How Kerry's "joke" was supposed to go

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. Just ask President Bush.

Unfortunately, as I wrote last night, he delivered it as

You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.

Kerry hasn't had as much practice as Bush has. If he'd taken office in January 2005, according to the true outcome in Ohio, he might have delivered such a "joke" as written.

And Bush does seem to have used his advantage well. He even speaks with considerably more fire than Kerry. The words of Kerry's press conference after the predictable Bushevik attack on his gaffe seemed emotional enough, but I saw and heard a snippet of his delivery on TV last night, and he was more like Al Gore, vintage 2000.

And I haven't seen so many reports lately of Bush saying stuff like, "Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." That was supposed to go, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you."

Now that the Busheviks have a Kerry lapse (like "I voted for it before I voted against it") to pound to death until Election Day to distract as many voters as possible from the Bush record of incompetence and mendacity, they probably won't have to steal as many votes on November 7.