JFK, THE ANTI-JFK:

Decision 2004: Fear Fatigue vs. Sheer Fatigue (Frank Rich, 10/31/04, NY Times)

To Mr. Bush and his cronies, who see the world as an arena in which performance is all and circumspection is antithetical to manly decisiveness, Mr. Kerry is a farcical weakling. That's why they were so obsessed with smearing the senator's Vietnam record, the main refutation of that argument. What they didn't count on is that their man's "Top Gun" stagecraft carries its own baggage. When a real war goes wrong, a considered plan, as Mr. Kerry pedantically refers to his every policy prescription, can start to look preferable to a slam-dunk Jerry Bruckheimer stunt. While the mantra of this election season has it that Kerry voters are voting against Bush, not for Kerry, it's equally possible that some of them see their choice as a vote for mundane, nuances-and-all reality over a hyperbolic fantasy whose budget in blood and money has spiraled out of control. After three years of nonstop thrills, Americans will just have to decide on Nov. 2 whether there could be fates even worse than spending the next four years being bored.

This is certainly the strongest argument in Mr. Kerry's favor, that after four years of doing great things Americans deserve four years of doing nothing. However, the plea that we should be Europe is antithetical to the American spirit, so the candidate can't make it openly and it seems unlikely that America--or at least the Red portion thereof--is ready to decline into the senescence claiming the rest of the West.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 28, 2004 8:38 AM