Boston Bacchanalia: The Prelude
Let the Democratic National Hatefest begin!
What’s that, you say? It’s not going to be a hatefest? John Kerry has given specific instructions to knock off the Bush-bashing? This will be a week of peace, love, and brotherhood instead, led by the Reverend Gomer Kaye?
Uh-huh. Guess whose speeches aren’t being censored by Kerry’s people? Bill and Hillary Clinton, the twin capos of the Democrat party who are bigger obstacles to a Lurch presidency than George Bush is. And sure enough, it’s rumored that they’re going to have claws and fangs bared and sharpened, which will rev up the bloodthirsty delegates, set the tone for the week, and make poor old John Kerry look like an afterthought when he goes out on Thursday to give “the speech of his life.” They can get away with that because of who they are and because it’s still their party, no matter the identity of the titular “presumptive” figurehead. They know Kerry is just a prop, a tomato can filling a role that will be completed in November, after which the decks will be cleared for Mrs. Clinton’s four-year coronational processional. Hell, Kerry probably knows it too, deep down, but will never admit it even to himself. Or at least until he lands a book deal next spring.
Other Dems – at least in actual positions of responsibility – don’t have that kind of autonomy. Of course, there are plenty of Dems who don’t hold positions of responsibility – Michael Moore and Howie Dean come to mind – who will be bashing away at the President and thumbing their noses at the nominee they supposedly can’t wait to “climb any mountain, bear any burden” to get elected. It seems to me that these people are going to overshadow the Kerryites’ public relations sanitizing efforts – overwhelm might be a better verb – no matter what the Boston Balker might claim to want.
Does he want a sane convention for the brief snippets the networks will be showing the country? After all, this is the same man who sat through the now-infamous Radio City Raunchfest, with all the profane, bilious Bushophobic vitriol, with a big smile on his mug and the comment at the end of the night that it had all “represented the heart and soul of America.” Recall as well how Kerry himself has had a number of unguarded moments when he’s called Bush and the GOP “liars” and “crooks” and accused the President of having “fucked up” Iraq.
The answer, of course, is that those are his real, true feelings, but he apparently possesses sufficient political acumen to discern that the tactical shelf-life of Bush-bashing has passed its expiration date. Just as the 1995-96 Mediscare gambit peaked in late spring/early summer of that election year, so the whole “BUSH LIED!!!!!” squall has begun showing signs of generating a backlash even before the 9/11 report, Senate Intelligence Committee report, and British Butler report took turns exonerating and vindicating the President’s war leadership. With erstwhile loony left stars like Dick Clarke, “Yellowcake Joe” Wilson, and the aforementioned Jabba the Hut reject having been deconstructed, decompiled, and all-around demolished, the usefulness of relentlessly deranged negativity is, it would appear, at an end.
There are, however, a couple of problems at that juncture.
One is that, let’s face it, even the “responsible” Dems won’t really be able to help themselves. Just look at the columnar advice of former New York guv Mario Cuomo:
Ah, so “we will not call the President a liar,” but we will say should have somehow “known better” than to defend the country and legitimate eighteen UN Security Council resolutions despite the intelligence that was available to him at the time. “We will not call the President a liar,” but we will continue perpetuating the fiction, already discredited, that there were no WMDs or WMD programs, no Saddam-al Qaeda links, and that Bush ever said the Iraqi threat was “imminent.” “We will not call the President a liar,” but we will condemn him for not ignoring 9/11 in his foreign policy decision-making, even as we will condemn him for not acting pre-emptively to avert the al Qaeda attacks of three years ago. In short, “we” will do everything but call the President a liar.
Well, at least here there’s no phony “We will not call the President…” demurral. Cuomo flat-out urges Senator Kerry to call George Bush a warmonger and war criminal and completely mischaracterize the liberation of Iraq and the vast step forward it made in the war on terror. Certainly the above bears no resemblance to their utterly neutered campaign plank on Iraq.
In other words, Senator Kerry should declare that in an age of WMD terrorism, he will not defend the country until after thousands more American civilians have perished first. Small wonder that Rush Limbaugh this morning was all but begging Kerry to take Cuomo’s advice.
Kerry’s other problem is…well, Kerry. Listen to Cuomo’s summation:
Understand that he’s talking about John Kerry’s oratory here. The only time he’s ever moistened the eyes of his listeners is by boring them to tears. If he tries to imitate Clinton’s lower lip-biting and effeminate emoting, he might double over the delegates in laughter, or perhaps generate a collective disgruntled, mildly horrified incredulity. But manipulating emotions? Conducting the feelings of the assembled faithful like a rhetorical virtuouso? Who’s Mario trying to fool with this pulp?
John Kerry can do one thing with his voice: lecture. He’s the medieval Chinese history associate professor who can pontificate on the fourth Ming dynasty for hours at a time without even taking a second breath. He’s the oratorical equivalent of a VCR instruction manual in all four listed languages. He never says anything in ten words or less when he can say it in fifteen hundred words or more. And whenever he says anything it’s with that nasally air of pomposity that slides underneath his words to impute to the listener the subliminal impression that you should already know what he’s saying and agree with it so that he doesn’t have to bother explaining it again. In short, he’s Thurston Howell III without the sense of humor.
Now this is not to say that Kerry is going to bomb on Thursday. Maybe he’ll be smart and disciplined enough to eschew Cuomo’s red meat. In fact, here is the gist of the speech that I would advise Senator Kerry to give:
Sound familiar? It was the acceptance speech punch line (except for the last tidbit) of another U.S. Senator seeking the presidency in the aftermath of a time of crisis and war, Warren Harding. And as Frank Freidel, one-time Charles Warren Professor of American History at Harvard, commented,
No parallel is ever exact, of course. “Most voters,” writes Freidel, “were chiefly interested in protesting uncomfortable living conditions” (i.e. the post WWI economic depression), and that’s a far cry from the booming economy and avaricious prosperity Americans enjoy today. Even the war on terror has not been the sustained crisis or required the sort of sacrifice that “the Great War” did (as President Bush predicted early on). But, ironically, the incessant anti-Bush agitating, coupled with the contrast between the year-plus reconstruction of Iraq and the initial three-week blitzkrieg, has engendered a sort of fatigue of unrealistically high expectations from which a lot of Americans have come to suffer to varying degrees. The growing backlash against the Bushophobes is a manifestation of it.
Were Kerry to go out on Thursday and, in effect, declare victory in the war on terror and turn the page back to domestic matters, with a particular eye toward harkening nostalgically back to the supposed “good ol’ days” of the Clinton detour, that would neatly sidestep, and perhaps even eclipse, the Bush-bashers, apply a little martial arts misdirection to Dubya’s national security strength by rendering it less relevant, and redirect the campaign toward the greatest strengths of Kerry and his party. And it would be the route that would fit in best with Kerry’s own strengths as a speechifier.
Oh, sure, that runs the same huge risk for Mr. French as boasting about there not having been another terrorist attack in the homeland would for the President – if something big goes boom, there goes his credibility – and the notion would certainly seem to be belied by the army of security that is locking down half of Beantown this week. But as former NFL football coach Chuck Knox used to say, “You gotta play the hand you’re dealt.” Kerry is not a used car salesman and emotion-manipulator like Bill Clinton, and he’s not an angry, alpha male-impersonator (and crazy as a loon) like Al Gore. And thanks to them and self-righteous pacifistic fops like George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and his mentor, Michael Dukakis, his party is not taken seriously on national security, and hasn’t a prayer of regaining such gravitas after its reprehensible conduct of the past fifteen months. So if you know voters won’t trust you in time of war, you have to make the case that the war is over and hope that near-term events don’t burst the illusion. Is it responsible? Absolutely not. Is it Kerry’s only realistic chance? Definitely. Can it hold for three months and a week? Well, it’s held for almost three years, hasn’t it? What would Lurch have to lose? After all, it only has to hold long enough for him to get elected. Thereafter al Qaeda can incinerate the entire country, and Kerry will still be in what’s left of the White House. And what more prominent historical legacy could he have than to go down as the last President of the United States? Would stomp Clinton’s legacy into chunky salsa.
Bottom line is, since greater Kerry exposure usually means declining Kerry poll numbers, why not use what exposure you have to incur to your best advantage? But will the fourth-term junior upper chamber legislator from the Bay State follow this advice? From the looks of things, it appears highly unlikely.
What a…well, “crying” shame…
What’s that, you say? It’s not going to be a hatefest? John Kerry has given specific instructions to knock off the Bush-bashing? This will be a week of peace, love, and brotherhood instead, led by the Reverend Gomer Kaye?
Uh-huh. Guess whose speeches aren’t being censored by Kerry’s people? Bill and Hillary Clinton, the twin capos of the Democrat party who are bigger obstacles to a Lurch presidency than George Bush is. And sure enough, it’s rumored that they’re going to have claws and fangs bared and sharpened, which will rev up the bloodthirsty delegates, set the tone for the week, and make poor old John Kerry look like an afterthought when he goes out on Thursday to give “the speech of his life.” They can get away with that because of who they are and because it’s still their party, no matter the identity of the titular “presumptive” figurehead. They know Kerry is just a prop, a tomato can filling a role that will be completed in November, after which the decks will be cleared for Mrs. Clinton’s four-year coronational processional. Hell, Kerry probably knows it too, deep down, but will never admit it even to himself. Or at least until he lands a book deal next spring.
Other Dems – at least in actual positions of responsibility – don’t have that kind of autonomy. Of course, there are plenty of Dems who don’t hold positions of responsibility – Michael Moore and Howie Dean come to mind – who will be bashing away at the President and thumbing their noses at the nominee they supposedly can’t wait to “climb any mountain, bear any burden” to get elected. It seems to me that these people are going to overshadow the Kerryites’ public relations sanitizing efforts – overwhelm might be a better verb – no matter what the Boston Balker might claim to want.
Does he want a sane convention for the brief snippets the networks will be showing the country? After all, this is the same man who sat through the now-infamous Radio City Raunchfest, with all the profane, bilious Bushophobic vitriol, with a big smile on his mug and the comment at the end of the night that it had all “represented the heart and soul of America.” Recall as well how Kerry himself has had a number of unguarded moments when he’s called Bush and the GOP “liars” and “crooks” and accused the President of having “fucked up” Iraq.
The answer, of course, is that those are his real, true feelings, but he apparently possesses sufficient political acumen to discern that the tactical shelf-life of Bush-bashing has passed its expiration date. Just as the 1995-96 Mediscare gambit peaked in late spring/early summer of that election year, so the whole “BUSH LIED!!!!!” squall has begun showing signs of generating a backlash even before the 9/11 report, Senate Intelligence Committee report, and British Butler report took turns exonerating and vindicating the President’s war leadership. With erstwhile loony left stars like Dick Clarke, “Yellowcake Joe” Wilson, and the aforementioned Jabba the Hut reject having been deconstructed, decompiled, and all-around demolished, the usefulness of relentlessly deranged negativity is, it would appear, at an end.
There are, however, a couple of problems at that juncture.
One is that, let’s face it, even the “responsible” Dems won’t really be able to help themselves. Just look at the columnar advice of former New York guv Mario Cuomo:
A simple clear idea that could distinguish Kerry from Bush: He might start by saying, "We will not call the president a liar. He's our commander in chief, and we respect that. But we will say this. He was mistaken, as many of us were, about the three predicates of the war: weapons of mass destruction, complicity with Al Qaeda with respect to Saddam, and imminence of threat. "He did not know, but he was grotesquely wrong. Many of us were fooled by this, but he is the president.
Ah, so “we will not call the President a liar,” but we will say should have somehow “known better” than to defend the country and legitimate eighteen UN Security Council resolutions despite the intelligence that was available to him at the time. “We will not call the President a liar,” but we will continue perpetuating the fiction, already discredited, that there were no WMDs or WMD programs, no Saddam-al Qaeda links, and that Bush ever said the Iraqi threat was “imminent.” “We will not call the President a liar,” but we will condemn him for not ignoring 9/11 in his foreign policy decision-making, even as we will condemn him for not acting pre-emptively to avert the al Qaeda attacks of three years ago. In short, “we” will do everything but call the President a liar.
He now insists that the war was worthwhile anyway. Worthwhile? A loss of 900 Americans, many more wounded, 15,000 to 30,000 Iraqis killed, $120 billion spent on an occupation that has failed terribly in stabilizing the nation and has drawn terrorists from all over the world? Despite all that, the president said it was a good thing to do. Here lies the big difference between me and the president. He's saying he would do it again. Another 900 lives, another $120 billion, another 15,000 to 30,000 Iraqis killed. Another loss of respect.
Well, at least here there’s no phony “We will not call the President…” demurral. Cuomo flat-out urges Senator Kerry to call George Bush a warmonger and war criminal and completely mischaracterize the liberation of Iraq and the vast step forward it made in the war on terror. Certainly the above bears no resemblance to their utterly neutered campaign plank on Iraq.
That's where I part company with the president. He has not yet renounced his preemptive war. I'm against preemptive war. I will not make that mistake. I will not let the country make that mistake again.
In other words, Senator Kerry should declare that in an age of WMD terrorism, he will not defend the country until after thousands more American civilians have perished first. Small wonder that Rush Limbaugh this morning was all but begging Kerry to take Cuomo’s advice.
Kerry’s other problem is…well, Kerry. Listen to Cuomo’s summation:
You should be able to bring a tear to people's eyes or a smile to their lips, a moment of revelry, a laugh. You should move people when you're trying to be president. Kerry is so accustomed to the precision of his words. He's complete. When people let themselves go and follow their own emotions, it can be wonderful.
For this convention, I want to see Kerry make people cry, make people a little nervous.
Understand that he’s talking about John Kerry’s oratory here. The only time he’s ever moistened the eyes of his listeners is by boring them to tears. If he tries to imitate Clinton’s lower lip-biting and effeminate emoting, he might double over the delegates in laughter, or perhaps generate a collective disgruntled, mildly horrified incredulity. But manipulating emotions? Conducting the feelings of the assembled faithful like a rhetorical virtuouso? Who’s Mario trying to fool with this pulp?
John Kerry can do one thing with his voice: lecture. He’s the medieval Chinese history associate professor who can pontificate on the fourth Ming dynasty for hours at a time without even taking a second breath. He’s the oratorical equivalent of a VCR instruction manual in all four listed languages. He never says anything in ten words or less when he can say it in fifteen hundred words or more. And whenever he says anything it’s with that nasally air of pomposity that slides underneath his words to impute to the listener the subliminal impression that you should already know what he’s saying and agree with it so that he doesn’t have to bother explaining it again. In short, he’s Thurston Howell III without the sense of humor.
Now this is not to say that Kerry is going to bomb on Thursday. Maybe he’ll be smart and disciplined enough to eschew Cuomo’s red meat. In fact, here is the gist of the speech that I would advise Senator Kerry to give:
America’s present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums, but normalcy; not revolution, but restoration; not agitation, but adjustment; not surgery, but serenity; not the dramatic, but the dispassionate; not experiment, but equipoise; not unilateralism, but sustainment in triumphant internationality.
Sound familiar? It was the acceptance speech punch line (except for the last tidbit) of another U.S. Senator seeking the presidency in the aftermath of a time of crisis and war, Warren Harding. And as Frank Freidel, one-time Charles Warren Professor of American History at Harvard, commented,
…the very murkiness of such statements was effective…both opponents and proponents of American entrance into the League [of Nations] could find in Harding’s speeches reasons to vote for him.
No parallel is ever exact, of course. “Most voters,” writes Freidel, “were chiefly interested in protesting uncomfortable living conditions” (i.e. the post WWI economic depression), and that’s a far cry from the booming economy and avaricious prosperity Americans enjoy today. Even the war on terror has not been the sustained crisis or required the sort of sacrifice that “the Great War” did (as President Bush predicted early on). But, ironically, the incessant anti-Bush agitating, coupled with the contrast between the year-plus reconstruction of Iraq and the initial three-week blitzkrieg, has engendered a sort of fatigue of unrealistically high expectations from which a lot of Americans have come to suffer to varying degrees. The growing backlash against the Bushophobes is a manifestation of it.
Were Kerry to go out on Thursday and, in effect, declare victory in the war on terror and turn the page back to domestic matters, with a particular eye toward harkening nostalgically back to the supposed “good ol’ days” of the Clinton detour, that would neatly sidestep, and perhaps even eclipse, the Bush-bashers, apply a little martial arts misdirection to Dubya’s national security strength by rendering it less relevant, and redirect the campaign toward the greatest strengths of Kerry and his party. And it would be the route that would fit in best with Kerry’s own strengths as a speechifier.
Oh, sure, that runs the same huge risk for Mr. French as boasting about there not having been another terrorist attack in the homeland would for the President – if something big goes boom, there goes his credibility – and the notion would certainly seem to be belied by the army of security that is locking down half of Beantown this week. But as former NFL football coach Chuck Knox used to say, “You gotta play the hand you’re dealt.” Kerry is not a used car salesman and emotion-manipulator like Bill Clinton, and he’s not an angry, alpha male-impersonator (and crazy as a loon) like Al Gore. And thanks to them and self-righteous pacifistic fops like George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, and his mentor, Michael Dukakis, his party is not taken seriously on national security, and hasn’t a prayer of regaining such gravitas after its reprehensible conduct of the past fifteen months. So if you know voters won’t trust you in time of war, you have to make the case that the war is over and hope that near-term events don’t burst the illusion. Is it responsible? Absolutely not. Is it Kerry’s only realistic chance? Definitely. Can it hold for three months and a week? Well, it’s held for almost three years, hasn’t it? What would Lurch have to lose? After all, it only has to hold long enough for him to get elected. Thereafter al Qaeda can incinerate the entire country, and Kerry will still be in what’s left of the White House. And what more prominent historical legacy could he have than to go down as the last President of the United States? Would stomp Clinton’s legacy into chunky salsa.
Bottom line is, since greater Kerry exposure usually means declining Kerry poll numbers, why not use what exposure you have to incur to your best advantage? But will the fourth-term junior upper chamber legislator from the Bay State follow this advice? From the looks of things, it appears highly unlikely.
What a…well, “crying” shame…
posted by JASmius at 8:35 PM
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