On a flight back from Berlin, Barlow turns up his voice of reason to comment on Kerry vs. Bush. Barlow is a Kerry supporter of the "anyone but Bush" flavor, but it is a mistake to brand him as such. Barlow is unhappy with Kerry, but terrified of Bush.

His central point is a common one; A reminder that a presidential election puts a power structure in place, not a person. It is necessary to look past the personality fashion show, and keep the laser beam on the specific issues and larger ideologies that guide them.

As is the tradition, I'll quote out of context and expect you to read the whole thing:

And let's face it, folks, John Kerry is really irritating. There. I've said it. And, having broken the surface tension on that spleen blister, let me just get the rest of this off my chest once and for all. ... Worse, Kerry's transparently theatrical efforts to out-macho the Republicans make him seem, as a friend recently put it, all dick and no balls. ... Kerry's failure to capitalize on the failures of the worst administration in my lifetime is unfathomable. ... Gradually, I have watched the steam go out of the Anybody-But-Bush crowd as we realized that anybody, in this instance, was the increasingly irksome John Kerry. ... And I have become, I must admit, one of these. Being an actual Kerry *supporter* just seems, well, un-cool.

... and the gear switch. Lincoln vs. Douglas it was not.

But is Kerry really as personally lame as he appears? Well, in fact, no. ... I would say not, especially when we consider what's at stake here. ... I refer to our national tendency to treat presidential elections as though we were all high-schoolers choosing a Prom King. ... Being dorky is more damning than being dictatorial. ... We were electing a set of ideologies, cultural predispositions, policies, practices, and beliefs - many of them religious - that may literally affect the fate of life on earth. ... Along with the man himself, whatever his personality traits, we got a large cast of characters who, in aggregate, have been vastly more important than the hands-off President himself. ... We got a legion of too-smart-by-half Stepford husbands with flags on their lapels, fire in their eyes, and God on their side. ... His masters, his servants, and his fundamental beliefs will all be very different, whatever his marketing wizards (all of whom study Rove) are telling him to say now. ... While it would be a wonderful thing to have a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, it is criminally misguided to think that we could bomb such a thing into existence. ... He has started the United States on a path towards oligarchy that, unchecked, could turn America into a country that makes Mexico look like Sweden. ... I won't attempt to repeat the list of his catastrophes here. ... Neither can the rest of us who have any regard for the well-being of our descendents. ... Yeah, John Kerry makes a lousy candidate for Prom King. But that isn't what he's running for.