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.
I guarantee you, our friends over at DU aren't laughing. I can't remember having this much fun in a campaign. Win or lose, we'll have a blast. I just pity the other side, they all agree Bush is the American Osama Bin Laden but they can't make the President look silly. When it comes to political humor, the Left is bereft of a major weapon. The American people look up to Bush. As for Kerry, these days they're beginning to feel sorry for him.
Great column. Solid closing.
"President Bush will be all calm, and Kerry will come apart at the seams."
I think they'll have to dope him up, which won't exactly sharpen his debating skills. He truly has not one thing to run on other than that he is entitled. Bwahahaha.
That' exactly what happened with Algore! : )
Very well laid out.
Time for this remembrance to reappear:
No kidding, when he puts the electorate to sleep! Maybe that's his game plan, to bore us to death before the terrorists come over here to finish the job.
Then after he & his MSM friends get out of the nuke shack he'll hold a press conference with a speech on mercy killing. (/sarcasm off)
I wonder if effin ever tried out for Saturday Night Live and was rejected.
Priceless.
Oh man, that has got to hurt. I got a pain in my groin when I read this and I wasn't even the target.
Um......that's SIX words.
Any idea how I can see a video of the midnight speech?
The Steyn piece is so great (hard for him to outdo himself, but he did), that I copied and saved it. Then I read your post and saved that too. I remember Kerry's testimony. It was devastating to hear that "our guys" were doing such things. It shook me to my roots. I never had anything but respect for those in the military, but I had the impression that something so horrible was going on that it had turned our boys into what to me was unrecognizable. All that anguish, and it was untrue. What Kerry did is not forgivable.
I thought President Bush was supposed to bring it on?
But now, when Bush does just that, Kerry acts like he's being wildly hysterical.
Sorry Johnny boy, but you asked for it....and now you got it.
Do something about it...other than complain...you dope.
How about releasing the medical records of your miliary service so we can see who recommended you for those purple hearts [was it you?].....or maybe the complete financial records of your wealthy bride Theresa [whose influence will become staggering if you become president].
Those two items would go a long way toward clearing up two of your HUGE infected credibility gap.
BRING THEM ON!!!!
oh yeah, those three words are repeating
And most important was 'Uncle' Walter Conkrite with the biggest stab in the back by declaring on the CBS Evening News the Vietnam War was lost and it was time to get out.
Mark Steyne is easily my favorite political writer. Another fave says in a column this week that Kerry is so crazed, drunk and imbalanced that it is reasonable not to agree to debate him this cycle. I agree. Also, the AP story by Tom Hayes AKA anonymous is an outrage.
My lib friends who watched the convention say that they don't know who to vote for and that Kerry is a terrible candidate.
You're probably right. LOL!
"I NEVER fall off my snowboard!!!"
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