Posted on 07/30/2004 9:50:10 PM PDT by neverdem
BOSTON — There were so many military men at the Democratic convention I almost expected John Kerry to mount the stage in full body armor and recite the war speech from "Henry V." As it is, he called for bulking up the military, doubling the size of the Special Forces and crushing the terrorists. He hit Bush from the right, and when he got around to bashing the Saudis, I thought I'd wandered into a big meeting of The Weekly Standard editorial board.
Not only that, Kerry's speech followed an all-hawk medley. Gen. John Shalikashvili called for appreciably increasing the size of the Army. Joe Lieberman called for muscular and idealistic internationalism. Joe Biden said we must "win the death struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism." Gen. Wesley Clark said we're in "a life or death struggle" against terrorists seeking nuclear weapons.
John Edwards gave a speech that eschewed talk about Halliburton, W.M.D., misleading the country into war - the entire liberal catechism. Instead he talked about defeating "every enemy in this new world" and confronting Syria and Iran so they don't interfere with the emergence of a democratic Iraq.
Around the arena I spotted some of the people most often talked about as senior officials in a Kerry administration: Richard Holbrooke, Biden, Rand Beers and Dick Gephardt. On the international economy side: Roger Altman, Steve Rattner, John Spratt. On Thursday night I saw Mr. Sober and Serious himself, Robert Rubin, sitting next to Teresa. These are tough centrists from the Washington-Wall Street axis who would be heroes in any crisis.
And so I dared to dream. Maybe the Democratic Party is going to recapture the security policy credibility it had during the Truman and Kennedy years. Maybe this display of McCainiac muscular moderation is not just a costume drama, but the real deal. Maybe hope is really on the way!
I should never have gone back and read the speech again. I should never have gone back on Friday morning, in the unforgiving light of day, and re-examined the words Kerry had so forcefully uttered the night before.
What an incoherent disaster. When you actually read for content, you see that the speech skirts almost every tough issue and comes out on both sides of every major concern. The Iraq section is shamefully evasive. He can't even bring himself to use the word "democratic" or to contemplate any future for Iraq, democratic or otherwise. He can't bring himself to say whether the war was a mistake or to lay out even the most meager plan for moving forward. For every gesture in the direction of greater defense spending, there are opposing hints about reducing our commitments and bringing the troops home.
He proves in the speech that he can pronounce the word "alliances," and alliances are important, but alliances for what? You can't base an entire foreign policy on process.
Then I remembered that, of course, the Great Co-opter has to try gauzily to please everyone. He has to play to the 86 percent of the delegates who say the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq, as well as the Clintonite foreign policy elites who supported the war. He has to play to the Sharptons as well as the Liebermans.
And it all brings back the memories of Kerry the senator. For though convention viewers may not be aware of it, Kerry has actually had a career since his four months in Vietnam - mostly in the Senate. It's not true that Kerry is a flaming lefty (he's a genuine budget hawk and he voted for welfare reform), but he was wrong about just about every major foreign policy judgment of the last two decades. He voted against the first gulf war, against many major weapons systems. He fought to reduce the defense budget. He opposed the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe in the early 1980's. He supported the nuclear freeze. His decision to authorize war in Iraq but vote against financing the occupation is the least intellectually coherent position of all possible alternatives.
So now I'm disillusioned. What the Democratic Party is going through is not yet a genuine muscular centrist revival. As a friend joked, from the voters of Iowa to the delegates in Boston, there's been a vast left-wing conspiracy to present a candidate who looks like a muscular moderate, but they picked someone who is not in his heart of hearts a muscular moderate, or anything else.
Democrats lie about being liberal, and what they picked was the number one and number four liberals in the US Senate.
That was pure blather about building up our defense.
John F*ckin': The Ultimate Straddler.
And in the NY Times, too. Nice piece.
Good article.
Does anybody really believe that these lib Democrats honor the military and the flag? Protesting much too much, the Dems tried to paint themselves as tough on terrorism, pro-defense, pro Vietnam War vets, moralists, God-fearing patriots, populist saviors who think like the average blue collar citizen.
But nobody who is honest is buying it. They insult the public. These liberal hacks have spent their adulthood slamming soldiers, Vietnam, Reagan, God, the flag and flyover country. Their lame aisle dancing to warmed over Motown cannot hide their sadness: the liberal utopia is "swirling the bowl" and they know it.
The Democrat Party sold it's soul to the devil. It defended the Clinton Machine when it should have destroyed the beast in raw self interest.
Now the desperate tactics get wild-eyed, the screeching louder, the irrational Bush hatred flares, the liberal anger ratchets up to a fever pitch.
Now it gets amusing.
Psssst .. David -- He's a budget 'hawk' because that provides him cover for raising taxes. In other words, he is a flaming lefty in accountant's clothing.
Don't surprise me none. He's been a military player from an early age. Everyone knows it, too. Why he once rode his bicycle square into the Russian zone of Berlin when his father was stationed there after WWII. He said so in his acceptance speech last night. He was so well known even then that Soviet sentries apparently thought nothing of allowing a youth on a bicycle into the eastern sector.
Y'all pardon me if I put forth the theory that this story was even more full of BS than the hamster rescue.
Also sold out the South Viet Names and the united states.
Strobe Talbot loves him.
Oh yeah, almost forgot he's a Senator!
We must soon be done with this war or file it among our past foolishness.
"Not only that, Kerry's speech followed an all-hawk medley. Gen. John Shalikashvili called for appreciably increasing the size of the Army. Joe Lieberman called for muscular and idealistic internationalism. Joe Biden said we must "win the death struggle between freedom and radical fundamentalism." Gen. Wesley Clark said we're in "a life or death struggle" against terrorists seeking nuclear weapons."
I myself say the army needs at least four new divisions, but it will never happen during a Kerry administration. That is just a lot of empty rhetoric. What is trully saddening is to see men who have risen to the rank of general to give aid and comfort to an obvious phoney like Kerry! Makes one wonder about the process whereby general officers are chosen. Clark is "supposed" to be an intellectual, but he behaves like a stupid fool.
I pray the smoke and mirrors comes crashing down quickly!
Brooks has a change of heart from Thursday night.
Too bad so many Friday morning pundits did not follow David Brooks' example:
* * *
"I should never have gone back and read the speech again. I should never have gone back on Friday morning, in the unforgiving light of day, and re-examined the words Kerry had so forcefully uttered the night before.
"What an incoherent disaster. When you actually read for content, you see that the speech skirts almost every tough issue and comes out on both sides of every major concern. The Iraq section is shamefully evasive. He can't even bring himself to use the word "democratic" or to contemplate any future for Iraq, democratic or otherwise. He can't bring himself to say whether the war was a mistake or to lay out even the most meager plan for moving forward. For every gesture in the direction of greater defense spending, there are opposing hints about reducing our commitments and bringing the troops home.
...
"And it all brings back the memories of Kerry the senator. For though convention viewers may not be aware of it, Kerry has actually had a career since his four months in Vietnam - mostly in the Senate. It's not true that Kerry is a flaming lefty (he's a genuine budget hawk and he voted for welfare reform), but he was wrong about just about every major foreign policy judgment of the last two decades. He voted against the first gulf war, against many major weapons systems. He fought to reduce the defense budget. He opposed the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe in the early 1980's. He supported the nuclear freeze. His decision to authorize war in Iraq but vote against financing the occupation is the least intellectually coherent position of all possible alternatives.
"So now I'm disillusioned. What the Democratic Party is going through is not yet a genuine muscular centrist revival. As a friend joked, from the voters of Iowa to the delegates in Boston, there's been a vast left-wing conspiracy to present a candidate who looks like a muscular moderate, but they picked someone who is not in his heart of hearts a muscular moderate, or anything else."
He sure has. Thanks for the ping.
It was a deceptive speech. Lots of tough-sounding language and the trappings of patriotism, but no authenticating substance beneath. In fact, the substance was at odds with the style. It reminds me of a cheap piece of furniture with a hardwood veneer concealing a particleboard core. Seen in the light of day, Kerry's speech looks pretty tawdry. Brook seems to be having a pretty nasty "morning after" experience with it.
I heard Newt Gingrich on Hannity's show yesterday, and he seemed to have had a similar experience. He said the speech left him puzzled and that it wasn't until the next day around noon, after he had had a chance to ruminate on it, that it became clear to him what a feat of misdirection the speech was, and that he became angry at that point.
I agree with both of these guys. My argument the other night was that the speech wasn't the obvious failure that some wanted to see -- John Kerry wasn't a profusely-sweating, nervous-ticcing Richard Nixon or even a stumbling, unconvincing John Edwards. Rather, he was a competent orator who delivered an appealing-sounding speech, who spoke with apparent conviction, and who gave the media a number of zingy lines to echo.
Now it's Bush's job to get out there and explain the profound problems of substance contained in the speech, problems the average Joe may not have seen as clearly as Brook and Newt and most other conservatives are now seeing them.
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