Reply #17: Indeed, Ma'am

[The Magistrate]

It is quite possible Sen. Kerry's strategy for repelling this attack would have worked well a decade earlier. But understanding the ground on which a battle is fought is essential for a leader, and those who do not manage such understanding, and produce strategies and employ tactics apt to the actual present conditions, will fail of success, and have no one to blame but themselves for their defficiencies in the event.

My own reaction at the start of this back in summer of '04 was that Sen. Kerry was doing the right thing, that he was laying groundwork for a devastating counter-attack over the next few days, but it became soon apparent that was not the case, and that a terrible miscalculation had been made.

A patrician manner can be an excellent asset, but it is worth remembering the old noblemen on whose mein it is modelled knew quite well when the time had come to go savage and cut the necessary throats.