Out of Bounds

I've taken a lot of pride in the fact that even though John Kerry has repeatedly been called a murderer in this election, neither he nor any of his supporters have lowered ourselves to making the same claim about President Bush. In fact, none of us have even compared the president to a murderer.

Until now.

There are many good things to be found on Daily Kos, the most extensive pro-Kerry blog around. But occasionally the anti-Bush energy makes Kos-goers get a little crazy. I'm talking specifically about all the people who recently posted about the alleged physical similarity between President Bush and serial killer Ted Bundy. (To read the posts just click here and scroll down.)

It wasn't enough for these posters to note a supposed physical resemblance, which by the way I don't see. (Bear in mind, many Kos posters are still holding out hope that the fake CBS memos are real.) No, they had to go on to argue that Bush, like Bundy, had the childhood traits of a future serial killer.

This is just wrong. You can't say that because someone supposedly looks like someone else, they share the same capacity for evil. And besides, Bundy held much more palpatable political views than Bush does.

The president has always leaned conservative, while Bundy was a dependable Rockefeller Republican. As Richard Larsen noted in The Deliberate Stranger, he even served as the manager of the downtown Seattle Draft Rockefeller headquarters in 1968. People familiar with Bundy always marveled that he might have had a bright political future -- likely as a Republican moderate -- if only he hadn't killed all those people.

So stop the Bush-Bundy comparisons. As absurdly unfair as they are to Bush, they're a little unfair to Bundy, too.

And finally, Democrats don't want to open the "looks-like-must-be-like" floodgates. Especially when the young John Kerry bears such a strong resemblance to Bugsy Siegel.