The Democratic Response: My Worst Fears Realized

All my worst fears about the Democratic response to the State of the Union address being given by Virginia Gov Kaine were realized tonight when he completely failed to take on the president on his greatest vulnerability -- the war in Iraq. "Second guessing is not a strategy," Bush said -- but Kaine didn't even bother to second-guess. Instead, he told us "together, we can do better" (I swear he did!) and that "our greatest need is to heal our partisan wounds." Now if I can only figure out how to heal these fresh wounds on my wrists, we'll be fine. At least, together we'll be fine.

While Kaine was droning on, I closed my eyes and imagined Jack Murtha giving the response, someone with the authority to do much more than second guess -- to offer an alternative strategy on Iraq and the war on terror, as opposed to Kaine's program of "service and competent management." And I thought "competence" had gone out of vogue with Michael Dukakis.

As for the Kaine bromide, "common sense solutions to common problems" -- who came up with that one? Fire them immediately. Please.