Let's get this straight. George Bush is not considered to be a moron because he was a C-student at Yale. He's thought to be a moron because he has no intellectual curiosity, possesses not a shred of self-doubt, and has little interest in the opinion of others. I suppose the fact that he rarely cracks open a book may be a factor as well. He also happens to be one of the most unpleasant a-holes ever to come to power in the West, his faux-religious sentiments notwithstanding. In any event, such traits are likely a sign of intellectual insecurity, but are not necessarily inconsistent with being a good President.

Unfortunately, the people he surrounds himself with are not the sharpest tools in the shed, either. His economic policies have been disastrous, his foreign policy is short-sighted and has been consistently characterized by a lack of preparation, whether it entailed dealing with pre-attack warnings before 9/11 or what to do after the fall of Saddam. He is a very able politician, but skill in that area is determined by shrewdness in dealing with the public, not intelligence. The ability to exploit the class anger and racial divisiveness in the Red States does not require a politician to be a genius, just as the exploitation of that base superstition which is euphemistically called "Fundamentalist Christianity" does not require any great philosophical understanding of the world.

Having said that, WTF was Kerry's rationale in not signing that damned form? That his grades at Yale were about the same as Bush's? Jeez, would anyone have cared about that? If people did care about that, he could have always pointed out that he had the higher grades during the only relevant period, the two years both he and Bush were together at Yale (1964-1966). The question about which of the two candidates was the more intelligent was quite dramatically resolved not when they attended college four decades ago, but over the three debates last year, in which Kerry kicked Bush's ass.

More to the point, why didn't Kerry want his military records out? Over the past few months, I've read rumors that the reason Kerry didn't want to sign Form SF-180 releasing all of his military records was that they would prove he exaggerated his service record, as the SBV's claimed, or that he had received a dishonorable discharge that he later expunged from his record. Even I thought that he was probably embarrassed about something; my guess is that he had contracted an STD over in Vietnam. It turns out, none of that was true.

Instead, the newly-released records make him look even better than before, if the Boston Globe (hardly a sympathetic paper to the Senator) is to be believed. The same lying dirtbags who accused Kerry of faking his injuries and exaggerating his combat performance are now shown to have written commendations for young John Kerry, calling him "one of the finest young officers with whom I have served"..."the acknowledged leader of his peer group," and ..."highly recommended for promotion."

Would it have mattered? For his opponents, no; the whole point of the Swift Boat accusations wasn't that they were true, but that the slander was repeated, again and again, by people who honestly didn't care. The fact that many of the people who pushed the story were bloggers with law degrees is part of the shame of my profession. For others, Kerry's war record (and Bush's dereliction of same) was a direct repudiation of their lives, that it could be possible to love one's country and serve it courageously while still being a critic of its policies; it was no coincidence that the chickenbloggers were most vociferous on this issue. If he had signed the form, they would have ignored it, since it was more important to pretend Kerry had something to hide.

But such partisans are a minority. The Swift Boat Ads were only played in a few states, but seemed to have had an especially dramatic impact in Ohio. A stronger response by Kerry could have swung that state into his column. Ultimately, he's responsible for not seizing the opportunity.