Timothy Noah is blowing smoke. If he's 46 now, he was 2 years old when Kennedy won the elction in 1960 -- only 1 in the midst of the campaign. He was 5 or 6 when LBJ ran in 1964, and barely 9 when Humphrey began his run in 1967. I doubt very much he remembers how appealing they were as candidates. In 1967 I was a volunteer for RFK (I was 16). I remember Humphrey very well, and a more unappealing candidate could not be found -- a man so desperate to please the party bosses he refused to condemn the police riot underway outside the Chicago convention, nor was he able to mention even one word against the Vietnam war (scared to death of LBJ) until two or three weeks before election day. When he finally came out against the war he surged in the polls and came within a hair's breadth of defeating Nixon -- but it was too little, too late. As for Kerry, he ain't my dream candidate either, but then again dream candidates are far and few between. Noah's claim that he's "pompous, an opportunist, and indecisive," is just silly and childish. Is he pompous or just somewhat patrician -- and who really cares? Opportunist? By definition all politicians are opportunists, and who in their right mind would attack Kerry as an opportunist in the face of what Bush's greed and insane imperial ambitions have done to the nation? Indecisive? Clearly, no more than most politicans and far less than others. Besides what does that really mean anyway? Look through the record of any Senator who has served as long as Kerry and you'll be able to find seeming contradictions (real and imagined) and apparent indecision (ditto). The bottom line is this: While I am very wary of kerry on the Middle East (Iraq, Israel, etc.) , I know he won't tear up the Constitution, destroy medicare and social security, destroy the environment, pack the courts with right-wing extremists, nor will he force the Bible down our throats, abandon public education, turn the economy over to the whims of coporations, and start taxing the poor which Bush is sure to do, nor will he renew the draft, in order to invade Syria and Iran, which Bush is also quite likely to do. Kerry is clearly not the final answer to Bush and his cronies, but he's the beginning of the answer. The rest is up to us.