"My Opponent Has Had...Very Few Signature Achievements"

You might have heard something of the new Bush attack line that John Kerry was an unaccomplished Senator. Ballsy coming from somebody who was in an alcoholic haze when Kerry was leading investigations into US government involvement in drug-trafficking in Central America. [And besides, aren't "signature achievements" few in number by definition?--ed.]

Matthew Yglesias has a sharp piece in the American Prospect on the respective accomplishments of Kerry and Bush, pre-2004. Money graphs:

Kerry "has no record of reforming America's intelligence-gathering capacity?" Maybe, but at least he hasn't spent years leaning on the intelligence community to overstate Iraq's WMD capacity, then misstating the community's findings, then trying to blame the problem on the CIA, then getting duped by his Secretary of Defense into actively obstructing intelligence reform. But to call attention to the president's record of letting his intellectual failings and the fanaticism and corruption of his advisors endanger the lives of people all across the world is to be a bit too kind. This is, let us recall, George W. Bush accusing someone else of lacking accomplishments.

While John Kerry was serving as an officer in the United States Navy, leading men in a shooting war and winning an armful of medals in the process, Bush was a male cheerleader and fraternity president at Yale. He later went on to use family connections to land a spot in the Air National Guard, duty from which he took ample time off to run losing political campaigns. Kerry became a leader in an influential movement, a candidate for office, a successful prosecutor, the Lieutenant Governor of a medium-sized state, and then a U.S. senator during a period when Bush was letting alcoholism nearly wreck his marriage, doing something with drugs he refuses to answer questions about, and running a variety of businesses into the ground, losing his dad's friends a bundle of money in the process.

Kerry didn't do much as a senator besides read bills other people wrote and decide how to vote on them. The president, meanwhile, doesn't read the newspaper. Or his daily intelligence briefings. Or the reports of government commissions. Not even the executive summaries!

No doubt this is a game you can play at home, but make sure you keep it between friends. In public, remember, you're positive and optimistic.