Would Someone Please Build This Guy A Memorial Library So He Can Retire?

Having a hard time finding a full clip of Kerry's speech. Here is a clip from the Olbermann show that includes a little more preamble, and some of the Kerry response to GOP criticism.

Start at 1:00 or so for the Kerry speech clip. It still seems to me like a stupid thing to say -- if he was joking about Bush, he blew it like he did so many times in 2004, with a miss so large that the "joke" re-explanation defies credulity. How do you have a 30-year career of public speaking experience and make a joke about Bush miss by so much that you sound like you are insulting "the troops'" intelligence?!? How do you do it a mere week before the midterm election, when your party has swung so far in front that all you have to do is not introduce any distractions from the news cycle of corruption, Iraq, torture, unaddressed terror, corruption, pending landslide, Iraq, rinse, repeat?

Check part of his response, around 3:30 in the Olberman clip...once again, just because Kerry's scripted point is right doesn't mean he is anything but an incompetent public speaker. At least Bush manages to convey a semi-coherent and generally cohesive statement (read:lie) when he speaks. He stays ON MESSAGE, appropriately trading any image of intelligence for the appeal and rhetorical advantages of simplicity, perceived strength, and implied strength of character.

Staying on message was invented for pols who can't speak extemporaneously, who can't stick to the point, who will ramble or say damaging things if given anything but a short leash. And that's Kerry, as much as Bush.

Kerry is rambling, scattered and seemingly incapable of saying anything in a direct and declarative way. He can't just leave it at that. He insists on including repetitions and rephrases within his delivery that are distracting, dilutive and disconcerting to ME, and I'm on his team.

Again, if I can't find more video that shows me he was talking about Bush, the idea that this was a botched joke is the real joke -- a rerun of Kerry's atrocious public presentation. It shows that he and his team learned nothing from their 2004 errors and loss.

Kerry continues to do more harm than good for the Democrats and American political discourse, and needs to be put out to pasture if he can't find the way himself.