First the conversation I thought we were having:

Phil: Kerry windsurfing instead of campaigning. Afraid campaigning makes polls worse. Kerry bad.

Larry: ditto

Me: there was a scheduled campaigning blackout

Tom: Kerry has money [non sequiter, by the way]. Kerry campaigning makes polls worse. Press loves Kerry. Democrats hate Bush. Democrats have dirty tricks lined up. The press is out to get me.

Larry: more Kerry campaigning makes polls worse. Some more Kerry bad stuff at the bottom.

Me: Looks like Kerry was doing more than windsurfing today after all (in a joking manner). Ambiguous tease about the heroic Bush flight (sorry, can't help myself).

Tom (falling for my ambiguity): Bush flew planes.

Me: clarifying that I referred to the Lincoln incident.

Tom: Bush flew the jet partway out to the Abraham Lincoln. Maybe.

Kerry can windsurf. I'm not sure I'm following your line of thinking. What do either of these have to do with their abilities as President? Don't recall asserting anything about a connection between windsurfing and presidential ability (though now I gotta wonder if you guys have been implying that Kerry's clothing, stature, "patrician" sounding voice, etc. etc. has something to do with presidential abilities. I had assumed not.) Fact is, I do respect old guys who participate in physical sports. I respect sail-sports in general. Now if we could just get W to jump out of a plane, like his daddy...

As for the troop rearrangments, Kerry supported it before Bush actually did it. Where did this come from? Thought we were talking about either campaigning or extra-curricular activities. "As for the troop rearrangments"? Did I ambiguously bring it up, somehow?

As usual, his political stance appears to be "I would do exactly what Bush is doing, only it wouldn't be Bush doing it." Actually, for a lot of his supporters, that's all they need. OK, I'll indulge. Any two different presidents will *not* handle things the same way. If you really believed that Kerry will do things exactly like Bush, then you would not campaign for Bush.

As an example, Kerry has opened a rift with many of his followers by supporting his vote on granting invasion (after all other avenues had failed). I was skeptical of the intellegence. I thought that a lot of the arguements (for WMD. for invasion) sounded weak. I would more like to support a candidate that was as skeptical as I. Tough shit. But it does not mean that if we rolled back the last 4 years, put Kerry in the Oval, that Kerry would have invaded at all, or invaded when Bush did, or invaded in the way Bush did, or failed to plan for any aftermath of the war as Bush did, etc. If there was any way to settle it, I would gladly bet you that there would have been no invasion of Iraq at all, if Kerry were president. Maybe instead, those divisions would have been put to use patroling the Paki/Afgan border and digging out al Qeda? There is a huge difference between these two men.