John Kerry Under the Microscope

The only thing remotely sexy about presidential hopeful John
Kerry is that his name is not George W. Bush. Though the man
currently occupying the White House is about as arousing to
American college students and anyone outside the United States as
milk-gone-bad, a prolonged taste of Kerry isn’t giving anyone
orgasms either.

Instead of appealing to young, on-campus voters by hyping the
need to make college more affordable or snatching democracy from
the corporations and giving it back to the people, John Kerry is
delivering his same, generic speech on his Campus Tour 2004 —
promoting tax-code reform, outsourcing, Social Security, and
Medicare, writes The Village Voice‘s Anya Kamenetz. ‘No
candidate would go to a senior center and give a lecture about Head
Start. Why, then, bring college students to a speech at the
‘Harvard of the poor,’ only to address the concerns of the
middle-aged middle class?’ asks Kamenetz, who interviewed several
first-time voters looking for a reason, any reason, to vote for
Kerry in November.

The World Press Review‘s compilation of reports on
Kerry from all over the world echoes the bored sentiment of
American’s youth. Luis Fernando Verissimo of the O Globo,
a centrist newspaper in Rio de Janeiro (where they definitely know
what’s sexy!), writes: ‘[Kerry’s] thoughts are slow and his
speeches are notoriously unexciting. His biggest claim to fame
might be that he has the same initials and is from the same
political base (Boston) as John Fitzgerald Kennedy … Aside from
the fact that a romp against Bush by anybody would make the whole
world a safer place … Kerry doesn’t impress us all that much.’
Meanwhile, Soledad Loaeza of the left-wing Mexican paper La
Jornada laments that ‘electability’ is the only word with any
punch for the Democrats this year.
— Jacob Wheeler

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Loaned: Kerry Borrows Youth Voters for his Campus
Snoozefest

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The
International Press on John Kerry

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