Posted on 09/20/2004 8:16:28 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
October is in our sights, and the two important teams from Massachusetts are confounding the experts. It's the Red Sox baseball club, not the Kerry presidential campaign, that's supposed to be in its pre-autumn swoon.
But that's not the case. Sen. John F. Kerry (news, bio, voting record) is running against an incumbent presiding over an uncertain economy and a controversial war, and still Kerry is on the defensive. What gives?
Part of it is the unusual nature of the economy and the war. The economy's not stuck in recession and it's not roaring into recovery. It's doing a little of each, making it hard for economists to explain what's happening, and making it harder still for the Kerry campaign to exploit the worries that ordinarily come with bad economic times.
Then there's the war. It's too new to have produced war fatigue among the voters, but old enough to have produced plenty of skepticism. And just below the surface is the nagging, and worrying, notion that this war is part of a bigger international problem that President Bush (news - web sites) hasn't addressed and Sen. Kerry hasn't articulated.
The result is discomfort, but maybe not enough to topple an incumbent. The result is uncertainty, but maybe too much to swap leaders in mid-struggle.
So part of the Kerry problem is context. George W. Bush profited in 2000 because it was the right time for the Republicans to nominate a Texas governor whose most appealing attribute was that he had the best chance to deny the Democrats a third consecutive term in the White House. He may profit in 2004 because the public is too befuddled over what this war and this economy mean to make a change.
But Kerry's problems at the end of September aren't only in his stars. Some of them may be in himself.
The president's foreign policy may not be to all voters' tastes, but at least all voters know what it is. His campaign can be summarized in five words, first made popular in an entirely different context by Louise Day Hicks, the fiery Boston opponent to forced school busing: You know where I stand. The nature of that stand, particularly the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war, can be debated. That the president knows his own mind cannot be debated.
Here's a way to measure, in your own neighborhood, the Kerry difficulty: Ask a few dozen people, including partisan Democrats and Kerry donors, to describe in a sentence or two the senator's Iraq (news - web sites) policy. You're likely to get a few sentence shards, some squirms and a couple of false starts followed by a request to try again. Do-overs are a signal that a campaign has to start over.
But it's not only the articulation gap, curious as it is in a candidate who is far more articulate than his rival and who had no problem articulating his views when he was in his early 20s opposing the Vietnam War in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Some campaigns project strength (Ronald Reagan (news - web sites) in 1980), some project weakness (Jimmy Carter in 1980), some project chaos (Bob Dole in 1996). Kerry's is a campaign that seems to be floundering -- on the basics, on the issues, in the polls. American presidential campaigns are ridiculous spectacles in every regard except for the only one that matters: They give the voters a sense of what the candidate's White House might look like.
That's why Kerry is in such a surprising position today. The public is watching his campaign get sucker-punched by Bush and his allies and not responding swiftly or adroitly enough. (Sub-theme being sowed subliminally by Republicans: If he responds to al-Qaida the way he responds to the Swift Boat guys, the country's sunk.) Voters watched where Kerry vacationed (GOP sub-theme: On Nantucket, a province of North Korea (news - web sites) ) and what he did (GOP sub-theme: Windsurfing, the national sport of France).
Candidates often comport themselves on the presidential-campaign trail in a way in which they can suggest they would be presidential in the White House.
The twist in 2004 is that the Republicans are using the way Kerry is campaigning -- making him look like a nattering nabob of nuancing -- to paint a picture of how he might approach problems in the Oval Office. In short: flounder from Boston.
A prime example occurred midweek. Right there in the heart of enemy territory -- the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal, at once the most literate, most conservative and most indispensable page in American newspapers today -- there appeared a piece titled "My Economic Policy," by John Kerry (news - web sites) himself. Read it and you can see why the editors of the Journal must have been delighted to publish it. The piece had more hedges than an English garden.
Can Kerry prevail? Of course he can. He was buried toward the back of the Democratic pack only a year ago and now is the nominee. He knows how to fade, to be sure, but he also knows how to come back into sharp relief.
Besides, any candidate who can drop nearly a dozen points in a week can recover nearly a dozen points in a week, as long as the week you're talking about isn't after the end of the World Series (news - web sites).
But all the time in the world won't salvage Kerry unless he can do precisely what so many of his aides ridicule Bush for being able to do: Make simple declarative sentences that set forth his ideas, his ideals and his identity.
He lied to the people and he got his administration to lie to the country. Is that leadership?
I see you're still spouting the same nonsense that you did on O'Reilly, Pigboy. It's 11:30 - I'm sure there is a buffet opening somewhere that needs to be cleaned out.
Oh, and FWIW, a lot of freepers have relatives fighting in Iraq.
Mine's going there in February.
Great article!
"Would you send your kid to Iraq to fight W.'s war? I didn't think so.. "
Hunterman, this is the world's war against terrorism. We must fight it. Our children must fight it. The coalition of the willing is fighting it. George Bush is leading the charge. Kerry doesn't have a clue - except that he'll let the corrupt U.N. make his decisions. So a President Kerry would roll over for terrorists who rape, cut off heads, kill babies, torture, destroy villages - reminiscent of Genghis Con......(you get the picture).
I ask you hunterman (I see you've been banned but you can think about this) what would it take for you to stand and say, 'no more'?
The economy grew at nearly 5% last year -- the fastest economic growth in 20 years -- thats *not* roaring into recovery?!?
This continual downplaying of our economic strength is pathetic.
And the left keeps talking about the LOSS OF JOBS!
They refuse to tally government jobs, farmers and self-employed workers that have been added to the workforce. Those totals would add over a million more that are employed.
There is another number that they don't like to talk about. Women who have voluntarily left the workforce to stay home with their children. That is a growing number.
"Would you send your kid to Iraq to fight W.'s war? I didn't think so.. "
This Michael Moore talking point can be rebutted on several levels:
1. Parents dont 'send their kids' - it's not a boarding school, its a volunteer army/armed forces that young adults 18+ sign up for.
2. When my son/daughter grow to maturity, if they decide as young adults to join the US military, I would be quite proud of them to do so. And I would be proud of them to defend our nation in fights like Iraq, where we fight enemies *there* instead of *here*. Family members would like to see their kin stay out of danger, but they understand that risk of injury and death is what goes with defending our nation militarily.
3. The underlying message here is that these are fights not worth fighting for. I wonder if these posters who insinuate that saving iraq or building a democracy there is not worthwhile would say yes in answer to these questions:
"would you risk your life to save the lives of dozens of women and children by running into a burning building? What if I told you there was a 50/50 chance of death going in, but an 80% chance you could save 100 lives doing so?"
"NOW ... WHAT IF THOSE 100 WOMEN AND CHILDREN WERE ALL IRAQIS?"
4. Many of these young brave men and women do more for our country than people who live their whole lives here in USA and pay taxes. we should honor the duty and sacrifice of the heroes in uniform.
We lost 2 million jobs in 2001. Clinton-bubble-burst recession plus 9/11 did that - not Bush.
Since then, net job gains; not enough, but gains. Job growth is the one weak point in an otherwise STELLAR ECONOMY. everything else - productivity, aftre tax income, growth, household net worth, private balance sheets, profitability -- all have been positive.
Dems/media are focussed on the weak points only.
If it was a Dem president (think Clinton 96), they'd focus on the positive numbers and wonder aloud "why isnt he getting more credit for this?"
But in fact economy of 2004 is STRONGER than economy of 1996.
No doubt about it.
Kerry is very sloppy about what he says.
Amen.
I am under the impression a 17 year old can sign up with parental consent, and can go to basic training the year before they graduate. If the kid has graduated, and is still under 18, they need the parental consent. But, if the parents will not consent, the kid can wait until they are 18. So really, it's ultimately the kid's choice. I could not force my kid to enlist at 20 years old, but, I'm extremely proud of that decision.
Also, this is the second time in two days I've seen "subliminal messages" mentioned by a lefty pundit. Here's a snippet from this piece:
"The public is watching his campaign get sucker-punched by Bush and his allies and not responding swiftly or adroitly enough. (Sub-theme being sowed subliminally by Republicans: If he responds to al-Qaida the way he responds to the Swift Boat guys, the country's sunk.) "
Here's one from an article posted just the other day:
One political observer has gone as far as saying "Bushspeak" is Mamet-like in its condensed, verbal economy. That may be too lofty, but even the introductory passages in his speeches - the bits not meant for media consumption - are packed with subliminal meaning.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1218746/posts (sorry, no hot link)
The liberals simply can't accept the fact that their guy has serious problems, and that these problems are his fault. Either they attempt to pass the buck to the American people by implicitly questioning their intelligence, or they try to pass it to President Bush by characterizing his clear use of language as a dirty trick (i.e. subliminal manipulation).
They really are a pathetic bunch.
For it and Against it
For the Iraq War, and Against It.
For the Marriaige Admendment and Against it.
For Abortion and Against it (Overwhelmingly for it).
For Supporting our Troops and Against them.
The only thing that is funny is his wife seems to have the same trouble:
For John Kerry and Against him (Loose Canon)
There are a number of people that are definitely for him and two that I don't think so
For John Kerry - The Main Stream Media and Teddy Kennedy
Pretend for John Kerry - The Clintons.
There are two definitly Against John Kerry:
The Swift Boat Vets and President George W. Bush
I think I will go with the latter :)
Just like Clinton is a policy wonk - detail kinda guy.
Just like Al Gore was so cerebral we'd be fools not to latch onto him as our president/environmentalist/inventor/daddy.
Just like all Democrat/elites, they're just so so so much smarter than us hayseeds.
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