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-KERRY'S VIETNAM FIXATION-
PART 1: advice from bill
Kerry is UNFIT #22: THUMBSUCKER SERIES
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(viewing movie requires Flash Player 7, available HERE)
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- by Mia T, 9.08.04
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Former President Bill Clinton, in a 90-minute telephone conversation from his hospital room, offered John Kerry detailed advice on Saturday night on how to reinvigorate his candidacy, as Mr. Kerry enlisted more Clinton advisers to help shape his strategy and message for the remainder of the campaign. In an expansive conversation, Mr. Clinton, who is awaiting heart surgery, told Mr. Kerry that he should move away from talking about Vietnam, which had been the central theme of his candidacy, and focus instead on drawing contrasts with President Bush on job creation and health care policies, officials with knowledge of the conversation said. The conversation and the recruitment of old Clinton hands came amid rising concern among Democrats about the state of Mr. Kerry's campaign and criticism that he had been too slow to respond to attacks on his military record or to engage Mr. Bush on domestic policy. Among the better-known former Clinton aides who are expected to play an increasingly prominent role are James Carville, Paul Begala and Stanley Greenberg, campaign aides said. Mr. Kerry's aides emphasized that this was an expansion of the staff for the fall campaign and did not represent another upheaval of the Kerry campaign. Still, several Democrats outside the campaign said the influence of Mr. Clinton and his advisers could be seen over the past few days in Mr. Kerry's attacks on Mr. Bush's domestic policies. They said the Clinton team had been pressing Mr. Kerry to turn up the intensity of his attacks on those policies after a month spent largely avoiding engaging the president. Kerry Enlisting Clinton Aides in Effort to Refocus Campaign
The New York Times | 09/06/04 | ADAM NAGOURNEY and DAVID M. HALBFINGER
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waiting surgery to bypass coronary arteries occluded in no small measure by years of yielding to his rapacious appetites, bill clinton counsels John Kerry to ignore his Vietnam fixation and related obsessions, to quit talking about "The War" -- which means both wars, Vietnam and The War on Terror -- and start talking about "the economy, stupid."
This, coming from the ex-president who, by doing precisely that for eight years, allowed bin Laden to metastasize from a nothing, a zero, to a global horror that now threatens no less than our very existence. The irony overwhelms. Apparently, bill clinton's heart wasn't the only organ bypassed last Monday at Columbia-Presbyterian.
COPYRIGHT MIA T 2004 |