Posted on 07/31/2004 4:08:52 PM PDT by Pokey78
It was interesting to see Ben Affleck emerge as the Hollywood mascot of the Democratic Convention. The week reminded me of Ben's movie Pearl Harbor: wall-to-wall evocative military imagery, a cast of thousands, superb production values, but a huge gaping hole where the star performance was supposed to be.
On TV the other night, young Mr Affleck offered a pearl of wisdom to Mr Kerry and his consultants: "You have to enervate the base," the Hollywood heartthrob advised solemnly. If it's enervating the base you're after, John F Kerry would seem to be the perfect candidate. On Thursday, for his first big moment in the national spotlight, his only concession to the occasion was to speed up his delivery, in order to cram a 90-minute address into the hour of primetime the networks were prepared to give him. But otherwise it was classic Kerry: verbose, shapeless, platitudinous, complacent, ill-disciplined, arrogant, and humourless.
On the other hand, despite Ben Affleck's advice, the Boston crowd wasn't in the least bit enervated. They were deliriously happy. The Kerry campaign seems to be the political equivalent of what they call on Broadway a "snob hit": the longer it is, the more boring it is and the worse time you have at it, the more you feel it must be good for you. To his numbed, buttock-shifting listeners, the great sonorous self-regarding orotund bromidic banality of Senator Kerry and his multitude of nuances is proof of how much more serious he - and therefore they - are. This is a profoundly un-American attitude and, from the so far bounce-less post-convention polls, it doesn't seem to be resonating with "swing voters".
At one level, what's happening is very unfair. Three-quarters of Democratic voters opposed the Iraq war; 86 per cent of convention delegates opposed it. But they've wound up with a presidential ticket comprised of two Senators who both voted in favour of it. And, after being for-and-against the war for the last year according to political necessity, Kerry seems to have settled on a position of doing pretty much what Bush is doing while simultaneously spending more time on the blower to Kofi, Jacques and Gerhard. If I were a principled anti-war Democrat, I'd be furious.
But they're not. Because the real distinction is not between pro- and anti-war, but between September 11 Americans and September 10 Americans. The latter group is a coalition embracing not just the hardcore Bush haters - for whom, as the opening of Fahrenheit 9/11 makes plain, it all goes back to chads in Florida - but the larger group of voters who've been a little stressed out by the epic nature of politics these last three years and would like a quieter life. That's what John Kerry's offering them: a return to September 10.
He doesn't quite put it like that, of course. He talks about an America "strong" and "respected" and all the other poll-tested words, while the Democratic platform asserts that Republicans "do not understand that real leadership means standing by your principles and rallying others to join you".
Say what you like about Bush, but on Iraq he stood by his principles and rallied the British, Australians, Poles, Italians, etc, to join him. He also rallied Kerry and Edwards to join him. They voted for his war, as the columnist Debra Saunders of The San Francisco Chronical drolly pointed out: "Kerry and Edwards followed. Bush led."
Kerry now says that Bush "misled" him on Iraq. But, if he was that easily suckered by a renowned moron, how much more susceptible would he be to such wily operators as Chirac. They would speak French to each other, and Jacques would blow soothingly in his ear, and Kerry would look flattered, and there'd be lots of resolutions and joint declarations, and nothing would happen. We'd be fighting the war on terror through the self-admiring inertia of windbag multilateralism.
As for the home front, Kerry says: "As President, I will not evade or equivocate; I will immediately implement the recommendations of that [the 9/11] commission." Whoa, hold on there. There's a ton of recommendations, and some of us don't like the part about concentrating all US intelligence under one cabinet secretary who serves not at the President's pleasure but for a fixed term. That effectively institutionalises the groupthink resistance to alternative ideas that led to the 9/11 failures. Leadership is about hearing different viewpoints and reaching a judgment. But Kerry gives the impression that, as long as he enjoys the perks of the top job, he's happy to subcontract his judgment to others.
He moans endlessly about the "outsourcing" of American jobs but, when it comes to his own job, he's willing to outsource American foreign policy to the mushy transnational talk-shops and to outsource homeland security to some dubious intelligence tsar. There's no sense of any strategic vision, no sense that he's thought about Iran or North Korea or any of the other powder kegs about to blow. I tried to ask him about some of these matters during the New Hampshire primary and he intoned in response, "Sometimes truly courageous leadership means having the courage not to show any leadership." (I quote from memory.)
In another perilous time - 1918 - Lord Haig wrote of Lord Derby: "D is a very weak-minded fellow I am afraid and, like the feather pillow, bears the marks of the last person who has sat on him." It's subtler than that with Kerry: you don't have to sit on him; just the slightest political breeze, and his pillow billows in the appropriate direction. His default position is the conventional wisdom of the Massachusetts Left: on foreign policy, foreigners know best; on trade, the labour unions know best; on government, bureaucrats know best; on defence, graying ponytailed nuclear-freeze reflex anti-militarists know best; on the wine list, he knows best.
Sometimes these default positions have to be recalibrated to take account of various political pressures - hence his current kinky Vietnam macho nostalgia, after two decades of voting against every important weapons system for the US military. But there's no sense - other than the blurry abstract nouns he shoveled off the stage on Thursday - of what Kerry stands firm on.
Last year, I was at a Kerry campaign stop in New Hampshire chatting with two old coots in plaid. The Senator approached and stopped in front of us. The etiquette in primary season is that the candidate defers to the cranky Granite Stater's churlish indifference to status and initiates the conversation: "Hi, I'm John Kerry. Good to see ya. Cold enough for ya?" Etc. But Kerry just stood there nose to nose, staring at us with a semi-glare on his face. After an eternity, an aide stepped out from behind him and said, "The Senator needs you to move."
"Well, why couldn't he have said that?" muttered one of the old coots, as Kerry swept past us.
That's how I felt after the Convention: all week Senators Biden, Lieberman and Edwards made the case that the Democrats were credible on national security. Why couldn't Kerry have said that?
Because in the end he's running for President because he feels he ought to be President. That's his message to George W Bush: "The Senator needs you to move." And even then everyone else says it better.
Steyn is better than readers digest when it comes to increasing your word power! L0L
Thanks for the definition. It makes a whole lot more sense now.
Enervate - to weaken or destroy
"The orotund bromidic banality" of K-flopper evil was obvious at the convention. He did the best he could to conceal his innate nastiness. That what we saw was the best he could do to get something he really wants speaks volumes. I'm expecting some MamaT eruptions that'll ruin this wretched excuse for a campaign. I expected good things for us from the nefarians and "canardians" at their coven, but not as much as I got.
Mark is now on my prayer list. He must continue writing. His work is simply too darn important. This stuff should enjoy WIDE syndication, indeed.
Its a patrician's disdain for his lessers. He wants us to fire President Bush cause he feels entitled, not cause he wants to earn the presidency by winning the respect of the American people through hard work. What was the first words that came out of pompous windbag's John F*ckin's mouth at the Convention? Ahh, yes, "I waaas booorn innn theee Weeest Winggg." There's the snotty presumption he's born to be President and as Mark Steyn observed, you mortals should get out of the way. Any one who disagrees is simply standing in the way of inevitably. John F*ckin' thinks he lives in an aristocracy. Perhaps in November it would be a good idea to give him an education in the meaning of America: her people have the final say in who sits in the White House.
The next time John F*ckin' brings up the "outsourcing" issue, President Bush ought to take the opportunity to turn it around on him. After all he doesn't believe foreign policy should be kept at home, in our own hands. Who is going to be affected by what happens in the world more, Americans or Chirac, Schroeder, and company? This should be an easy question to answer.
Ben is sKerry's boy toy. What else does he have to do? His acting career is in the crapper.
"We'd be fighting the war on terror through the self-admiring inertia of windbag multilateralism."
ie, deju-vu all over again a la' Bill Clinton.
Because they know Kerry and Edwards don't mean it when they say they're going to use the military to fight a real war.
Thanks for the *ping*!!
What I love about steyn is the way he strikes at the heart of the issue with humor.
This is a trait of our President as well.
I hope they are in league
As usual, Mark hits the mark.
Only one of countless flaws in Leftist thinking. "Bush is a moron," but he dances circles around them and constantly "misleads" them. What a bunch of worthless, bottom feeding slobs.
Yes indeed. I was wondering how that would play to America when he uttered those words
The joke I heard was that he won an Academy Award for taking dictation.
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Last year, I was at a Kerry campaign stop in New Hampshire chatting with two old coots in plaid. The Senator approached and stopped in front of us. The etiquette in primary season is that the candidate defers to the cranky Granite Stater's churlish indifference to status and initiates the conversation: "Hi, I'm John Kerry. Good to see ya. Cold enough for ya?" Etc. But Kerry just stood there nose to nose, staring at us with a semi-glare on his face. After an eternity, an aide stepped out from behind him and said, "The Senator needs you to move." "Well, why couldn't he have said that?" muttered one of the old coots, as Kerry swept past us. That's how I felt after the Convention: all week Senators Biden, Lieberman and Edwards made the case that the Democrats were credible on national security. Why couldn't Kerry have said that? |
Priceless.
Yeah, that stood out to me too. Big time.
"Mr Affleck offered a pearl of wisdom to Mr Kerry and his consultants: "You have to enervate the base," the Hollywood heartthrob advised solemnly."
I am the last to defend any lib like Affleck but it is only fair to note that our great President is one of the all-time tongue-twisted politicians of out time.
I'll give little ben a pass. Mangling words does not generally reflect intelligence (Mike Tyson being an exception); policy, vision, core beliefs, straight-forward, principled stands are good indicators.
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