THE UNDOMESTIC DOMESTIC:

'It was a face-off without their faces on': If George W Bush clobbered Saddam, why can't he clobber an effete ninny like John Kerry? (Mark Steyn, 10/10/04, Daily Telegraph)

I wrote here last week that Bush owed the American people a "performance". Television types define performance very narrowly - the kind of accomplished blandness of a smooth news anchor or financial reporter or weather girl - and they tend to measure political performance in media terms, too. But what the over-caffeinated Bush communicated on Friday was his passion, his energy, his resolve, his sense of humour and his authenticity. If he yells and waves his arms around too much to make a convincing weather girl, big deal.

Kerry, on the other hand, was accomplished only in media-smoothie terms. At Friday's debate, the Senator pledged that he wouldn't raise taxes on families earning over $200,000. Then he gazed out over the audience and said: "And looking around here, at this group here, I suspect there are only three people here who are going to be affected: the President, me, and Charlie, I'm sorry, you too," he added, chuckling clubbily with the debate moderator, big-time ABC News anchor Charles Gibson.

Well, he has a point. Bush is a millionaire, Gibson's a zillionaire, and Kerry's a multi-gazillionaire. But how can you tell by looking at people that they earn under 200 grand? And, even if you can, is it such a great idea to let 'em know they look like working stiffs and chain-store schlubs? But, when you've married two heiresses, it's kinda hard to tell where the losers with mere six-figure incomes begin: it's like the 97-year-old who calls the guys in late-middle age "sonny". In America, quite a few fairly regular families earn 200 grand and an awful lot more families hope to be in that bracket one day. And, more importantly, the sheer condescension of assuming that the room divides into the colossi of the politico-media ruling class and everyone else sums up everything that's wrong with the modern Democratic Party.

But Kerry's condescending reassurances on his tax increases prefigured his disastrous performance on the other domestic issues. It's not just that Bush was almost unnervingly competent on so-called Democratic topics such as the environment, but that Kerry was quite staggeringly patronising and incoherent on issues such as stem-cell research and abortion. The point here is that on, say, the disgusting practice of partial-birth abortion - which is really partial-birth infanticide - Bush knows what he believes; if Kerry believes anything on that subject, he seems incapable of expressing it and his professions of deep respect for the female audience-members who asked the questions - "You know, Elizabeth, I really respect the feeling that's in your question", "I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life. I truly respect it" - make him sound like the greasiest snake-oil salesman.

Kerry is a remarkable candidate: after a 20-year career of consistently opposing the projection of American power, he's chosen to run as a cipher. No wonder the media bigfeet love him: like them, he's a Leftie posing as an empty vessel.

A number of the liberal pundits commenting about Friday night seemed just stunned at how bad the Senator's answers were on the values issues, maybe they've never explained their own positions to themselves

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 10, 2004 9:08 AM