KERRY ON
Choose the best leader, not the best ad campaign
That the current system for choosing both a major party candidate and a president is flawed, outmoded, and just plain dumb, is axiomatic. Why this is so is a topic for another column or twelve. The point is, the system is designed so that the best man rarely wins.
In the 2000 primaries, both parties featured one candidate—Bill Bradley and John McCain, respectively—who would have made a superlative president. Instead, the parties went with Al Gore and George W. Bush because both were "more electable," whatever that means. The fourth-best option now occupies the Oval Office.
This is the extant system. It won't change in the next two months, although it should. So we have to accept the flawed system and try to make it work for us the best way we can.
I should also point out, in the spirit of full disclosure, that I am NOT a Democrat. I'm a registered Green, but I always vote for who I think would do the best job; I probably would have voted for McCain over Gore in 2000, had he run.
Now, then. On to the meat of the column.
The media is the message
A political campaign is an advertising campaign. I can't express it more clearly than that. An overwhelming majority of Americans will do no independent research about the two candidates, and will instead vote according to which advertising campaign they prefer.
A friend of mine in Florida is skeptical (as many are) about John Kerry, saying, "I don't think he has a clear message." This is not an indictment of Kerry, whose "message" is crystal clear to anyone who understands how the media works. This is an indictment of his advertising campaign.
The Democrat way to do things is bring in a big group of very smart people, listen to their ideas, think on them for awhile, and then act. Kerry's advertising campaign is not run by one person, but by committee. This is a great way to run a federal government, but, alas, a lousy way to run an advertising campaign.
The Republicans, on the other hand, are very very good at advertising campaigns. Karl Rove, the right-wing genius who runs Bush's with an iron fist, is the best at this, period, of anyone currently breathing. He understands the issues people respond emotionally to. He's so smooth, he can project deficiencies in his own candidate onto the other guy (see also, "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth").
Most of all, Rove recognizes that most Americans either don't know, don't care, or don't have time to know or care, about nuace. His "message" is simple, so any idiot can understand it:
Bush=strong, decisive, tough on terror.
Kerry=weak, wishy-washy flip-flopper.
If you are voting for Bush because you are a millionaire who appreciates the tax cuts, or a religious fanatic who would rather live in a Fascist state where abortion is illegal than a democracy where women's rights are respected, then I have no beef with you. Vote for him, by all means.
If, however, you're voting for Bush because you find him "decisive" or Kerry "wishy-washy," or because you "want to support our troops" or "don't want to change presidents during wartime" or "think Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are in cahoots" or—and this is the worst reason of all—you "think we're safer now," then you, friend, are a dupe. Rove and his inferior candidate have condescended to you, treated you like a least common denominator. The Republican advertising machine has brainwashed you, as it has brainwashed half of America. You are one of Lippmann's Bewildered Herd.
I concede, then, that Bush has run a better campaign—maybe the best campaign in history, given what he's had to run on (see also, "Iraq, War in"). As I said, Rove is the best. He is Lord Valdemort, and John Kerry is no Harry Potter.
The thing is, this is not a choice between soft drinks or fast food eateries. We're voting for the person best suited to run the country, not the person with the flashiest advertising campaign. And that person is John Kerry. Period.
To me, this election is about three issues: Iraq, the economy, and the "war" on terror/national security. Let's look at Kerry's qualifications, and Bush's faults, vis-a-vis those three issues:
Iraq
Here's what happened: Cheney and Rumsfeld and the other neo-cons thought that by "liberating" Iraq and installing a "democratic" government, the Arab world would realize how great our capitalist political system was, and the success in Iraq would create a domino effect in the region: Syria, Iran, and so forth.
So Bush had the CIA cook up reasons to take out Hussein—WMDs, links with al Qaeda, and so forth—which he presented to Congress as iron-clad and incontrovertible. On this pretense, we went to war, diverting attention from Afghanistan, where the real terrorists were. Cheney thought the Iraqis would welcome us with open arms. Rumsfeld predicted the war would last six months. The reasons for war turned out to be false.
Clinton was impeached for enjoying fellatio in the White House. Bush has indirectly killed a thousand American servicemen and -women—many of them National Guardsmen—for a bogus war, and yet people think he's the cat's meow. Karl Rove, as I said, is very good at his job.
Senator Kerry voted for the war resolution based on the White House's insistence that Hussein posed a clear and present danger to the U.S. This was the right thing to do—you don't doubt your president in those cases; you assume he's not pulling the wool over your eyes. Once Kerry realized what was going on, he stopped voting for anything to do with the war, in effect voting to not grant Bush more power. That was also the right thing to do. The Republicans calls this wishy-washy, flip-floppy. I call it responsible.
Lately, we've been hearing that Bush bailed on his National Guard service during Vietnam, that he went to Alabama to serve there, even though not one person has come forward to corroborate this claim. My guess is that he was coked up at the time, and for that reason wanted to avoid taking his physical. Given his hardline stance on drugs, I find this hypocritical. But it's not important. What's important is, Bush doesn't really know what it's like to be in a war, to face enemy fire, to be wounded in a strange country for flimsy reasons.
Kerry does. Kerry fought in Vietnam, and when he came home, led the group Vietnam Veterans Against the War. This is a guy who has seen people die on the battlefield; friends. This is a guy who understands the nuances of war.
Iraq, despite what the advertising campaign tells us, is a mess. A big mess. Just yesterday another American civilian got beheaded. Hell, even Republicans on Capital Hill acknowledge the whole thing was a big mistake. And if you think Bush won't reinstitute the draft after the election, you're a naive, naive person.
Kerry may not yet have a concrete plan to get us out of there, but I trust him to come up with one more than I trust Bush—the guy who, in case you weren't paying attention, created the mess in the first place.
Let's say the federal government was a fast food eatery. Who would you rather have run it, a guy who has worked in the kitchen and understands intimately how things work, or a guy who wouldn't know a cheeseburger from a filet o'fish?
Economy
The president doesn't have a lot of control over the economy, granted, but the fact remains, we went from biggest budget surplus ever to biggest dent ever in Bush's three-and-a-half years at the helm. Sooner or later, that will bite us in the ass.
Kerry understands this. He knows how budgets work. His Senate record reflects this. He has good ideas on how to change the tax codes so that big corporations pay more—did you know the Enron paid no federal taxes for the last, like, three years before it went belly-up?—and you and me pay less. As it should be.
Bush's supply-side policies have failed. Kerry's will work better—just like Clinton's worked better than Bush the First's.
The "War" on terror
You should read the 9/11 Commission Report before you vote. Please. I beg of you. The Bushies so distrusted the Clintonites that when taking office they tore everything down and started from scratch. The counterterrorism chief, Richard Clarke, knew what was happening. Bush received a daily briefing in August 2001 all about Bin Laden and the plans to do something big. Instead, Bush had Ashcroft bust cancer patients in Oregon for smoking medicinal marijuana. Really, he did. Bush, the former cokehead.
Tough on terror, indeed.
9/11 would have happened to Gore, too, probably. But Bush squandered all that goodwill of nations. His arrogant, unilateral administration alienated most of our allies, and we need those allies to fight the terrorists. Period. We can't do this alone, or with the ragtag bunch of nations Bush has coerced into justifying his invasion of Iraq.
John Kerry is a statesman. He speaks fluent French, although that is perceived by many under the Rove spell as a deficiency. He is well-traveled. (Bush, before taking office, had only left the U.S. once—to go to faraway Mexico—despite his affluence and ample leisure time). Kerry knows how to interact with the Putins, the Chiracs, the Blairs, the Arab leaders. Bush can't. Kerry cares about what the rest of the world thinks of us. Bush could give a shit—hey, most Americans could give a shit. But it is vital, as 9/11 proved.
Other issues
Bush's appointees are almost uniformly horrible. Cheney still insists there are WMDs in Iraq. Rumsfeld presided over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Rice, an expert on Soviet Cold War stuff, is in way over her head; watching her bold-face lie on TV this weekend about the situation in Iraq made me physically ill. Ashcroft is one of the most right-wing Attorneys General in history—the job should always be held my moderates, in my opinion. Even Colin Powell has not resigned, undermining his own credibility. And yet Bush stands behind all of them, because they control him. Asking Bush to dump Cheney is like asking Mullah Omar to dump Bin Laden.
In short, this is what you get in John Kerry: a thoughtful, compassionate (and not "compassionate conservative," which, far as I can tell, means "conservative with showing compassion"), highly intelligent man, a public servant all his life, a war hero, a towering presence with the gravitas Bush egregiously lacks, a guy with no skeletons in his closet (Rove would have found them by now if there were any), a man responsible with the federal budget, a man who, by uniting the world with us, would make us safer from terrorist attacks, a man who understands the nuance of issues, and a man who, once his mind is made up, is decisive.
Bush is a polarizing figure. He promised in 2000 to unite the country. He has not, despite his vaunted "leadership." People don't love John Kerry. People also don't hate John Kerry. He is what he is, and what Bush is not: a compassionate, worldly leader.
—Greg Olear
Editor, LARGEREGO
September 21, 2004
Editor, LARGEREGO
September 21, 2004
"We are a nation in danger." |