One talks the talk while the other walks the walk

The stark difference between Bush and Kerry: One talks the talk while the other walks the walk.

Bush was a cheerleader who made zillions from an investment in baseball with help from his poppy's cohorts.

Kerry is a true athlete who has tackled some of the toughest sports.

In short, Bush is a pseudo-macho while Kerry is the REAL man:

"Clearly Kerry is a much, much, much, much better athlete," he said, noting that Mr. Kerry has long played competitive hockey and also regularly snowboards, Rollerblades, windsurfs and kite-surfs.

"Kite-surfing," Mr. McDonell said, "is the hardest, most radical thing to do. It's what the most extreme surfers are doing."

Mr. Bush, in contrast, was a cheerleader, and not, Mr. McDonell notes, the kind that did flips. "It's like spirit club."


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/19/weekinreview/19zernike.html

New York Times - September 20, 2004

Kerry's Lesson: Lambeau Rhymes With Rambo by Kate Zernike

THE key interview in this year's presidential campaign was not with any of the big national newspapers or newsweeklies. It was for the October issue of Field & Stream magazine.

John Kerry, the Democratic challenger, gave the magazine a half-hour phone interview. President Bush went further, granting a private tour of his Texas ranch and a long sit-down to the editor, Sid Evans.

The candidates are devoting so much time to one magazine because they are aggressively courting the newest niche demographic: the rod-and-gun voter. As the online magazine Slate noted last week, Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have made several visits and even held a town hall at Cabela's, the gun and sporting goods store with outposts in several swing states.

But the candidates are not just bidding for the Cabela voter. They are after something much more basic: proving their manliness.

Mr. Bush started the trend in 2000. Photographs of him with his guns showed up in several outdoor magazines. And Field & Stream criticized his opponent a few weeks before the election with this headline: "Why Gore Wants Your Guns."

This year, Mr. Kerry has refused to cede any ground to Mr. Bush; he tosses footballs and hunts for the benefit of cameras. But the Republicans are working hard to portray him as, in Arnold Schwarzenegger's famous words, a "girlie man."

It seems to be working. Sports Illustrated readers overwhelmingly voted Mr. Bush the better athlete and sports fan, a conclusion the magazine's managing editor, Terry McDonell, finds baffling.

"Clearly Kerry is a much, much, much, much better athlete," he said, noting that Mr. Kerry has long played competitive hockey and also regularly snowboards, Rollerblades, windsurfs and kite-surfs.

"Kite-surfing," Mr. McDonell said, "is the hardest, most radical thing to do. It's what the most extreme surfers are doing."

Mr. Bush, in contrast, was a cheerleader, and not, Mr. McDonell notes, the kind that did flips. "It's like spirit club."

But Mr. Kerry has not helped his cause. Last month, he fumbled the name of Lambeau Field, the sacred ground of the Green Bay Packers, calling it "Lambert Field."

The Bush campaign mocked him mercilessly. Mr Bush offered his opponent advice while on a campaign stop in Wisconsin: "If someone offers you a cheesehead, don't say you want some wine. Just put it on your head and take a seat at Lambeau Field."

(Mr. Kerry should have noted that the political idol of his youth, John F. Kennedy, once assured a Midwest crowd that he had timed a campaign rally so that Packers fans could still make a game. "I don't mind running against Mr. Nixon," Kennedy said, "But I have good enough sense not to run against the Green Bay Packers.")

Mr. McDonell puzzled over what all this shooting and fishing had to do with being leader of the free world. "Within sports, you can see leadership," he said, "but that does not mean going to a Nascar event will make you a good president."

Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University, said that voters have a primal need to know that a candidate is a member of their tribe. "If you're sitting around watching sports on a Sunday and you know your president is also sitting around watching sports, you're not only in intellectual sync, you're probably in some biological sync on some level," said Ms. Fisher, who is the author of "The Sex Contract: The Evolution of Human Behavior."

"Bush wants to be seen as masculine," she said, "because masculinity is associated with assertiveness and competence and judgment and team-playing and a host of traits that men aspire to and women adore."<<