Mark Steyn takes on the Kerry phenomenon, using the expensive haircut story as a metaphor for a blow-dried blowhard. Again, it's on the WSJ's subscriber site, so no link. Here's a clip:

I always enjoy the bit at the end of the haircut where the stylist holds up the hand mirror so you can see the back and sides. The trouble with Mr. Kerry's policies, as the mirror of the one hand reflects the mirror of the other hand reflects the mirror of the first hand, is that it's all back and sides and no front and center. Bill Clinton got away with this approach, but today it seems tonally at odds with the electorate: President Bush is certainly not undefeatable, but what is certain is that he won't be defeated by a politician whose gut instinct is to have no gut instincts. Mr. Kerry has never held an original position for longer than it took his party's interest groups to put the squeeze on him. The Democrats suffered last month because they were perceived on the central issues of war and national security as, at best, tentative and, worse, opportunist. The senator seems set to expand this losing formula from the war to every major policy area, until the entire Democratic platform has achieved the perfect snapped-seesaw symmetry of his eyebrows.

Does Steyn win Kaus's contest?