You are brave.  You are courageous.  You mean well.  You are correct on just about every issue facing America.  You are also politically clumsy, rhetorically impotent and are an election time bomb that picked the worst time to go off.  Please close your mouth, sit in the corner and do not say anything until this campaign season is over.  Oh, and by the way, don't run for president again either.

Going into yesterday, the Democrats were on the verge of capturing both the House and maybe the Senate.  Now both milestones are in jeopardy because of a comment that John Kerry made about wanting students to strive to become intellectuals -- a trait President Bush has rarely exercised while managing the Iraq war:

"I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq."

Doesn't sound so bad, does it?  But the way Senator Kerry worded it underscored precisely why he lost us the 2004 election.  Rhetorical lapses, such as, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion, after I voted against it," are not the mark of bad character or sly intent, they are the mark of a political communication disorder.  Right now, I have to ask why on earth did we nominate this guy as our party's presidential nominee in what was supposed to be the most important election in our lifetime?

Senator Kerry is a very strong man.  He fought in Vietnam, unlike most of the chicken-hawks behind our current failed policy in Iraq.  His record was distorted in 2004.  But let's face it: John Kerry made it easy for them.  He is also making it easy for them now by serving up this kind of rhetoric on a platter that can be used against his own party.

Don't get me wrong: I don't think John Kerry meant to say anything negative about our troops.  If he did then he would be attacking himself, since he once fought in a war, which would be a surprising statement for anyone to make, especially someone with an ego like Kerry's.  He meant that George W. Bush is "intellectually lazy," and that only someone intellectually lazy would dismiss foreign policy realities by sending young men and women into a poorly-planned war without a comprehensive plan for how to get them out.  That is the message John Kerry intended to imply.

But intent is nothing in politics.  I am only 23 years old, and have studied politics for just a few years -- and even I know that!  Again, just in case you've been reading other blogs that tell you otherwise, INTENT MEANS NOTHING.  Politics is a consequentialist profession.  This blog focuses mostly on political strategy, therefore I will give that to you.  It does not take a high-priced pollster to tell you that what Kerry said "sounded" condescending and elitist.  Again, John was not condescending, he SOUNDED condescending -- that is all that matters when you are one week away from a vote that will determine the future of the U.S. Senate.

Tomorrow when I check my email box, I know that I will get the same kind of hate mail I get every other time I criticize John Kerry's lazy rhetorical skills.  But something needed to be said.  Again, I know that Bush and Rove are turning this into a bigger issue than it should be -- but they are because John Kerry gave them their October surprise they had been looking for.