John Kerry: the conservative in the race

I'm not a big fan of Andrew Sullivan, but he is right on this one:

[W]hat strikes me in [David] Brooks' defense of Bush is how it's traditionally a liberal defense of a liberal president. It's liberalism that has historically enunciated grand, abstract themes and conservatism that has always emphasized the difficulty of translating abstraction into reality, of finding the proper means to achieve certain ends, of the limits of our intellect when faced with the world of practical life. In that philosophical sense, it is Kerry who is the practical conservative in this race; and Bush who is the airy-fairy idealist.

Back in the day, I knew people who used to laugh at liberals as being people whose hearts were in the right place—they "meant well" was the sneer—but whose brains had been fried in the '60s.

It depresses me to think of how many of those people will vote for Bush next month.