The guy who might cause Kerry to lose

[quaoar]

Bob Shrum, whose track record in presidential campaigns is terrible. yet he is Kerry's chief speechwriter:

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/ArticleDisplay.php?id=397

Bob Shrum's fingerprints have been found at the scene of an uninterrupted string of Democratic presidential catastrophes over the past 30 years. Ed Muskie and George McGovern in 1972. Kennedy in 1980. Richard Gephardt and Michael Dukakis in 1988. Bob Kerrey in 1992. The only successful Democratic candidacies of the era -- Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992 -- were Shrum-free affairs. (Shrum worked for 10 days for Carter, but quit in a huff.)

Even after Shrum added to that litany with his disastrous 2002 attempt to transform silver-spoon Beltway insider Al Gore into the candidate of the common man, he remained the most sought-after catch of the primary season. And Shrum is tighter than tight with Ted Kennedy, Kerry's campaign savior. All good reasons, it seems, for Kerry to ignore the thread that runs through Shrum's failed presidential campaigns: blind devotion to an ideology that went out of style 30 years ago.

Shrum is, however eloquently, a one-trick pony, selling a 1960s populism bristling with the imagery of class warfare. When Kerry declares himself -- in the same language used by dozens of Shrum candidates over the years -- "a fighter" against "the powerful forces" of corporate greed and wealthy special interests, he is preaching the Shrum gospel.