Granted that the underachievement may be Bush's most authentic quality.] I had not known however that Bush was a cheerleader.

Posted by Laura at August 2, 2004 06:01 PM