Rambling Kerry gets himself lost - Don't Make me Yawn

The Democratic challenger must find a punchier speaking style - and soon, says Philip James
Of all the horrors that George Bush has committed over the last four years, one of the most egregious has been his assault on the English language. However, as this election campaign has heated up, something strange has happened - John Kerry has taken on the role of the oratorically challenged, and Bush is suddenly scoring As in the speech department. After 20 years in the Senate, Kerry has developed a meandering, circumlocutory speaking style. The point he is trying to make is pushed to the distant end of ridiculously long verbal structures. I had hoped that, during the campaign, his speechwriters would fix this problem - but no such luck. Here is a typical example from a recent stump speech:

• "The other day, we were driving along the road in our campaign bus, and I saw a sign with a lone W leaning up against a post," Kerry began at a campaign stop in West Virginia last week. "At first, I was a little confused. But then it all made sense. As the president likes to say, there's nothing complicated about it. It does all come down to one letter - W. George W Bush. What do you think that W stands for? That W stands for wrong. Wrong choices, wrong direction for America." [yawn ]