Coup de Grace
Short on specifics, some will say. Too full of gag-inducing patriotic fakery, others will add. Too long and hurriedly delivered, pipe the instant analysts. And yet, clearly, Kerry’s acceptance speech cleared the bar set for it, presented the nominee in the best possible light, and crowned an extremely successful convention with a rousing call to action.
Interestingly, most of the harshest criticism I’ve heard of the speech has been from what should be Kerry’s center-left core. Blogger Matt Yglesias called it “crap.” Billmon at the Whiskey Bar, in what eventually turns out to be a favorable notice, worries “the beginning was bad, real bad - maybe not stinking up the joint bad, but at several points early in the speech I thought he was going to topple over into it.” Ex-Calpundid Kevin Drum deemed it “workmanlike… not bad, but not great either.” In my own opinion, I found the whole to be equal to the sum of its best parts, since the groanworthy and tedious portions are driven quickly from memory by the more numerous undeniably sharp and well-crafted passages.
Fortunately, neither they nor I are the target audience for this speech. Neither, for that matter, are hard-core Republicans, who doubtless can produce dozens of reasons to hate it. Policy wonks on both sides have made up their minds long ago. So have diehard partisans polarized by Bush’s uncompromising “leadership” style.
Kerry’s people have read the polls (such as this one from Zogby). They know that there are 48%+ who think the country is headed in the wrong direction, 51% who give Bush a negative approval rating, the 53% who want “someone new” compared to the 43% who would re-elect Bush. These folks only need to see that John Kerry is a credible alternative, a decent guy, someone they could see as President.
The Bush people are working like hell to tear Kerry down. The malignant Robert Novak darkly hinted on Wednesday that we’d start to see the GOP questioning his war record and challenging the “hero” theme. They’ve already misrepresented his voting record in the Senate and created a completely false issue around Kerry’s vote against a version of the $87 billion war appropriation that ended up passing – a bill which Bush himself threatened to veto if it had not been to his liking.
That’s fine if that’s their strategy, because, like it or not, this election isn’t about Kerry; it’s about Bush. It’s about whether the man who committed the greatest foreign policy blunder in American history (and is damn proud of it!), who turned a $200B surplus into a $470B deficit in 3 years with hardly a thing to show for it, and who has consistently fought to keep the truth from view of the American people, deserves to be returned to office. Kerry’s plans are sketchy, his record in the Senate modest at best, his persona on the stump constantly threatening to turn into a sucking black hole. What Bush’s people can’t understand is that none of that matters, because if people can picture Bush as President, they can picture anyone as President, so long as he’s not a screaming two-headed freak who eats babies and rapes cattle.
In the speech, Kerry seems to have done a great job reassuring the country that he’s a responsible adult, a thoughtful person with some fire and courage, who will keep a steady hand on the till. A lot is made of Kerry’s plodding style, which he effectively transcended in the best parts of last night’s address. In short, he passed the "can you picture this guy as Commander-in-Chief" test; even his enemies have to give him that.
But Bush has to talk, too, and while what Kerry had to say had the virtue of novelty, with Bush, we’ve heard it all before. One now wonders if the finely-honed sensibilities of the critics and pundits will finally call Bush to account for his sins at the podium: the substitution of assertion for fact, the shallow and ideological policy pronouncements, the absence of wit and charm, the irritability and malice lingering just below the surface, the abiding sense that the man has almost no idea what he’s talking about.
Kerry has said his piece, and while not everyone will like it, enough will. Can the same be said for the (for the moment) President of the United States?
9:49:24 AM 
|
|
