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.
Thanks for the ping! Cheers for Steyn!
I love it! (Maybe you should send it to Steyn!)
The last guy who was born to be President was Algore.
Ping
That is plain funny! lol.
Here is my analysis of this election: Is Bush in a better position now than he was in 2000? Yes. He is the incumbant and he has a list of solid accomplishments to show: tax cuts, success in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a booming economy.
Is Kerry better than Gore? No. He is not an incumbant. He is not more interesting. He is not more experienced. He is not a better speaker. He does not have better positions. He does not have a better vice president.
Prediction: President Bush to get at least 52% of the vote and at least 300 electoral votes.
I'm with you on that.
I think that this is the truest statement in the piece...other than hard core Democrats anyone else who votes for Kerry doesn't get it...they want the war to go away...they don't understand that if we don't go on the offensive and win this thing that Islamofascism will just get stronger...they are not serious people.
I've seen the running gag about the hamster for some time, but somewhere along the line I must have missed the reason. Can someone link me to an explanation? Mucho thanks.
bump...
http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1181433/posts
Alexandra Kerry: Dad Gave Hamster CPR
I was in Boston last Thursday and Friday and I was praying that some news person would ask me my opinion of Senator Kerry's speech. I didn't listen, of course, but I had my answer ready.
Well, I'm sure Boston is glad that it's village idiot will be out of town for two weeks. At least he won't be in the Senate voting for stupid things like unlimited partial birth abortions or voting against funding our troops unless he can increase taxes on the middle class first. I saw that Ben Affleck liked him. Actually, I thought the convention was going to nominate Mr. Affleck. Not only is there precedent for an actor whose career is failing to make an outstanding President, but Mr. Affleck has the advantage of not looking like he was resurrected from the dead to run for office. It would also provide an excuse for believing all the lies Michael Moore put in his Democratic Campaign Contribution, Farenheit 9/11 since we don't really expect actors to know what Senators should know. But the corpse is nominated and the Democrats can rest easy that he won't have to give any major speeches any time soon.
That's what I would have said, but I was never asked. Thanks for letting me say it here.
Shalom.
Bwahahahahahahahahaha...you are so right, AHerald.
For those who don't notice it, what Affleck was advising with his solemn pronouncement was to weaken the vitality of the Dem base. In other words, Affleck doesn't know what "enervate" means. From Mirriam-Webster's online dictionary:
Main Entry: en·er·vate
Pronunciation: 'e-n&r-"vAt
Function: transitive verb
1 : to reduce the mental or moral vigor of
2 : to lessen the vitality or strength of
No, Affleck meant what he said — he just didn't know the meaning of what he said.
Ben could embrace the Senator in his next marriage - in accordance with the Massachusetts law. But is he rich enough by the Kerry's matrimonial standards? That's the question.
YES! I've been saying this for MONTHS. How much of a sucker can you be if you get suckered by the biggest "idiot" in presidential history? In the words of Fred Sanford: "Not only is you a dummy, you's a STUPID dummy!"
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