Life In Hell

I don’t care either way about Teresa Heinz Kerry’s outbursts: she isn’t the candidate, it is sexist to assume that her husband can “control” her (I sure as hell can’t control my wife), and her bluntness isn’t inherently good or bad – it just is. I am somewhat concerned about the implications of this episode, though:

Heinz Kerry was introducing her husband, John F. Kerry, at a huge outdoor rally here when a group of Bush supporters, armed with a megaphone, started chanting from a distance, “Four more years! Four more years!”

Without hesitating, Heinz Kerry responded, “They want four more years of hell.”

….When it was his turn to speak, Kerry said of his wife, “She speaks her mind, and she speaks the truth — and she’s pretty quick on her feet, too.” [Washington Post]

The issue here is Teresa says that life under the Bush administration has been hell, and states that another Bush term would be four more years of the same. This also implies that the next four years under a Kerry administration would not be hell, and by the candidate endorsing his wife’s statement, he agrees. This seems a bit presumptuous. I wonder what, specifically, he will do to remove the hell-quotient from our lives.