Gregg Easterbrook has an interesting thought on why John Kerry's war record resonates with a lot of folks:

Set aside what John Kerry said to a college newspaper in 1970 about Vietnam--anything that anybody said to a college newspaper in 1970, on any subject, is likely to sound silly today. Surely one reason Kerry is doing so well in the Democratic primaries is that he embodies the middle-American consensus about the Vietnam War. That consensus seems to be that Vietnam was a bad war, but there was a duty to serve and those who fulfilled the duty should be admired.

That's fair enough, but most people that I see praising his efforts are much more concerned with the possibility that it would make his utter lack of any foreign policy with which Americans would agree with beyond reproach.

What I find so interesting about the Kerry ascendancy is how much of it is based on polls. Bush and Clinton both used electability as a selling point to keep their respective party's outliers in line and there's nothing wrong with doing that. But whatever your personal feelings on Bush and Clinton are, they came to the table with more than electability. Some people, well, actually liked them. They liked their ideas and the direction that they wanted to take the party. They liked their optomism and ability to inspire. Does anyone have a clear idea of where precisely Kerry plans to take the party?

People seem to settle on Kerry because he's electable without much of a semblence (that I've heard, anyhow) of why he's electable. The only thing I've heard thus far is his war record. His war record has indeed innoculated him to the point that anyone who questions his ideas is accused of questioning his patriotism. To suggest that this will last and that people are not interested in where Kerry would take the country and that they will repeatedly fall for the "How dare you question the Purple Heart?" line for the next nine months is not giving the public very much credit.

Kerry does, however, have plenty of time to establish himself. I think by this point in the race Al Gore still had two complete metamorpheses in him, so Kerry can mold himself into someone with some ideas beyond heel-biting the administration. I think it's a fool's wager to pass over candidates of more style (Edwards) or substance (Gephardt) on such speculation, though.