I have to agree with William Safire in his NY Times essay today,"Kerry, Newest Neocon" (and, by implication, with Jason Pappas as well). Safire tells us that Kerry's statements during last week's foreign policy debate with President Bush were the essence of"hawkish" neoconservatism. This isn't just about wiping out"terrorist strongholds" in Falluja, or changing"the dynamics on the ground," or endorsing the concept of preemptive strikes against perceived threats. It's about"embracing Wilsonian idealism," which would enable Commander-in-Chief Kerry to spread"humanitarian" wars of"liberation" from the Middle East to Africa."His abandoned antiwar supporters celebrate the Kerry personality makeover," writes Safire."They shut their eyes to Kerry's hard-line, right-wing, unilateral, pre-election policy epiphany."

Alas, it is sometimes the case that people long identified with certain political propensities will embrace their opposite upon achieving political power. It has long been said that only a life-long anticommunist like Richard Nixon could travel to Russia and China. If Kerry bests my six-month old prediction of a Bush re-election, I think we should all be prepared for a similar transformation in the new JFK. Whatever Kerry's most recent criticisms of Bush's Iraqi adventure (criticisms with which I am in large agreement), I stand by my observations in that article:

A President Kerry would further institutionalize the Iraq War. He might be positively Nixonian in his approach: Before Nixon committed to the"Vietnamization" of the war in southeast Asia, to troop reductions and the elimination of conscription, his quest for"Peace with Honor" actually entailed a widening of the war. Likewise, Kerry himself might actually increase the number of troops in Iraq. He will do everything in his power not to go down as the President who"lost Iraq."

In the end, I don't see any fundamental change in the direction of American foreign, or domestic, policy.

Check out the refurbished"Not a Blog."

But there's one small problem here - we've seen this from Bush before. We've seen the short, direct answers. We've heard the folksy tales about praying with people and rolled our eyes. We've heard him call people"Vladimir" with a kind of personal twang that drives folks of an intellectual bent nuts. We grab our hair and yell and want him to see how complicated the world really is. After all we've backpacked through it smoking grass and getting to really know people in our self-righteous elite way.

But when faced with the cold light of day I believe that a lot of people who live in small towns, go to church (because they want to), have"real" jobs, and shop at Walmart (not Pottery Barn, my God what a bad choice of stores by Kerry) like the fact that Bush bugs all of us know-it-alls. I think they like the way he boils things down for people. And I think they trust him for reasons of faith that a lot of us pompously try not to understand.

Everytime we've seen this performance that drives intellectuals nuts he's won. He beat Ann Richards with it, and he beat Al Gore with it. He crushed the Democrats in '02 on security, certainty, and simplicity. And last night he hammered Kerry, again and again, on the same lines of consistency and flip-flopping. In my mind, Kerry never effectively answered why he did what he did. If you're willing to listen long enough, and think about the world as gray, you might buy Kerry's response. But for most folks, the world doesn't work that way. Bush is no Clinton, but he's a bulldog when it comes to staying on message. I'll be bold (or stupid) enough to say it - I think Bush won last night with the folks that mattered most, and that group doesn't include people like me.