Today I received my edition of The New Yorker, which is certainly not news in and of itself (though one of the major perks of being on the East Coast this summer is receiving the magazine about a week earlier than I do out in California or Oregon). After going through my weekly routine of perusing the magazine, focusing on whose playing in New York's finest jazz clubs this week (Eartha Kitt, of original Catwoman fame, and drummer Lewis Nash, among others) and of course the comics (the week's best is below), I stumbled upon an extensive article on John Kerry.



I didn't get a chance to read the piece until I went to the gym tonight, and reading it occupied the better part of an hour on the elliptical machine (the slowness of my reading, my propensity to bounce while on the machine and the sheer length of the article surely extended the reading time). Though it is surely slanted in a liberal direction (is any of The New Yorker not slightly slanted?), I would certainly recommend it as a must read.

The article is highly nuanced, somewhat longwinded, extremely thorough and at times equivocal... like John Kerry himself. It portrays John Forbes Kerry who in both a positive and negative light, contrasting his strengths (he is a masterful politician, as evidenced by his ability to claim the nomination after "he was trailing Al Sharpton in some polls") with his weaknesses (his propensity to complicate issues, or at least not thoroughly explain his positions). Focusing primarily on his biography and his foreign policy stances, it is a great pre-convention read.

It also reminded me that there is an even more important read on John Kerry's foreign policy to occupy your time before the DNC in Boston. Joshua Micah Marshall, of Talking Points Memo fame, thoroughly details Kerry's international relations stances in this month's Atlantic, and specifically how his views bear a striking resemblance to President Bush... that is to say, George Herbert Walker Bush.

Utilizing the same extensive research he provides us daily over at TPM, Marshall provides a Kerry vision of multilateralism and quasi-"Scowcroftian middle ground." The article is significantly shorter than its New Yorker counterpart (it doesn't pay the same attention to Kerry's childhood or Vietnam experience), but it is nonetheless the quintessential primer to Kerry's foreign policy.