But biography is the past — or at best prologue. The question is what comes next. And in this context, Mr. Kerry was largely silent. I know, some will point to all the position papers the campaign has produced, and the intelligence of its advisers and the lines of substance about what lies ahead that actually were uttered during the convention and in the intervening weeks.The rumors are swirling that the Democrats are livid with the Kerry campaign and heads will roll. My guess is that Team Splunge will expunge all references to Vietnam for the next month now that they realize that approach is backwards-looking.
It doesn't matter. No one remembers a word of it. And the reason is that the biographical material crowded it all off stage. Yes, of course, Mr. Kerry needed to "introduce" himself to the American people. But that is not all he needed to do. It is now apparent that what should have been an elegant backdrop to the substantive case for a Kerry administration became itself the case in chief. To mix my theatrical metaphor, never mind the play: Look at the sets. Look at the actor.
On Wednesday, Sen. John Kerry intends to present a completely revamped speech to the American Legion. The speech, written largely by Kerry communications guru Bob Shrum, is intended to get the candidate some attention at a time when much of the media focus will be on New York and the GOP convention. "It's going to get him within the top two or three stories on the nightly news that night," says a Kerry adviser.For the wrong reasons, I’ll wager.
A bunch of amateurs, no matter how smart and enthusiastic, could never outperform professional neurosurgeons, because they lack the specialized training and experience necessary for that field. But what qualifications, exactly, does it take to be a journalist? What can they do that we can't? Nothing.This immediately brought to mind an exchange from an episode of “Cheers” when psychiatrist Frasier Crane confronts a fortune teller:
Frasier: “You exploit vulnerable people, charging them huge fees for holding their hands and pretending insight into their problems.”Or, in the case of the MSM: “I’ve got this laminated press card and a long notebook.”
Fortune Teller: “How is that different from what you do?”
Frasier: [long pause] “I can prescribe drugs.”
He said that, if elected, Kerry would ensure that European allies were prepared to join the United States in levying heavy sanctions if Iran rejected the proposal. "If we are engaging with Iranians in an effort to reach this great bargain and if in fact this is a bluff that they are trying to develop nuclear weapons capability, then we know that our European friends will stand with us," Edwards said.They “know” it! To Kerry/Edwards it’s an indisputable fact that the Europeans will be swayed to the U.S. point of view if we only speak to them slowly and make significant hand gestures to convey our deep concern. No other outcome is conceivable.
Kerry received his most enthusiastic response from 6,000 VFW members when he strongly advocated improving health care, disability and other benefits for veterans. But overall, he was received here far less enthusiastically than was Bush, who generated two standing ovations during his speech. By contrast, Kerry's audience offered cordial and polite applause, with one detractor heckling the Massachusetts senator.That meeting was before the Swift Boat Vets ad campaign really took off. By now the Legionnaires have fully digested the consequences of Kerry’s anti-war activities after he returned from Vietnam. They should be reminded of this also:
The RNC notes that Kerry criticized the VFW and American Legion in a 1971 book: "We will not quickly join those who march on Veterans Day waving small flags, calling to memory those thousands who died for the 'greater glory of the United States.' ... We will not readily join the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars," he wrote.Since Senator Splunge can’t make up his mind on troop deployments, watch for him to pander on veterans' health benefits (that the Bush administration increased funding by 40%). The problem with this approach is the upper-cut in this Wednesday one-two punch: Zell Miller’s primetime speech on John Kerry’s diaphanous Senate career
John Kerry's "miserable record" over the course of his 19-year Senate career will be a focus of Sen. Zell Miller's highly anticipated speech at the Republican National Convention, the renegade Georgia Democrat told The Post.In nearly two decades in the U.S. Senate, Kerry has sponsored three pieces of legislation that passed into law. When he bothers to show up at all, he has amassed arguably the most liberal voting record in the Senate, reflexively taking the Ted Kennedy line on economic and military matters. In the 1990s, as Al-Qaeda nefariously planned, John Kerry skipped 76% of the meetings of the Senate Intelligence Committee. There’s a reason John Kerry devoted a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it twenty seconds to his Senate career during his acceptance speech to the Democrats last month – he’s justifiably ashamed of it.
Until a few weeks ago, John Brenner, department commander for Pennsylvania's Veterans of Foreign Wars, was leaning toward George W. Bush.That’s good!
Then he caught wind of a TV ad launched by an anti-John Kerry group accusing the Democratic candidate of lying to get medals in the Vietnam War. "I don't want to see them question anybody's record," says Brenner, 61, a Vietnam vet. "Especially if they got a Purple Heart and . . . shrapnel in their leg."Uh-oh…
But last week, Brenner saw a second ad from the anti-Kerry outfit--Swift Boat Veterans for Truth--which blasted Kerry for telling a Senate committee in 1971 that U.S. forces had committed atrocities in Vietnam. This time, Brenner's anger turned to Kerry and other antiwar protesters, who, he says, prolonged Vietnam and made it "hard on troops that were still over there."Better dispatch the trial lawyers!
Over this past weekend, Arkansas, Virginia and Missouri moved from Toss-Up toLeans Bush. Minnesota moved from Leans Kerry to Toss-Up. Maine and Michigan moved in Kerry's direction--from Toss-Up to Leans KerryI also thought that the latest from Wisconsin should cause some heartburn for Team Splunge: Bush 48% / Kerry 45%
The Globe's Thomas Oliphant continues to peddle the fantasy that the Mainstream Media are the guardians of the public good with regard to the SwiftVets movement -and that's how it strikes me, as a movement. These guys are driven.Wise Solomon: don’t you know that the mainstream media has the superhuman ability to cast aside bias and report the news in a factual and objective fashion? Certainly the minor detail that Oliphant’s daughter is working for the Kerry campaign has nothing – nothing whatsoever – to do with his leftist commentary:
Oliphant has no problem going into full attack mode on some veterans, veterans who also served, who were also wounded and decorated (and with the latest salvo, spent years in Vietnamese prisons) while defending his own man. I'm not sure how you just blow off as a smear the fact that the friends who support Kerry are outnumbered by those who oppose him by a factor of over 20 to 1.
I write now because the political junk is much higher profile now, though no less misleading -- and not, by the way, because in her fourth job in the public arena, my daughter just joined Kerry's staff.Perish the thought, Tommy boy!
A federal appeals court decision has thrown a gigantic roadblock in the way of efforts to create an underground burial site for nuclear wastes at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. A three-judge panel in the District of Columbia ruled last month that regulators could not simply require the repository to contain the wastes for 10,000 years, the standard set by the Environmental Protection Agency, but must instead ensure that Yucca could function acceptably for hundreds of thousands of years. That standard is so outlandishly stringent it may not be achievable.If atomic energy were more readily available, America could reduce its dependence on coal-fired electricity generation, which accounts for the vast majority of electricity sources (nuclear and natural gas are a distant second and third). Oh but we hates that nuclear energy and we loves Nevada’s five electoral votes:
Congress will no doubt be reluctant to tackle the issue in an election year, especially since Senator John Kerry and other Democratic leaders, pandering shamelessly for the electoral votes of the battleground state of Nevada, have pledged to block Yucca.Holy cow, the NY Times said that? Are they also in cahoots with the Bush campaign? As Howard Dean would say: the timing is suspicious.
Initial public reaction to a proposal for reducing the number of American troops in Germany and Korea is very positive.This is the trouble you invite when every position you have is "not Bush."
Fifty-nine percent (59%) of voters favor the plan which would station more American troops in the United States while reducing our presence in nations that dominated the Cold War era. A Rasmussen Reports survey found that 23% oppose the idea.
As a correspondent pointed out to me in an e-mail, each episode of the HBO series Band of Brothers, begins with a voiceover in which the narrator says of the World War II soldiers portrayed in the program: "I was not a hero, but I was surrounded by heroes." In contrast, what John Kerry is saying in essence about his "band of brothers" is that "in Vietnam, I was a hero, but I was surrounded by war criminals."Except for those who basked in the aura of JFK II.
The Rasmussen Reports survey also found that 76% say Kerry's political career since Vietnam matters more than his career in Vietnam. In terms of Election 2004 voting decisions, only 9% take the opposite view and say that Kerry's combat experience is more important.This is devastating news for the candidate who has framed his qualification for the presidency entirely on four months in Vietnam. Because, as FactCheck noted, if you look at Kerry’s career, well, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein: “There’s no there there.”
John Kerry is fond of saying "I led the fight" on a lot of things -- against Arctic drilling, against Bush's Medicare prescription drug legislation, for federal grants for 100,000 new police officers, against Newt Gingrich's attempts to lessen environmental regulations.Always remember: (unless you’re a Gloucester fisherwoman) after two decades in the Senate, John Kerry has done almost nothing to help ordinary Americans. No wonder he only wants to talk about Vietnam.
But reporters who cover Congress often gave others credit for the leading roles in some of those fights -- with scant mention of Kerry.
And The Associated Press last July found that only eight laws had Kerry as their lead sponsor, five of them "ceremonial," two relating to the fishing industry, and one providing federal grants to support small businesses owned by women.
No thanks to the mainstream media. Score one for the bloggers!"They made a strategic mistake," Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, said of Kerry's campaign. "The ad has been largely effective because it wasn't rebutted."
A senior political consultant who is close to the Kerry campaign agreed. "I think the campaign was slow to respond to this," the person said. "And with some justification. The rule book says don't help somebody sell their book. But on this one, it just seemed to take on a life of its own."
John Kerry has a big problem, you see. Repeat after me:Hoisted by his own petard - that's all.
He. Made. Vietnam. A. Campaign. Issue.
He did. Not the Swift Vets. How many times during the primaries did Kerry refer to his Vietnam service and try to tell us how his four months of combat experience qualify him to be Commander in Chief? How many?
He's the one who showed up at the Convention with his half-assed salute and ludicrous "reporting for duty" line.
He's based his entire campaign on it. He WANTED it to be an issue, because his lackluster Senate record is nothing to run on.
Europe is free to flaunt its "concern" – and even its "deep concern" – over the Eastern Congo precisely because it's entirely irrelevant to events in the Eastern Congo. As Stephens points out, European countries now have attitudes in inverse proportion to the likelihood of their acting upon them. They're like my hippy-dippy Vermont neighbours who drive around with "Free Tibet" bumper stickers. Every couple of years, they trade in the Volvo for a Subaru, and painstakingly paste a new "Free Tibet" sticker on the back.Right on.
What are they doing to free Tibet? Nothing. Tibet is as unfree now as it was when they started advertising their commitment to a free Tibet. And it will be just as unfree when they buy their next car and slap on the old sticker one mo' time.
We don't normally get too worked up about an elected official's attendance record at congressional committee meetings. The real work of legislating often gets done elsewhere. But given the weight Kerry himself has given his congressional experience with intelligence oversight and his stated desire to ``reform the intelligence system,'' his record of missing 76 percent of public Senate Intelligence Committee hearings - and every one in the year after the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center - is surely fair game.Once again, I need to ask: Why is Kerry drawing a salary?
The fictional character Kerry most identifies with: "There's a little Huck Finn in me; there's a little Tom Sawyer in me ...”So which characterization is most apt?
As his plane was flying from Oregon to Idaho on Saturday, Kerry defended his taste in sports, saying, "The guys who do it are all local guys -- plumbers, construction workers."“Mon dieu, that’s less than the cost of Chateau Margaux 1981!”
Asked if these regular folks fly from one state to another, the husband of the condiment heiress downplayed the cost, saying, "What? 250 bucks for a ticket?"
Luckily for Kerry, the moment was not on camera. But it was the kind of moment -- if captured on camera -- that could undo months of work.
"He [Kerry] hasn't done anything to even try to close the deal," she said. "He just keeps saying, 'I'm not Bush and this is why,' and it's a valid point, but so many other valid points need to be made."Thank you, Mr. Sandman!
"If you do elect Bush, you know what direction he's going to go," said Robin King, 39, a print-shop coordinator at the First Christian Church in Canton, and a Bush supporter. "You don't know anything that Kerry's going to do. You can guess from what he says, but he doesn't really hit hard on any of the questions."
Ed Beegle, 53, a retired UPS driver who voted for Bush in 2000 but is still undecided this year, said Kerry "never commits to nothing."
"I don't think Bush has done as good a job as I think he could have, but I think he's doing a better job, and I trust him infinitely more than I trust the Democrats in general and Kerry in particular to lead us through these tense times," Cohodas said.
"A lot of New England people think Ohio people and this region's people are stupid," said Gaul, who regularly watches the talk show of Boston native Conan O'Brien. "They always make fun of Cleveland, and like this is a corn state. My impression is that New England people often think Midwesterners are stupid."
King said: "They talk like that about people in Ohio, yet we're the deciding vote. What's funny is, the corn people know.”
If Kerry is dogged and haunted by the accusation of wanting everything twice over, he has come by the charge honestly. In Vietnam, he was either a member of a ''band of brothers'' or of a gang of war criminals, and has testified with great emotion to both convictions. In the Senate, he has either voted for armament and vigilance or he has not, and either regrets his antiwar vote on the Kuwait war, or his initial pro-war stance on the Iraq war, or his negative vote on the financing of the latter, or has not. The Boston Globe writers capture a moment of sheer, abject incoherence, at a Democratic candidates' debate in Baltimore last September:This is a great line too: “When critical votes on [Iraq] come up, Kerry always looks like a dog being washed.” I’ve seen that look on my dog.
''If we hadn't voted the way we voted, we would not have been able to have a chance of going to the United Nations and stopping the president, in effect, who already had the votes and who was obviously asking serious questions about whether or not the Congress was going to be there to enforce the effort to create a threat.''
And all smart people know how to laugh at President Bush for having problems with articulation.
Politically, though, I think the whole Swift boat campaign is not very smart. It focuses attention on Kerry's one strong point. The man has nothing to say about his next 30 years. His own emphasis on his Vietnam days is a brilliant distraction from his mediocre Senate career and his unbroken string of misjudgments about the national security requirements of the United States: supporting the idiotic nuclear freeze, opposing crucial Pershing II missile deployments in Europe, opposing support for the Nicaraguan anti-communist insurgency, voting against the Persian Gulf War, trying to cut post-Cold War intelligence funding. The list is long.Bush was wise to praise Kerry's service in Vietnam in his Larry King interview. Bury this issue and focus on the Senator's twenty years in Washington where he has consistently voted the wrong way on national defense, intelligence, and taxes.
A new Gallup Poll shows a slight improvement in President George W. Bush's overall job approval rating, while the presidential contest remains essentially unchanged. In a two-way contest with Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, Bush enjoys a slight lead among likely voters, 50% to 47%, little changed from the 51% to 47% lead he enjoyed in a July 30-Aug. 1 poll.This poll shows President Bush with a 51% approval rating among likely voters.
I said a flip-flop the hippie is flippingCatchy, no? My favorite entry was the one done to the Eagles' "Take it Easy"
To the flip flip flop, you don’t stop
The crock to the bang bang boogie say up jumped the boogie
To the flippety flippety beat
Well, I was cycling down the roadSing along to them all!
In my tight French clothes
I had seven viewpoints on my mind
Four wildly liberal
Two wildly liberal
One, a token moderate line
Bush has lately claimed the Iraq war to be a Kosovo-like “humanitarian intervention,” but that notion has never had more than a minuscule following among Democrats; and although Dean’s candidacy imploded in Iowa, and voters united around Kerry as the best bet to beat Bush, a deep vein of disapproval for his Iraq votes still runs through the Democratic base.This past week, President Bush managed to pin Kerry down on one issue and it proved disastrous for the Senator, leading to grumbling among Democratic staffers that Kerry had been duped by Bush (again!). Over the next couple of months, Senator Splunge will have to reconcile his positions for a dozen other issues on which he’s vacillated, equivocated and flip-flopped. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but to echo Matt Margolis: bring on the debates!
That unease is compounded by the obvious political calculation of Kerry’s vote last fall to withhold eighty-seven billion dollars of auxiliary support for the military in Afghanistan and Iraq. As one of his advisers put it to me, “Off the record, he did it because of Howard Dean. On the record, he has an elaborate explanation.” Kerry originally supported an amendment sponsored by Senator Joseph Biden that would have funded the war by temporarily reducing Bush’s tax cuts to the wealthiest one per cent of Americans. But Biden’s bill had no chance of passing in a Republican-dominated Senate, and Kerry’s absurdly abbreviated account of the matter—“I did vote for the eighty-seven billion before I voted against it”—has left him open to relentless Republican ridicule. Biden himself ultimately voted for the money, and he confirmed that Kerry’s decision not to was “tactical,” an attempt “to prove to Dean’s guys I’m not a warmonger.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is considering burning down his Mount Kisco home and rebuilding it from scratch because it's so infested with bugs.Oops!
Our wag in Westchester claims that Kennedy, a crusading environmentalist, is considering torching his family home because it's overrun with "something like termites, but not termites." Apparently in some circles, setting a home ablaze is considered more ecologically sound than simply spraying it with chemical pesticides.
When we called Kennedy for comment, he told us: "I urge you not to write this — it will damage the value of my house." He added: "We don't know what we're going to do," and declined further comment.
If you wanted to pick a candidate on the wrong side of every major defense and foreign policy question of the last two decades, you would be hard put to find anyone with judgment as comprehensively poor as Mr. Kerry: total up his votes and statements on everything from Grenada to the Gulf war, Saddam to the Sandinistas, the Cold War to missile defense to every major weapons system of the 1980s and '90s. He called them all wrong.To be fair, Kerry was just following Ted Kennedy's
I know what our troops go through when they carry an M-16 in a dangerous place and can't tell friend from foe.No contextual background is provided for this important issue (pssst! It’s Iraq). Instead, let’s review the most important topic to John Kerry: John Kerry. Here we learn, in a heap of solipsism, that he carried an M-16 in some dangerous venue, probably Nantucket.
Both [Kerry and Bush] want more international military and financial help, a stable and relatively democratic government, an intensive training of Iraqi security forces and a gradual drawdown of U.S. troops. But who wouldn't? The question is how to get there.And the LA Times today noted that none of the Europeans are giving any indication they’re willing to provide troops, and certainly not at the levels that would allow significant American troop withdrawals as Kerry has promised. This is all shadow and fog, and a great disservice to the American troops with whom Kerry supposedly empathizes.
When it comes to Social Security reform, John Kerry is clear about what he is against.Kerry’s entire campaign is built on “not Bush.” Eventually, he’s going to have to come up with some answers of his own.
``I will not privatize Social Security,'' he declared in his acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention. ``I will not cut benefits.'' The Democratic Party as a whole takes the same position through its party platform: ``Democrats believe in the progressive, guaranteed benefit that has ensured that seniors and people with disabilities receive a benefit not subject to the whims of the market or the economy. We oppose privatizing Social Security or raising the retirement age.''
It is a clear, resounding message... that says absolutely nothing about what Sen. Kerry or the Democrats would do to solve Social Security's looming financial crisis.
Teresa Heinz Kerry, the candidate's Mozambique-born spouse who has become known for her unscripted utterances, spoke of her deepest fears when talking about her love of American democracy.Oh Mama T…we have strict orders from Lord Protector Ashcroft and Il Duce Rove: no lynchings until after the election.
"We don't have to fear being hung from a lamppost or shot or sent to jail. Not yet. Not yet. And please God, not ever," she said.
In Pennsylvania, 53% of all voters Approve of the way President Bush is performing his job. That's up six points from a month ago and close to his national Job Approval rating.C’mon Pennsylvania!
SIR – You should be frightened at the thought of the world's dominant economy being taken over by a liberal Democrat with no real experience in administering anything of any note. Governing a state or at least running a big governmental entity is usually a vital prerequisite to overseeing the sprawling federal bureaucracy. Being so distant politically from the mainstream of the body politic ensures that a Kerry-Edwards administration would be mired in legislative gridlock from the start. The thought of them, in over their heads, turning to the likes of Edward Kennedy and Bill Clinton for political sustenance could only excite the naive or those without America's best interests at heart.Ron Goodden
US President George W Bush offered up a new entry for his catalogue of "Bushisms" today, declaring that his administration will "never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people".Not helping, George.
It's not even going to be close. Bush is going to beat Kerry like a red-headed step-child, the electoral college result will be so one-sided the Democrats will wonder why they ever thought Kerry stood any chance of being even faintly competitive, George McGovern will have to move over one place in the Ultimate Loser Hall of Fame, and Michael Moore will have to be put on suicide watch.Testify, brother, testify!
Republicans are out to make Democratic nominee John Kerry answer a simple question: Knowing what you know now, would you have gone to war in Iraq — yes or no? So far, it's not a question that Kerry wants to answer yes or no in commander-in-chief fashion, and it's easy to see why.The Boston Globe:
Asked about Bush's Iraq policy during an economic event here, Kerry bristled slightly in recalling news accounts that suggested he "hasn't spelled out" his vision for rebuilding Iraq and bringing home US troops.And the WashPost noted in “A Low Profile for the Big Issue”:
Kerry has strongly criticized the Bush administration's competence in handling the war, principally its failure to enlist other nations to its cause in Iraq. But he has not questioned the basic tenets of the policy, nor has he outlined a course of action substantially different from the one Bush is pursuing to shore up the interim government and prepare for national elections. While he has said he would substantially cut troop strength in Iraq by the end of his first term, he has not provided details on how.John Kerry seems to feel a sense of entitlement, whether because of his blue-blood heritage, his rarefied education, or his wife’s ketchup money. But being a leader requires something more than a political philosophy honed by focus groups. It requires, it demands, that you take a position and defend it. On this and so many other issues, Kerry has failed the test.
Four years ago, based on numbers less grim than these, I said Bush was toast. Gore had passed Bush, and I thought the numbers couldn't turn around. I was wrong.Yet you feel no compunction making the same prediction four years later? Way to get back on that horse, Bill!
In Shullsburg, Wis., Kerry's bus stopped so he could greet some well-wishers along the road, and a man asked Kerry about his vote against funding body armor for U.S. troops. Kerry says the charge was a distortion of his record.He didn’t really vote against the funding for body armor, except when he did, but so he could change the policy… of sending body armor to soldiers. Vietnam!
"It's killing you in this area," the man said.
Kerry moved on to shake more hands, but turned back and told him, "I'd never leave those troops without their body armor, you know that."
But these days, judging by several best-selling books in France and the tone ofOh for heaven’s sake: cowboy up and drink your Starbucks!
a self-effacing discourse on national radio and television and in newspapers,
the country has begun to again broach the subject of its own decline. The
discussion touches on the loss of influence in the spheres of politics,
economics, art, film, diplomacy, and even language.
But the part of Mr. Kerry's solution to the terror threat that really got Republican eyes rolling was his call for a special session of Congress to consider legislation reorganizing the management of intelligence agencies.He’s right, you know! This led to the “Weaselly Qualifier of the Day”:
"That's pretty tough talk from a guy who has fewer days at work this year than he has houses," said House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. "He's not been around here during our regular session; what makes anyone think he'll be here for a special session?"
Mr. Kerry later told reporters that he would attend such a session to debate and vote when necessary.That is: never.
