NP: Real Time With Bill Maher

Hey, blogging from the couch! More on the laptop, from the laptop, later. Maybe.

Anyway, I'm watching Real Time With Bill Maher, and Bill is interviewing failed presidential candidate John Kerry. Kerry just said something very interesting. He said that, in response to a question about taking the low road, that he should have responded more quickly and more forcefully to the GOP attacks and misrepresentations.

What I find interesting here is that Bill Clinton had a team devoted to exactly that task, and he won. Twice. And he was the guy with the much more checkered past than either Al Gore or John Kerry. In retrospect, was it because Clinton had obvious reason to protect himself from his own past that he was more effective? Did Gore's and Kerry's images as grown-up Boy Scouts give them a false sense of security that they wouldn't have to defend against the legendary "bimbo eruptions"?

Or was it an aversion to all things Clinton left over from the Lewinsky scandal? Either way, it's one of those things that makes you wonder whether or not the Dems can turn things around because they can't seem to focus on how to do it right instead of how not to do things wrong.