IF ELECTED I WILL GO TO TORA BORA (via Mike Daley):

Kerry's 'Me, Too' Campaign Seems Destined for Failure (Nicholas Von Hoffman, NY Observer)

While George Bush has been hard at work firing up his base support by advocating a marriage amendment to the Constitution, Mr. Kerry has taken another tack-he is trying to discourage his base. His astonishing avowal that, if he knew then what he knows now about weapons of mass destruction, etc., he still would have voted for the war, has had about the same effect on his hard-core supporters as an announcement by George Bush that he is in favor of abortion rights would have on his. If only by silent deception, Mr. Kerry should have understood that he must give his own workers some reason to think that, if elected, he would not be Bush lite.

Mr. Kerry's critique of Mr. Bush's war and foreign policy has been fumbling,
ambiguous, unfocused and unconvincing. He gives the impression of a politician who is hiding his real intentions-which, if one can smell them out, are to walk the same path as Mr. Bush, but with the lame promise of getting more help in Iraq from NATO or the E.U. That, however, is transparent buncombe. Making nicey-nicey is not going to get French or Belgian or German politicians to send their people into the desert to get picked off by snipers and roadside bombs.

It makes tactical political sense for Mr. Kerry not to attack the Iraq war head on, as the Howard Dean people might like, but a candidate has got to say something more than "Me, too." "Me, too" never got anybody elected, and the war is too big to be skipped over. Mr. Kerry has got to say something about it that is strong, clear and different from what George Bush says, and that will not alienate the lukewarms in the quivering middle.

One public position which fulfills these requirements is the argument that Mr. Bush has no plan to win the war against terrorism, only to endure it indefinitely. The war strategy is blundering overseas and posting a guard in front of every bridge, dock, pipeline, chemical plant, courthouse, office building, etc., in the country. Since homeland security is a political-patronage mill and a cash cow for crony corporations, in a pinch you may be sure half of these "first responders" will screw it up. The costs of our kind of homeland security to business must add one more competitive drag on an economy which falls farther behind in the world-trade race every year.

Mr. Kerry should be saying that there is no security in George Bush's security program. Does Mr. Bush think he can keep terrorists out of the United States? Let Mr. Kerry remind us that Mr. Bush cannot keep out thousands of tons of cocaine and tens of thousands of Mexicans. If he can't do that, how is he ever going to stop a couple of dozen terrorists?

Mr. Kerry must repeat and continue to repeat that only an end to the war, a victory or even a negotiated compromise will make the homeland secure.

So a Democrat stands to benefit by attacking drugs and immigrants and by vowing to negotiate with al Qaeda? Mr. von Hoffman makes little enough sense to be hired as an advisor.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 18, 2004 5:42 PM