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.
That host of characters have come out so often already, Bush is already prepared...he just needs to take the cue and he's off to the races. : )
check C-Span. They may have it in their archives.
Has any of the painstream media pointed out Kerry's poor math skills as in "five words" as they did Dan Qualle's "pototoe"?
Oh sure! President Bush will be all smiling and confident, and FnKerry spewing, then after the debates, he will wimper and cry that Bush is nothing but a big bully. You watch.
FnKerry want's a 'softer gentler' nation. So, he will run as a 'girly man,' and scream that Bush is a big bully. I can see it coming.
I'd much rather have our Country in the hands of a solid man, then a wimper girly man that will bend over for every country in the world. If you know what I mean.........
And IMHO, all President Bush has to do is STAND there. I can't wait to see him snicker at FnKerry. LOL!
You know that little snicker he can give? I always laugh when he does that.
How could four months be "two tours of duty"?
www.cspan.org Do a search for "kerry springfield"
The part 31 min into the speech about 1 guy saluting him and saying "thats america" is my favorite part
Thank you for your insight into scary Kerry AND, most importantly, YOUR service to our country. Thank you!
Beautiful insight by Steyn.
Kerry's arrogant "sense of entitlement"-----he considers himself the rightful heir to the presidency-----is a disturbing pre-Revolutionary war image, ala King George IV, that Kerry is totally oblivious to.
Kerry has been planning and scheming to "wear the crown" for so long that he goes ballistic when the rest of America doesn't see it his way.
His arrogance is apparent in that he actually thought he was going to get away with ascending to the presidency on the basis of his Viet service without any questions being raised.
"If you can't take the heat, get three Band-Aid Purple Hearts and get out of Vietnam!"
bttttttt
I was watching GWB this morning (on-line) at one of his rallies. The man is definitely in "the zone." He's up in the polls, on top of his game, and the crowd loved it.
I'm looking forward to the debates.
With any luck, this election will shatter the hold this imperious elitist dolt has on the voters of Massachusetts.
The combination of hubris and tunnel vision is deadly in national politics..
I think the tour question is related to the way the approval for the bronze combat stars were assigned. A "tour" in Vietnam was one year but the stars you could pin on your ribbon was determined by when you were there. So you could be there for a short time and have two stars, or a longer time and have only one. I was there on USS Wainwright in 68-69 and were allowed to have two bronze stars (not ever shot at so no silver) on our service medal, even though we were on station (off and on) over a six month period (eight month deployment). So were there for two combat "tours" even though we were not there for a year, an actual time/duration "tour".
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