A little birdie tells me that Mark Steyn has been reading LGF again: Kerry can’t shoot deer or stop terror.

There’s a bumper sticker I see on a lot of Vermont cars these days: “BE PATRIOTIC — VOTE GEORGE BUSH OUT”. The trouble is you can’t vote Bush out, you have to vote the other fellow in. And convention week marks the point when Americans begin to get to know the challenger the way they know the incumbent. I find it hard to believe that getting to know John F Kerry can possibly work to his advantage.

He was in Wisconsin the other day, pretending to be a regular guy, and was asked what kind of hunting he preferred. “I’d have to say deer,” said the senator. “I go out with my trusty 12-gauge double-barrel, crawl around on my stomach… That’s hunting.”

This caused huge hilarity among my New Hampshire neighbours. None of us has ever heard of anybody deer hunting by crawling around on his stomach, even in Massachusetts. The trick is to blend in with the woods and, given that John Kerry already looks like a forlorn tree in late fall, it’s hard to see why he’d give up his natural advantage in order to hunt horizontally.

Possibly his weird Vietnam nostalgia is getting out of control. Still, if I come across a guy in the woods in deer season inching through the undergrowth with a mouthful of bear scat, at least I’ll know who it is.

Conversely, if you’re a 14-point buck and get shot in the toe this autumn, you’ll know who to sue.

Crawling around on your stomach is a lousy way to hunt deer, but it’s proved a smart way to campaign for president. For months now, George W Bush has been up there getting fired on from all directions. Meanwhile, down in the scrub, John Kerry was crawling forward on his stomach, a stealth candidate advancing slowly, off the radar, prone alone.

Sadly, the stealth candidacy has come to an end. This week the real John F Kerry has to stand up, and, judging from the way those Senate and House candidates in tight races are staying away from the convention, a lot of bigshot Democrats aren’t too sure Americans are going to like what they see.