Posted on 09/04/2004 5:44:17 AM PDT by visagoth
Both candidates gave speeches late on Thursday night. George W. Bush was more or less expected to. John Kerry didn't have to, but reported for duty even though nobody wanted him to. Unnerved by sagging numbers, he decided to start the post-Labor Day phase of the campaign three days before Labor Day. The way things are going, Democrats seem likely to be launching the post-election catastrophic-defeat vicious-recriminations phase of the campaign round about Sept. 12.
At any rate, less than 60 minutes after President Bush gave a sober, graceful, droll and moving address, Kerry decided to hit back. In the midnight hour, he climbed out of his political coffin, and before his thousands of aides could grab the garlic from Teresa's kitchen and start waving it at him, he found himself in front of an audience and started giving a speech. As in Vietnam, he was in no mood to take prisoners: ''I have five words for Americans,'' he thundered. ''This is your wake up call!''
Is that five words? Or is it six? Well, it's all very nuanced, according to whether you hyphenate the ''wake-up.'' Maybe he should have said, ''I have four words plus a common hyphenated expression for Americans.'' I'd suggest the rewrite to him personally, but I don't want him to stare huffily at me and drone, "How dare you attack my patriotism."
By about nine words into John Kerry's wake up call, I was sound asleep again. But this was what he told Ohio's brave band of chronic insomniacs:
''For the past week, they attacked my patriotism and my fitness to serve as commander in chief. Well, here's my answer. I'm not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve.''
Oh, dear . . . growing drowsy again . . . losing the will to type . . . what's he saying now?
''Two tours of duty''
Ah, yes. As usual, he has four words for Americans: I served in Vietnam. Or five words if you spell it Viet Nam.
So we have one candidate running on a platform of ambitious reforms for an ''ownership society'' at home and a pledge to hunt down America's enemies abroad. And we have another candidate running on the platform that no one has the right to say anything mean about him.
And for this the senator broke the eminently civilized tradition that each candidate lets the other guy have his convention week to himself? Maybe they need to start scheduling those Kerry campaign shakeups twice a week.
There was an old joke back in the Cold War:
Proud American to Russian guy: ''In my country every one of us has the right to criticize our president.''
Russian guy: ''Same here. In my country every one of us has the right to criticize your president.''
That seems to be the way John Kerry likes it. Americans should be free to call Bush a moron, a liar, a fraud, a deserter, an agent of the House of Saud, a mass murderer, a mass rapist (according to the speaker at a National Organization for Women rally last week) and the new Hitler (according to just about everyone). But how dare anyone be so impertinent as to insult John Kerry! No one has the right to insult Kerry, except possibly Teresa, and only on the day she gives him his allowance.
Several distinguished analysts have suggested that the best rationale for a Kerry presidency is that it would be a ''return to normalcy'' -- a quiet life after the epic pages of history George W. Bush has been writing these last three years. Even if a ''return to normalcy'' were an option, I doubt whether John Kerry would qualify. As we saw in those two Thursday speeches, Bush takes the war seriously but he doesn't take himself seriously -- self-deprecating jokes are obligatory these days, but try to imagine Kerry doing the equivalent of Bush's gags about mangled English and swaggering. The president is comfortable in his own skin, which is why he shrugs off the Hitler stuff. By contrast, Kerry doesn't take the war seriously because he's so busy taking himself seriously. If ''return to normalcy'' means four years of a grimly humorless, touchy, self-regarding Kerry presidency, I'll take the war.
That's surely why Kerry is running his kamikaze kandidacy on biography rather than any grand themes. Senator Kerrikaze is running for president because he thinks he should be president -- who needs a platform? One of the most revealing aspects of the campaign this last week were the interviews given by his various surrogates. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic National Committee chairman, went on Hugh Hewitt's radio show and was asked about the swift boat veterans' ads, and he laughed and blustered and stalled and floundered. That sounded weird. This thing's been going on a month now, and the Kerry campaign still hasn't come up with a form of words to deflect questions about it. If they had an agreed spin, McAuliffe and Co. would be out using it. But the seared senator feels it's lese majeste even to question him. He can talk about Vietnam 24/7, but nobody else is allowed to bring it up.
Sorry, man, that's not the way it works. And if he thinks it does, he's even further removed from the realities of democratic politics than he was from the interior of Cambodia. Instead of those military records the swift boat vets are calling for, I'd be more interested in seeing his medical ones.
As for Bush, to be sure at one level his convention was a ''soft-focus infomercial,'' just as Kerry's was. But the infomercial came into sharp focus just often enough to clarify, piercingly, the differences between the parties. On opening night in Boston, the Democrats staged a tasteful, teary candlelight remembrance of those who died on 9/11. On opening night in New York, the Republicans put up one speaker after another -- John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, Ron Silver -- resolved that those thousands of innocents shall not have died in vain.
I remember a couple of days after Sept. 11 writing that weepy candlelight vigils were a cop-out: the issue wasn't whether you were sad about the dead people but whether you wanted to do something about it. Three years on, the two conventions drew the same distinction. If you want passivity and wallowing in victim culture, the Dems will do. If you want to win this thing, Bush is the only guy running.
Kerry's fragging himself again?
Love that Free Speech pic..............
I really do remember it. I was old enough to know what was going on. Just horrible. Yet, he goes on to be a BIG SENATOR! He sure is a mean and hateful looking man. I can no way imagine being with someone like this.
but if it were Dubya' or Dan Quayle messing up this way, the media would be all over it...
This simply has to be a blow-out election. I have the most supreme disgust and distrust of the Demonrat Party. They have no morals and therefore no reservations about lying, cheating and stealing an election. It's sad to say, because I know that some of my family and friends are Demonrats - like Zell - but I believe that they have been duped. That is my honest impression of the party.
Thank you. It was fun making that one, too. :^)
The event at that school in Russia is going to have an enormous effect on our upcoming Presidential elections. I can't imagine many Democrats with children hearing that terrorists shot small children in the back and burned babies who were too young to run to safety, voting for Kerry. If they do, may God have mercy on American school kids. And I also wonder what American children think about this terrorist attack in Russia.
His midnight rally was so stupid on so many fronts. Just 1/2 hour earlier, the President of the United States stood in MSG and gave an incredible speech in front of tens of thousands of people. It was presidential, it was profound and it was brilliant. 1/2 hour later Kerry and his Assistant, John Edwards show up, wearing JEANS and flannel shirts in front of maybe 500 people who looked like they were dragged out of bed and said NOTHING new, nothing deep..NOTHING. I was expected some whammies thrown towards Bush to warrant this unprecedented retreat from protocol. But it was nothing. Which is what he conveys to people.. NOTHING. Nothing at all.
Yes, and as Steyn pointed out, this mean, pointless exercise in pettiness was considered by Kerry to be reason enough to trash the time honored convention that each party respect the other's nominating convention week. Can you imagine what the press would be saying if the Republican candidate pulled such a desperate stunt? Kerry might as well have had L O S E R stenciled on his forehead for that pathetic display.
'This is your wake up call!'' Is that five words? Or is it six? Well, it's all very nuanced, according to whether you hyphenate the ''wake-up.'' Maybe he should have said, ''I have four words plus a common hyphenated expression for Americans.'' I'd suggest the rewrite to him personally, but I don't want him to stare huffily at me and drone, "How dare you attack my patriotism.""Suicide Bomb-er" ping.
George W. Bush will win reelection by a margin of at least ten per cent.
I was in the hotel bar last night talking to a Kucinich/Nader supporter who is voting for Bush. Kerry is toast.
I'm emailing this article all over the place - especially to Liberal friends. I love Steyn!!!
I would have to repost the entire article to point out everything I enjoyed.
bttt...
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