A truly excellent article from Englishman Paul Johnson asks, “Will Showbiz and Moneybags Hijack the Election?“

I don’t say this often, but read it all. Really.

I am going to quote some of it for my archives but find that what I really want to do is copy the whole thing:

As a daily reader of Le Monde, which unconsciously reflects Jacques Chirac’s preferences, I ask myself: Why are the French so keen to see Kerry in the White House? Does Chirac, a dedicated enemy of the U.K., hope to replace the special relationship with a Franco-American one? It certainly looks that way. The official French government observer at the Democratic Convention cheerfully described Chirac’s relations with Bush as “execrable,” and the French Socialist observer there said that a Bush reelection would be “catastrophic” for him and his friends….

[Kerry] has posed as a man of Boston-Irish background in order to garner the Catholic vote, when all along he’s known his family origins to be Austrian, and last year learned they were also Jewish. Why the deception? And how can a man say he is a Catholic when he repudiates his church’s teaching on major issues such as abortion? I do not admire these repeated attempts to have things both ways-indeed, all ways….

While calling for the votes of the poor, Kerry enjoys the advantages of his wife’s fortune, estimated to be $750 million, and travels between their five mansions on a Gulfstream V jet. He wants to raise taxes, while his wife pays an effective tax rate of only 15% on much of her income by using (legitimate) tax-avoidance provisions.

Another skillful tax avoider is Kerry’s running mate John Edwards, who shelters 90% of his income from Medicare tax by means of a “Subchapter S” corporation that enables him to take his money in dividends instead of in salary….

It seems to me, in surveying Kerry’s allies, that what we have here is a species of conspiracy by money men, showbiz celebrities and other self-important pseudo-idealists to hijack the presidential election. I trust that ordinary American voters will recognize what is happening and vote accordingly.