QandO

July 27, 2004

America, meet John Kerry. John, this is America.
Posted by Dale Franks

For most Americans, John Kerry is an unknown northeastern politician. This is, of course, the week Kerry begins changing all that. Mark Steyn writes that the real question is whether, after seeing John Kerry, the voters will like him.

Sadly, the stealth candidacy has come to an end. This week the real John F Kerry has to stand up, and, judging from the way those Senate and House candidates in tight races are staying away from the convention, a lot of bigshot Democrats aren't too sure Americans are going to like what they see.

If I were a mad scientist hired by Bush svengali Karl Rove to construct the most unelectable Democratic presidential candidate possible, I'd start with a load of big-government one-size-fits-all dependency-culture domestic policies. Next I'd throw in a consistent two-decade voting-record aversion to American military power. Then make him the kind of fellow whose stump speeches are always butt-numbingly ponderous and go on way too long because someone told him that if you intone a platitude slowly and sonorously enough it sounds like the Kennedy inaugural address.

He'd probably be a senator because, in a business that attracts pompous blowhards, senators are the crème de la crème. A senator from Massachusetts, because that's as near as you can get to running Jacques Chirac while still meeting the citizenship eligibility requirements. He'd have to be an aristocratic Massachusetts senator, because there don't seem to be any other kinds, but he wouldn't be glamorously high-class, like Jack and Camelot, just aloof and condescending and affected. And every time he tries to talk a little guy talk, a little hunting or baseball, it doesn't come out quite right. And he's so nuanced he's running not only as America's most famous war hero but also as America's most famous anti-war protester.

No, scrub that last bit. No one would believe it.

It's the likeability problem, and it seems to me that the more you know this guy, the less you like him.

Another thing that strikes me is the odd nostalgia for the September 10th world. The Democrats seem keen to remind us that, during the '90s, America was prosperous, and at peace. Well, maybe, but I'm sure December 6, 1941 looked pretty good from the perspective of 1943, too.

But, just as on 6 Dec 41, the Imperial Japanese Fleet was steaming towards Hawaii, the late 1990s were a time when a number of problems were steaming towards us, too. Al-Qaida was striking US targets overseas with relative impunity. The stock Market was topping off a bubble of "irrational exuberance" about the dotcoms. The Enron and Worldcom boys were playing fast and loose with there accounting, putting the savings and investments of millions of employees and stockholders at risk. There were lots of thunderclouds on the horizon, while we contented ourselves with wondering whether Gary Condit killed that intern with which he was having an affair.

The Democrats are promising a holiday from history. Now, that may be something extremely seductive, but it's not something they can realistically offer. Moreover, the last time we had it, in the 1990s, the Holiday came to a pretty depressing end.

For instance, it wasn't George W. Bush who damaged the Mideast peace process. It was suicide bombers blowing up women and children in pizzerias and on buses. George W. Bush doesn't control them. Our enemies do.

And that's a key point to remember: No matter how much we might want peace, no matter how much we desire an operational pause, or are fatigued with war, the decision to stop fighting doesn't lie with us. If our enemies want to kill and crush us, then we will be at war with them whether we wish to be or not. Pretending otherwise, as the Democrats seem to be doing in Boston, is the height of folly.

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