Is that he tells the truth by accident. His joke was a Freudian slip with important policy implications. Alex Tabarrok explains:
John Kerry this week has been abjectly apologizing for his statements on Iraq and education. According to Kerry he intended to critique President Bush:
"Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq."
But what he said was:
"You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
The irony is that the joke he intended to make is a lie but what he actually said may be the truth. The disaster in Iraq was created by a bunch of highly educated intellectuals but the soldiers fighting in Iraq do have less education than the young men and women who have stayed home. According to historian David Kennedy, quoted in the October issue of the Atlantic, 50 percent of 18-24 year olds in the general population have some college education compared to only 6.5 percent of the same age group in the U.S. military.
As a young male of military age, I am acutely aware of just how unfair this war has become. While I'm enjoying my tax cut, many of my enlisted peers are suffering through their third overseas deployment. Through a simple slip of the tongue, John Kerry managed to make an excellent point. It's a shame he had to apologize for it.
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This is totally a self-inflicted wound for Kerry. If he had just come out and said on Monday afternoon, "This is what the joke was supposed to be," told the joke, added, "I muffed the punchline," and then issued an apology to the troops, even the most vicious efforts of the Republican attack machine wouldn't have been able to keep the issue alive more than a day or two.
Instead he waffled, hemmed and hawed, and refused to apologize for three days. Then, when he did apologize, he just posted a lame apology on his website, rather than holding a press conference.
David Letterman (I think it was him) was right when he said that Kerry can lose an election that he's not even in!
I think the quote about losing an election he's not even in came from Jon Stewart.
Either that or in the White House.
That's exactly why it's upsetting people so badly - because on some level it's true. In my part of the country, many young men join the military to get an education, because they don't have the resources to pay for four years of college. It's hardly an issue of laziness or smarts - some of my most challenging students have been Iraq vets. But Kerry's screwup plays right into the reflexive conservative hysteria against out-of-touch intellectuals. Couldn't he have botched a joke about something less fraught?
Regarding the original joke, it's quite possible for college graduates like Bush to be "intellectually lazy" despite their educational credentials. The original joke wasn't necessarily inaccurate - just more subtle. Which is why it's so much easier for people to go with the botched version. Thanks, Kerry.