Sunday September 26, 2004 Politics as Usual

Sunday September 26, 2004

How has Kerry screwed up his chances of a successful bid against the incumbent Bush? Here was a man who emerged among all the Democratic hopefuls with a clear mandate before the Democratic Convention in Boston. There were a number of signs of weakness that begun almost from the start of the primary campaign. It began with a slow start, after Howard Dean had set the pace and the tactics of the campaign: aggressive money raising via the Internet and attacking the president head on for a foolhardy, misguided, and unprepared rush to war. Had Dean more to recommend him than being Governor of Maine, and a more centrist record of administration of that state, he might have become the standard bearer. But, as he got outside of the region of the country that understood his politics, he had no substantial constituency to provide support. The large liberal bloc big labor that could be relied on to bring votes backed Kerry. He was a man they knew and knew how to influence. Kerry also stumbled in his early fund raising efforts as well as the management of his campaign with high-level defections and operational confusion.

Kerry seemed to rebound from these setbacks and eventually took the initiative from the pack. The next stumble came in the selection of a vice president. The process was drawn out and had the appearance of being clumsy-the leaks of Kerry's attempts to get John McCain to come on the ticket as vice president, showed weakness-he wasn't able to make it happen and appealing to a republican rather than picking a democrat. Then the selection of John Edwards, though late in coming seemed to take some of the sting from the failed McCain efforts. Then came the convention where Kerry again made a blunder by trying to orchestrate himself that, he hoped, would make him more appealing to the electorate. He revived his military service attempting to paint himself as leader, who had experienced war and had led men into battle rather than send them into battle as Bush had. The only problem was that Kerry's record in Viet Nam was a double-edged sword. After serving he then became an ardent anti-war critic putting himself in the position of opening up a wound that split his one base of support military veterans, a good percentage of them viewing Kerry in the same boat as those anti-war protesters demonstrating in the streets-the same protesters that had shunned those who served. (Curiously, it was a Republican, Ronald Reagan, who reached back to undo this disservice all those veterans felt had been done to them by recognizing and lauding their Viet Nam era service with a memorial and the belated gratitude of a grateful nation.)

None of the spokespeople who articulated Kerry's position on issues have been able to answer to specify what Kerry would do to extricate the U.S. from the quagmire-the Viet Nam in the Middle East-that Bush has gotten the country into. They suggest somehow that Kerry will convince the U.N., the European Community, and NATO to help solve the problem, when Bush has not. The U.S. has gotten itself into this mess and the rest of the World is quite happy to see the arrogant bully get its due. Meanwhile, the economic strength of the U.S. is being depleted by a wasteful war that seems to benefit no one except Halliburton and the rest of the government contractors feeding off the lavish expenditures the U.S. are making prosecuting this war.

If the average life of a great empire is three hundred years, this nation has probably peaked. And the most glaring symbol of its having done so is its inability to produce leaders that have a vision for carrying on the great enterprise of a great nation. Like any living organism a nation reaches old age and the U.S. has every sign of having done so. Age in humans is marked by deterioration in mental facilities and certainly our current head of state is a clear example of this reality. What's even more telling is that the nation for the past two elections have not been able to field a candidate that demonstrated any greater mental acuity. The previous rival had the misguided belief that he created the Internet.