John Kerry, Master of Analogies

John Kerry, campaigning in Wisconsin today:

Bottom line is this: this economy has a bad case of the flu, and we need a new medicine, ladies and gentlemen.

There is no medicine for the flu. It's a virus. We can't cure viruses, we can't fight viruses. We can vaccinate against the flu by stimulating the patient to produce antibodies, but once the disease is caught, the disease is caught. The best we can do is make the patient comfortable until his immune system fights off the invasion itself. There are plenty of over-the-counter medications that purport to treat the flu, but all they do is mask the symptoms while the parasite continues to thrive within the host.

Obviously a cheap way to allude to the flu vaccine shortage... which wasn't under the President's control and he which he gave Americans good advice to try to alleviate. But it wasn't only cheap, it was clumsy. The flu is a particularly bad analogy for the economy.