Posted on 09/22/2004 10:24:47 PM PDT by smonk
If someone applied to you for a job but didn't want to talk about what he has been doing in the last 20 years, wouldn't you be suspicious? Might you not think he was insulting your intelligence by expecting you to hire him on the basis of what he did decades ago?
Yet for the most important job in this country -- indeed, the most important job in the world -- Senator John Kerry has applied by talking about what he did in a wholly different job back in the 1960s.
Never mind that people who were actually there with him in the 1960s dispute what a great job he did then. Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that he did all the things he said he did and none of the things that eyewitnesses in Vietnam said he did. How does that qualify anyone to be President of the United States?
The Kerry campaign and the liberal media want to make this election a referendum on President Bush, especially as regards Iraq. That too is an insult to our intelligence.
If the same job applicant who won't discuss his own qualifications just keeps complaining about the performance of someone whose job he wants to take, would you think that was enough reason to hire him?
Anybody can complain. Anybody can make great promises. And anybody can insult your intelligence by expecting you to vote for him on that basis.
Has the war in Iraq gone according to plan? No! But name any war that did.
Even World War II -- the "good war" of "the greatest generation" -- didn't go according to plan. The invasion of Normandy was a historic feat but lots of things went wrong.
Our paratroops who were dropped behind enemy lines were dropped in the wrong places. Intelligence reports about the big gun emplacements our troops were supposed to knock out turned out to be wrong.
Our own bombers accidentally dropped bombs on American troops, killing over a hundred men. We got caught completely by surprise by the German counter-attack that led to the Battle of the Bulge. But we won the war -- and that's the bottom line.
Any Civil War buff can spend hours telling you all the mistakes that were made on both sides. Robert E. Lee, whom many regard as the greatest general in that war, was so mortified by one of his disasters that he offered his resignation.
Mistakes in war are not new. What is new is a widespread lack of realism about war, especially among people who have never been in the military, who are like the proverbial little kid on a trip who keeps asking: "Are we there yet?"
This is the constituency that Senator Kerry is appealing to with his reckless attacks on the President and his loud assertions that he could do better. But just what has Senator Kerry actually done better during his long political career?
Not national defense, with his record of having voted repeatedly to cut the military budget and the budget of the intelligence agencies. The whole gambit of making Vietnam the centerpiece of the Kerry campaign makes sense only as a way of enabling his spinmeisters to say: "How dare you question his record on national defense, when he has defended this nation in battle?"
Nor do Senator Kerry's denunciations of the intelligence agencies mean that he would do a better job in that department. As a member of the Senate committee on intelligence, John Kerry missed three-quarters of its public meetings.
Confronted with this, the Kerry camp replied that this does not count what he did in the closed meetings of the intelligence committee. Moreover, his spinmeisters added, he was vice-chairman of that committee.
But Senator Kerry refused to give permission for the committee to release his attendance records at the closed meetings. And, as far as being vice-chairman, that was Senator Bob Kerrey.
How many times must John Kerry insult our intelligence before the voters get it? Incidentally, have you noticed how both the Democrats and the liberal media avoid referring to him as "Senator"? Using that title would raise the awkward question of what John Kerry has actually done in the Senate. Not much.
[you don't have to excerpt townhall, do you?]
And the dems want us to concentrate on Bush supposedly missing several months of National Guard service. 20 years of taking up oxygen and warming a seat in Congress with nothing to show for it? What a slacker.
Thomas Sowell. Always excellent.
How many bills did Kerry actually introduce? How many of them made it out of a committee?
My thoughts exactly. I've been saying the same but not as well. John Kerry has been a do-nothing, no-show Senator for 20 years. Was referred to as a backbencher by the Clinton administration. What exactly is his claim to fame? 4 months in Vietnam?
Yet this sniveling punk has a big mouth on him when it comes to George Bush who has a record he can run on. One that can be praised or criticized.
ROTFL - it isn't even an analogy. It's the literal truth.
How many bills did Kerry actually introduce? How many of them made it out of a committee?.....
IIRC he he's had 7 bills passed in his 20 years in the Senate. John Kerry is unable to lead men because he's a queer duck. No Senator respects him enough to work with him or follow him.
There it is, Bush-Cheney 2004 - - the first line of your next TV ad.
Take it and run with it.
maybe why they've been curiously silent on his nomination. THAT'S unusual because it's the ONLY thing that GWB has done in the past six months -- save maybe visiting hurricane ravaged areas of the US -- that these amateurs haven't unqualifiedly crapped on.
I think it's very telling that SENATOR Kerry's committee attendance is just one more record he wants to keep hidden.
HA! I would be suspicious that he just got out of the penitentiary.
The principle reason is that Kerry does not talk much about it and nobody has been able to hang him with it.
His endlessly touted Vietnam service served ironically and justly to give traction to the Swift Boat Vets's effort against him.
Kerry is wise not to much raise the issue of his Senate record to a prominent point of his campaign. The paper trail of so many years is much more extensive and accurate than the combat records and citations of four months service in Vietnam 35 years ago. His laziness, non attendance, bloviations on the Senate floor, and steadfast opposition to so many Military programs and Anti-Soviet foreign policy positions will scream to high heaven if brought to the fore. In short, he is a liberal Senator from Massachusetts.
I've got an idea that may change in the debates, but it's tough to call him a non-entity AND maintain that he's voted against nearly every major weapons system in the past 20 years. the two ideas seem to conflict, and team bush seems to prefer the latter.
He certainly will not rely on the facts of his Senate record, but he will act insulted if the questions are raised.
The central technique of his campaign has been to accuse the opponents of smear tactics at any criticism.
I've often thought that "for three whole months . . .", "for three whole months . . .", "for three whole months . . ." would be an excellent response. how much of the public thinks he pulled two or three tours of duty in viet nam?
of course, the problem with that response is that it would seem ungrateful to anyone who served, and that is VERY unlike bush.
Lol!, but you are right Bush would never do that, but the Swift Boat Vets have done the heavy lifting for us and many now know details and questions that Bush and the GOP could never have stated.
I copied a post awhile ago. As I recall 3 of the bills were for renaming some Federal buildings, 3 were for designating a day as "Mrs. O'Leary's cow day" or something similarily important, and ONE was actually something real (sort of?) - it was somehow doing some type of accounting change in how the senators got paid?!? (They were SOMETHING like this.)
They were minor bills. That's how I remember it. Kerry got 6 or 7 minor bills through in 20 years of windsurfing through the US Senate.
ping
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