QandO

September 04, 2004

Kerry's "miscalculation"
Posted by McQ

As we're all aware George Bush gave an acceptance speech on Thursday night and John Kerry pitched a fit an hour later.

But let Mark Steyn describe it:

At any rate, less than 60 minutes after President Bush gave a sober, graceful, droll and moving address, Kerry decided to hit back. In the midnight hour, he climbed out of his political coffin, and before his thousands of aides could grab the garlic from Teresa's kitchen and start waving it at him, he found himself in front of an audience and started giving a speech. As in Vietnam, he was in no mood to take prisoners: ''I have five words for Americans,'' he thundered. ''This is your wake up call!''

Is that five words? Or is it six? Well, it's all very nuanced, according to whether you hyphenate the ''wake-up.'' Maybe he should have said, ''I have four words plus a common hyphenated expression for Americans.'' I'd suggest the rewrite to him personally, but I don't want him to stare huffily at me and drone, "How dare you attack my patriotism."

Is the "patriotism" gig wearing a little thin? Since when is questioning a man's record in the Senate questioning his "patriotism?" Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't recall a single speaker at the RNC who questioned anything but Kerry's record.

And what does Kerry do? Question a former Secretary of Defense and sitting Vice President about "service" in a war he spent all of 4 months in (I'm sorry folks but I just can't find it in myself to credit him with "two tours" when one of those supposed tours was 5 weeks sitting by an aircraft carrier at Yankee Station with coast of Vietnam completely out of sight). Would anyone say FDR didn't serve during WWII? Look, when you're Secretary of Defense, you are the top guy in the military. But for Kerry, the only "service" which counts is his in Vietnam.

There were USO shows which stayed longer in Vietnam than Kerry did.

What we're seeing right now are indicators of serious problems in the Kerry campaign. As the Washington Post reported a few days ago:

Coming off what even his aides acknowledge has been a bad month for the candidate, Kerry is scrambling to regain momentum -- sharpening his critique of Bush's policies and shaking up his communications team to be more responsive to attacks on the Democrat and his running mate, Sen. John Edwards (N.C.).

Thursday night was apparently the face of the new and improved Kerry campaign. To me it seemed more like the Paul Wellstone memorial or the Howard Dean scream.

It was pitiful.

So the man who would be president decides to pull a classless stunt after the President's acceptance speech and this is where he goes with it?

''For the past week, they attacked my patriotism and my fitness to serve as commander in chief. Well, here's my answer. I'm not going to have my commitment to defend this country questioned by those who refused to serve.''

Hate to break it to him but you bet he's going to have his commitment to defense questioned as it does impact on whether he'd be a fit commander in chief. And its going to be questioned through his record. The record he asked us to judge him by on his thursday night ... the one on which his opponent gracefully kept silent.

So what was this thursday night Kerry gig? Perhaps it is Kerry finally doing what he wanted to do all along:

There is disagreement inside the campaign over who is to blame for the belated response to the attacks on the Kerry's war service. Kerry has told some Democratic friends he wanted to strike back hard weeks ago, but several advisers talked him out of it because polls and focus groups showed a negative response could backfire. Yet one aide said Kerry privately conceded that he, like most of his top staff, miscalculated the impact of the attacks by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the influence of 24-hour cable news in shaping public opinion, and thought the controversy would blow over. One Kerry friend said the candidate focuses on more traditional news outlets and lacks a sophisticated understanding of modern media. "You would think he would have recognized this five years ago," the friend said.

But with all things political, timing is the key. And the time to do this has passed. While Bush may have said he "miscalculated" concerning the aftermath of the war in Iraq, it appears that Kerry's decision to attack now is a miscalculation as well. Just as the impact Swift boat accusations are beginning subside, Kerry wants to address them?

Not a particularly smart move. The thursday Kerry performance had him come off as petulent, whiny and thin-skinned. As Steyn says:

Ah, yes. As usual, he has four words for Americans: I served in Vietnam. Or five words if you spell it Viet Nam.

So we have one candidate running on a platform of ambitious reforms for an ''ownership society'' at home and a pledge to hunt down America's enemies abroad. And we have another candidate running on the platform that no one has the right to say anything mean about him.

And for this the senator broke the eminently civilized tradition that each candidate lets the other guy have his convention week to himself? Maybe they need to start scheduling those Kerry campaign shakeups twice a week.

Its almost as if Kerry doesn't understand how politics at a national level are played. It ain't bean bag, Senator.

There was an old joke back in the Cold War:

Proud American to Russian guy: ''In my country every one of us has the right to criticize our president.''

Russian guy: ''Same here. In my country every one of us has the right to criticize your president.''

That seems to be the way John Kerry likes it. Americans should be free to call Bush a moron, a liar, a fraud, a deserter, an agent of the House of Saud, a mass murderer, a mass rapist (according to the speaker at a National Organization for Women rally last week) and the new Hitler (according to just about everyone). But how dare anyone be so impertinent as to insult John Kerry! No one has the right to insult Kerry, except possibly Teresa, and only on the day she gives him his allowance.

Bush has shrugged off the vicious attacks by the left because he understands that unfortunately it is part and parcel of the national political scene. It comes with the territory. Kerry seems not to have figured that out even yet. But there's more to it than that.

Several distinguished analysts have suggested that the best rationale for a Kerry presidency is that it would be a ''return to normalcy'' -- a quiet life after the epic pages of history George W. Bush has been writing these last three years. Even if a ''return to normalcy'' were an option, I doubt whether John Kerry would qualify. As we saw in those two Thursday speeches, Bush takes the war seriously but he doesn't take himself seriously -- self-deprecating jokes are obligatory these days, but try to imagine Kerry doing the equivalent of Bush's gags about mangled English and swaggering. The president is comfortable in his own skin, which is why he shrugs off the Hitler stuff. By contrast, Kerry doesn't take the war seriously because he's so busy taking himself seriously. If ''return to normalcy'' means four years of a grimly humorless, touchy, self-regarding Kerry presidency, I'll take the war.

That's surely why Kerry is running his kamikaze kandidacy on biography rather than any grand themes. Senator Kerrikaze is running for president because he thinks he should be president -- who needs a platform? One of the most revealing aspects of the campaign this last week were the interviews given by his various surrogates. Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic National Committee chairman, went on Hugh Hewitt's radio show and was asked about the swift boat veterans' ads, and he laughed and blustered and stalled and floundered. That sounded weird. This thing's been going on a month now, and the Kerry campaign still hasn't come up with a form of words to deflect questions about it. If they had an agreed spin, McAuliffe and Co. would be out using it. But the seared senator feels it's lese majeste even to question him. He can talk about Vietnam 24/7, but nobody else is allowed to bring it up.

As Steyn aptly points out, George Bush is very comfortable being George Bush. But Senator John Kerry is not comfortable being Senator John Kerry. Kerry knows, in a time of war, that his Senate record won't compare well to that of a war time president. So he chooses instead to construct a facade of war hero turned politician as the way to negate Bush's advantage. As is obvious to all but Kerry apparently, its not working. The TIME poll released yesterday puts an obvious exclamation point into the heart of Kerry's theory.

But having placed himself in this box, he has no where else to go. So he has to grit his teeth and push on. What it is creating is a brittle, shrill and petulent candidate who takes offense at every legitmate attack and instead of answering the charge, attempts to characterize it as an attack on his patriotism.

Steyn points out that, unfortunately for Kerry, that's not the way this all works:

Sorry, man, that's not the way it works. And if he thinks it does, he's even further removed from the realities of democratic politics than he was from the interior of Cambodia. Instead of those military records the swift boat vets are calling for, I'd be more interested in seeing his medical ones.

Indignation as a result of over-the-top rhetoric is one thing. But indignation over legitimate political questions is simply silly. More importantly, it plays poorly among voters.

Kerry obviously wants to avoid serious discussion of his record. He's fond of saying that Bush doesn't want "to run on his record, he wants to run away from it". Ironically the line seems to fit him much better than Bush.

It also explains his almost knee-jerk reaction to any criticism as an attack on his patriotism.

What he needs to quit this whiny nonsense about patriotism and answer legitimate questions about his record. If he even hopes to succeed he needs to get his story out there. And do so quickly. Because while he whines about "patriotism", the Repulicans are telling the story about Kerry's Senate record their way.

I'm not sure he understands this, but when he gets to the debates, viewers and voters aren't going to buy the false indignation. They're going to demand he answer the questions.

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