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" BOCA RATON, Fla. \u2014 What a strange time it must be to be John Kerry. Absent a few thousand votes, and not a little chicanery, in the state of Ohio, he might be wrapping up his second term as president right now. He would have won election in the first place partly by virtue of having won all three of his debates against the incumbent, George W. Bush. That turned out not to matter at all. Instead, he is playing the challenger, Willard Romney, in debate practice on behalf of the incumbent, Barack Obama, who clearly won two of the three debates, and that is turning out not to matter very much at all in an election that may come down essentially to... Ohio. Late Monday night in the spin room here, after Romney&amp;#039;s preposterous performance in a debate that was ostensibly about foreign policy, Kerry&amp;#039;s persona seemed locked halfway between sheer incredulity and utter gobsmackery. &amp;quot;What you saw tonight was the difference between a commander-in-chief and a campaigner in confusion,&amp;quot; Kerry told a group of us. &amp;quot;Mitt Romney was able to recite Wikipedia facts about a country, but he had no policies. He agreed with the president and agreed with the president \u2014 totally different from what he&amp;#039;s been saying for the last seven years. He shows up here tonight, agrees with the president on this and that. You know, the game Battleship came up in there. I think tonight the president sank his battleship. &amp;quot;On every occasion, Romney would say something and the president would indicate we&amp;#039;re already doing that, and more. Honestly, I was surprised. I was amazed at the degree to which Mitt Romney was the Etch-A-Sketch foreign-policy candidate tonight, who came in here, just changing \u2014 shake it up, agree with the president, and hope to get out of there quickly.&amp;quot; Kerry, of course, is said to be in line to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State in the eventuality of a second Obama term, so a lot of what he was saying was pure good-sailorism on behalf of the ticket and (to be completely honest) in advancement of his own career. But as a serious man who&amp;#039;s taken on serious issues in his time \u2014 Google &amp;quot;Kerry + BCCI&amp;quot; some time \u2014 his astonishment at Romney&amp;#039;s apparently bottomless well of cynical opportunism seemed utterly genuine. &amp;quot;He shakes it up and he comes back and he has a new policy,&amp;quot; Kerry said. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s not how you should be a commander-in-chief. This was a confused candidate tonight. This was a man who does not have a clear sense of the world. Never have we had a ticket with so little experience, and in both debates, it has shown up. Let me give you an example. &amp;quot;Even the Chamber of Commerce, and major business groups, have said that, if you name China a currency manipulator, you could bring the economy of the United States down, and maybe bring on a global depression. That is not the way to move forward. China does have to appreciate its currency, and they are. It&amp;#039;s higher than it&amp;#039;s been in 19 years and it&amp;#039;s changing. Again, you just have to be a little more thoughtful and a little more judicious. You can&amp;#039;t come to the presidency doing Rosetta Stone foreign policy. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s always a tight race for president. Look at Gore. Look at my race. It&amp;#039;s always tight. The country is divided.&amp;quot; It must be a strange time to be John Kerry. Eight years ago, he got tagged as a flip-flopper who was for things before he was against them. This year, on behalf of a Democratic incumbent, he has been tasked with embodying a man who has turned being for things before he was against them, and against them before he was for them, into a kind of political performance art. And it&amp;#039;s selling. Strange time to be John Kerry, indeed. ON THE DEBATE: Nothing Is Foreign to the Liar Willard Romney Anymore "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a16403/john-kerry-debate-2012-14022079/>