One of the characteristic behaviors of the left is the big lie, the false attack on your opponent for something that you have done yourself. With John Kerry, this tendency is exacerbated by a uniquely highly developed case of tone-deafness, an insensibility to context, which in turn is a symptom, it seems to me, of his impenetrable self-regard and sense of entitlement. The other day Kerry attacked President Bush for having continued to read to the Florida school children for several minutes after getting word that the second plane had hit the World Trade Center. All other things being equal, I suppose it might be a fair point. But when we remember that Bush’s response to 9/11 is overall the high point of his presidency, with even his enemies admitting he was magnificent in the days and weeks following the attack, Bush’s initial delayed response (if that’s what it was) to the news of the attack would seem an extremely odd thing for Kerry to criticize him for.

As is always the case with Kerry, however, it gets worse than that. It turns out that on the morning of September 11, Kerry did not, like Bush, delay acting for a mere five minutes, he delayed acting for 40 minutes. Here is Kerry’s reply on July 8 to Larry King who asked him what he was doing on September 11th:

I was in the Capitol. We’d just had a meeting—we’d just come into a leadership meeting in Tom Daschle’s office, looking out at the Capitol. And as I came in, Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid were standing there, and we watched the second plane come in to the building. And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think, and then boom, right behind us, we saw the cloud of explosion at the Pentagon. And then word came from the White House, they were evacuating, and we were to evacuate, and so we immediately began the evacuation.

Since the South Tower of the World Trade Center was struck at 9:03 a.m., and the Pentagon was hit at 9:43 a.m., this means that Kerry along with several other members of the Democratic Senate leadership sat together at a table in a daze for a full 40 minutes, unable to act, unable to think. From Kerry’s description it sounds as if they weren’t even watching the television, as tens of millions of normal people did, to follow and try to make sense of the unfolding events. They simply relapsed into a passive state, neither taking in nor reacting to the fact that America was under an unprecedented attack. This is not surprising, since liberals are incapable of acknowledging the existence of evil and enemies (except of course for evil and enemies on the right). A serious attack by a real enemy doesn’t fit their conceptions, so when it occurs, they go mentally blank.

Kerry criticizing Bush for his insufficiently quick response on 9/11 is like a pacifist criticizing George Patton for failing to bring the fight to the Wehrmacht.

And just what did you expect Kerry to do? He wasn't the President. He wasn't the Vice President. Or the Sec'y of State of Naitonal Security Advisor or anything other than a Senator. He had no role to play in our national security that day. There was nothing Kerry or any other Senator, Dem. or Rep., could have done at that point. Had Kerry been President, then the criticism would be valid. But no one in the legislative or judicial branches of the government had any authority to do anything on the morning of 9/11. That was an executive-branch role only, and as the chief executive of this country, Bush failed miserably. If that was the crowning point of his administration, that doesn't say much for the rest of it. He got on Air Force 1 and flew around for a day like a coward.

And as for your opening comment about a characteristic of the Dem. Party being the big lie, you're joking, right? The Republican Party is known for its bag of dirty tricks and lies. I don't think most of them even know how to tell the truth anymore. This goes way back, too. Remember Adlai Stevenson's line:

"I'll make a bargain with the Republicans. If they'll stop telling lies about us, we'll stop telling the truth about them."

It says it all.