Who's laughing now?

John Kerry made an appearance on The Daily Show, to the delight of many, but, if he was paying any attention at all, the certain dismay of W. There was plenty of 'funny ha-ha' to be had, but a bit of 'funny hmmmm...', too.

For instance, isn't it kind of 'funny' that John Kerry has to appear on a comedy show in order to get a discussion of serious issues?

"...George Bush doesn’t wanna talk about the real issues. I mean, what’s he gonna do? Come out and say we lost 1.8 million jobs? Four million Americans lost their healthcare. We’re going backwards on the environment. We angered everybody in the world."

I was particulary impressed with Kerry's take on a couple of points. For instance, he puts a spin worth repeating on the so-called 'decisiveness' that's supposed to be one of Bush's positive attributes...

JON STEWART: to watch when when— this President will come out sometimes and say— you know, “I’ve been a strong leader,” only because he’s been decisive. And I guess what you’re saying is anybody can make a decision. It’s the right— it’s making the right decision.

JOHN KERRY: Yeah. I mean, it doesn’t help you to be stubborn in the wrong decision. I think the President’s stubborn. He stubbornly has made the wrong economic decisions. And the result is you got four million people who have lost their healthcare. The middle class is actually paying a higher tax burden today than they were when George Bush began. And the wealthiest Americans are paying less. Now he’s stubbornly moving America in a direction where we’re outsourcing jobs. The jobs we’re creating pay $9,000 less on average than the jobs we’re losing. He stubbornly sticks to his policy in Iraq even though everybody can see that we need other troops on the ground. We need to take the American stamp of occupation off of this effort, bring the world to our side. I mean, there’s so many choices the President has sort of stubbornly gone down that I think is the wrong path.

...and offered an intriguing setup for the fall debates...

JOHN KERRY: Well, that’s the test of debates. I mean, look, the President has won every debate he’s ever had. People need to understand that. He beat Ann Richards. He beat Al Gore. So he’s a good debater.

Spin those expectations, Karl.

One of the best takes on the show comes from athenae at First Draft.

"...I do think he was himself, which is really, really smart. He could have fallen all over himself trying to look hip and genial, and he didn't. He's deeply comfortable in his own skin, and I'm starting to think that maybe the fact that not everybody is comfortable with him is a failure to appreciate on our part, rather than a failure to communicate on his.

Having seen Kerry on the stump in formal and informal settings, from a crowd and one on one, that's been my consistent impression as well. Agree with him or not, John Kerry knows who he is and seems to like who he is. I think that's a key to the resiliance that makes him such a strong campaigner under pressure. If it takes a setting like The Daily Show to put that across to a broader audience, he should grab every similar opportunity available.