July 30, 2004
WHY NOT TAKE ALL OF ME?:
Buzzwords and cheap shots (Jeff Jacoby, July 30, 2004, Boston Globe)
His political career wasn't the only thing missing from Kerry's speech."This is the most important election of our lifetime," he said. "The stakes are high. We are a nation at war -- a global war on terror against an enemy unlike any we have ever known before." And with that, he launched right into a discussion of -- what? The nature of that unprecedented enemy? The threat from radical Islam? His strategy for victory? No: After raising the specter of an enemy "unlike any we have ever known before," Kerry promptly started talking about -- jobs. Coming less than three years after 9/11, this is the most important election of our lifetime. But why that is, Kerry has yet to say.
He spoke of his empathy for the young grunts "carrying an M-16 in a dangerous place" and about his respect for "all who serve in our armed forces today." Couldn't he have spared a few words to salute those troops for their two great achievements of recent years -- the toppling of vicious tyrannies in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Mr. Kerry gets trapped in a weird political calculus here:
A: The only thing he's ever done in his life, so far as we can tell, is serve honorably in Vietnam.
B: However, he thinks that war was evil and he a war criminal.
C: He thinks has to project a sufficiently powerful image that we'll hire him to fight this war.
D: However, he opposes it, almost equating it to Vietnam.
When you add all that up he's implicitly (sometimes explicitly) denigrating his own service to the cause of freedom and that of our current military, while asking to lead them (and us). No wonder he looked like Richard Nixon last night--this is one tortured dude.
Posted by Orrin Judd at July 30, 2004 11:15 AMLileks points out that Kerry referred to his Vietnam service as "defending" the country.
Posted by: David Cohen at July 30, 2004 11:46 AMI wonder how tortured this guy really is. he seems to be a purely self-interested politician who believes he is entitled to the Presidency. His four months of service in Viet Nam may have been orchestrated simply for political advantage using JFK and PT109 as a model. His position on the political/ideological continuum was changeable, malleable and determined solely on what he believed to be saleable during a very bad time. If one listens to his testimony before congressional commitees as our Vietnamese allies were being abandoned, he obviously had no interest other than positioning himself as a new kind of politician, one who would exercise power in a world where Marxism was a practical alternative to American liberal democracy. His actions during the Reagan years are perfectly in line with such political foolishness. John Kerry has accomplished very little as a senator while maintaining a record which has been consistently wrong regarding the great drama of the 20th century. That he has never changed or "grown" from his errors is disturbing. The upcoming campaign may be an example of extreme demogoguery as strange as the candidate's changeable accent.
The Bostonians I know tell me that politicians don't get any phonier than Mr. Kerry.
>His four months of service in Viet Nam may have
>been orchestrated simply for political
>advantage using JFK and PT109 as a model.
According to some (doubleplusungood refs unevents) stories from those who ran into JFKerry in the 'Nam, he said as much -- that he was going to be "the next JFK from Massachusetts" and this was his "PT109 moment".
Kerry's got the worst case of JFK Impersonator syndrome in history.
Posted by: Ken at July 30, 2004 12:13 PM"Kerry's got the worst case of JFK Impersonator syndrome in history"
Actually I thought the hoopla over the first JFK's war experiences was overblown also.
Posted by: h-man at July 30, 2004 12:32 PMOf course, the JFK legend was manufactured. It's old news. That Kerry still clings to it as a model for campaigning is what I find strange, even bizarre. He may honestly believe, which is likely, that the average voter is stupid and more than likely to fall for it. It's the elitist mind set. The fact that the man actually clings to some of the silliest, most counter-productive economic and foreign poilicy ideas while believing himself to be a great leader, in light of his record, in an exercise in delusional narcisism which may be approaching neurosis/psychosis.
Posted by: Tom C, Stamford,Ct. at July 30, 2004 12:49 PMI'm with Tom C. on this one. Kerry's positions are 1) completely, transparently, self-serving and likely to change with the next mild gust of popular opinion. They're obviously what Kerry believes are the most likely to get him votes
Which brings me to...
2)His instincts about what will get him votes are shockingly wrong; abysmal, actually.
It's frightening, how out of touch Kerry actually is.
What sort of pathetic chump would want to be Kerry's Vaughn Meader? Is it even possible?
"His instincts about what will get him votes are shockingly wrong; abysmal, actually. "
They keep him and Teddy in the Senate, don't they?
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at July 30, 2004 2:12 PMRaoul,
From Massachusetts.
But, point taken.
Kerry's like the political verison of Robbie Williams, does well in his local market, bombs in the wider U.S. of A.