Monday, September 13, 2004
THAT'S LIFE
Loud Mouths
by Michelle Cottle
Only at TNR Online | Post date 09.10.04
Jeez. The Republicans throw one decent convention, Bush's poll numbers show signs of life, and suddenly the entire Democratic Party is agonizing about why its chosen candidate is such a loser. John Kerry was too slow defending himself against attacks. He is too easily put on the defensive. He relies too much on his personal history. His policy positions are too complicated. His campaign has too many advisors. He lacks a core message. He lacks a common touch. His wife is a raving lunatic. His chin is too big. He dances like a girl. And on and on and on.
Enough with the public hand-wringing. For starters, this election is hardly over. Iraq is still a disaster. The economy isn't exactly en fuego. Al Qaeda is very much alive and recruiting like crazy. The entire Middle East, and much of the rest of the world, thinks America is the Great Satan. Our homeland security efforts are scattered and underfunded. Iran and North Korea are building nukes. Dick Cheney is becoming a bigger jerk by the day. Bush's National Guard record is back in the news. And not even Karl Rove's flying monkeys can stop Monday's release of Kitty Kelley's new book--which, while unlikely to inflict much damage to W.'s rep, in part because even many Republicans have long assumed that "I was young and irresponsible" is code for "I was a rich, spoiled, coke-snorting, drunk-driving, awol slamhound," will at least annoy the Bushies for a few days.
To be fair, the thought of four more years of The George and Dick Show is enough to terrify anyone outside of John Ashcroft's immediate family. But if anti-Bushies insist on wallowing in their doubts, fears, and premature recriminations, they should do so beyond the earshot of the bloodthirsty political media. Publicized angst just plays into Republicans' message that Dems are a bunch of weak, self-doubting girly men.
Besides, it's not like we couldn't see Kerry's problems coming from a mile away. The candidate did not wake up one morning in late June to find that he had morphed into a wishy-washy, windsurfing liberal with a mediocre Senate record and poor people skills. Arguably, he has been one all along. Did Democrats really think that JFK2's Vietnam odyssey was enough to compensate for his myriad shortcomings as a nationwide candidate? Clearly the Kerry camp did, if the early campaign ads were any indication, but what about the rest of the party?
But herein lies the problem. Most Democrats didn't give Kerry a thorough once-over before they crowned him. In the early days of this race--before we knew how egregiously the White House had misled the public about Iraq and before we realized that Rummy had stormed Baghdad without a postwar plan--Dems all pretty much assumed that President "Mission Accomplished" Bush was damn near invincible. This sense of inevitable failure allowed anti-Bush voters to flirt with whichever Democratic suitor tickled their fancy, with little thought as to how that candidate would play in the general. Thus emerged Howard Dean as the frontrunner.
As 2003 rolled along and Bush started to look beatable, Dems began to worry that some trash-talking nobody from Vermont was too inexperienced (or too liberal, or too crazy) to do the beating. But the compressed primary season left voters little time to evaluate their alternatives, and, in an eleventh-hour panic, they latched onto Kerry as the "most electable" of the bunch. Why? Who had time to ask why? The guy looked presidential, he was a seasoned politician, and, best of all, he'd been to war. Polls at the time showed that Kerry wasn't embraced because of his policy positions or inspirational message; he was simply the candidate everyone believed--for no definable reason--had the best chance against W.
So now Dems are stuck with Kerry in all his imperfection. But just because he's going through a rough patch is no excuse for party operatives to freak out and start giving nasty quotes to the media. A "disgusted" Tony Coelho (Al Gore's 2000 campaign chief) recently groused to The Washington Post that Kerry needed a Karl Rove of his very own. Come on, people! No matter how grim the situation, you should never pine for the proliferation of evil.
Perhaps even more problematically, if the Democrats can't hold it together now, how will they hold it together in the (still likely) event that Bush whips Kerry's snowboarding butt in November? Back when Dean was the man to beat, his Democratic critics issued Cheneyesque warnings about the devastating impact a Dean candidacy would have on the party for years to come: The seas would boil, the crops would shrivel, and the entire electorate would wind up convinced that Dems really are the tofu-munching socialist peaceniks that Republicans claim. Maybe. But it is entirely possible that a Kerry defeat would prove even more catastrophic.
If Dean had run and lost, at least the left wing of the party would have been discredited and cowed into submission for a few years, temporarily halting the Old and New Dems' civil war over the direction of the party. But a Kerry defeat will only exacerbate the Democrats' identity crisis. Democratic Leadership Council-types will claim he was too liberal. (Damn that Bob Shrum!) Lefties will insist he was Bush Lite. And the resulting internecine chaos will not only aid Rove's sinister quest to cement a Republican majority for the next 50 years, it will pave the way for another Nader run in 2008.
If that's not enough to convince Dems to suck it up, circle the wagons, and keep their premature hysteria to themselves, I don't know what is.
Loud Mouths
by Michelle Cottle
Only at TNR Online | Post date 09.10.04
Jeez. The Republicans throw one decent convention, Bush's poll numbers show signs of life, and suddenly the entire Democratic Party is agonizing about why its chosen candidate is such a loser. John Kerry was too slow defending himself against attacks. He is too easily put on the defensive. He relies too much on his personal history. His policy positions are too complicated. His campaign has too many advisors. He lacks a core message. He lacks a common touch. His wife is a raving lunatic. His chin is too big. He dances like a girl. And on and on and on.
Enough with the public hand-wringing. For starters, this election is hardly over. Iraq is still a disaster. The economy isn't exactly en fuego. Al Qaeda is very much alive and recruiting like crazy. The entire Middle East, and much of the rest of the world, thinks America is the Great Satan. Our homeland security efforts are scattered and underfunded. Iran and North Korea are building nukes. Dick Cheney is becoming a bigger jerk by the day. Bush's National Guard record is back in the news. And not even Karl Rove's flying monkeys can stop Monday's release of Kitty Kelley's new book--which, while unlikely to inflict much damage to W.'s rep, in part because even many Republicans have long assumed that "I was young and irresponsible" is code for "I was a rich, spoiled, coke-snorting, drunk-driving, awol slamhound," will at least annoy the Bushies for a few days.
To be fair, the thought of four more years of The George and Dick Show is enough to terrify anyone outside of John Ashcroft's immediate family. But if anti-Bushies insist on wallowing in their doubts, fears, and premature recriminations, they should do so beyond the earshot of the bloodthirsty political media. Publicized angst just plays into Republicans' message that Dems are a bunch of weak, self-doubting girly men.
Besides, it's not like we couldn't see Kerry's problems coming from a mile away. The candidate did not wake up one morning in late June to find that he had morphed into a wishy-washy, windsurfing liberal with a mediocre Senate record and poor people skills. Arguably, he has been one all along. Did Democrats really think that JFK2's Vietnam odyssey was enough to compensate for his myriad shortcomings as a nationwide candidate? Clearly the Kerry camp did, if the early campaign ads were any indication, but what about the rest of the party?
But herein lies the problem. Most Democrats didn't give Kerry a thorough once-over before they crowned him. In the early days of this race--before we knew how egregiously the White House had misled the public about Iraq and before we realized that Rummy had stormed Baghdad without a postwar plan--Dems all pretty much assumed that President "Mission Accomplished" Bush was damn near invincible. This sense of inevitable failure allowed anti-Bush voters to flirt with whichever Democratic suitor tickled their fancy, with little thought as to how that candidate would play in the general. Thus emerged Howard Dean as the frontrunner.
As 2003 rolled along and Bush started to look beatable, Dems began to worry that some trash-talking nobody from Vermont was too inexperienced (or too liberal, or too crazy) to do the beating. But the compressed primary season left voters little time to evaluate their alternatives, and, in an eleventh-hour panic, they latched onto Kerry as the "most electable" of the bunch. Why? Who had time to ask why? The guy looked presidential, he was a seasoned politician, and, best of all, he'd been to war. Polls at the time showed that Kerry wasn't embraced because of his policy positions or inspirational message; he was simply the candidate everyone believed--for no definable reason--had the best chance against W.
So now Dems are stuck with Kerry in all his imperfection. But just because he's going through a rough patch is no excuse for party operatives to freak out and start giving nasty quotes to the media. A "disgusted" Tony Coelho (Al Gore's 2000 campaign chief) recently groused to The Washington Post that Kerry needed a Karl Rove of his very own. Come on, people! No matter how grim the situation, you should never pine for the proliferation of evil.
Perhaps even more problematically, if the Democrats can't hold it together now, how will they hold it together in the (still likely) event that Bush whips Kerry's snowboarding butt in November? Back when Dean was the man to beat, his Democratic critics issued Cheneyesque warnings about the devastating impact a Dean candidacy would have on the party for years to come: The seas would boil, the crops would shrivel, and the entire electorate would wind up convinced that Dems really are the tofu-munching socialist peaceniks that Republicans claim. Maybe. But it is entirely possible that a Kerry defeat would prove even more catastrophic.
If Dean had run and lost, at least the left wing of the party would have been discredited and cowed into submission for a few years, temporarily halting the Old and New Dems' civil war over the direction of the party. But a Kerry defeat will only exacerbate the Democrats' identity crisis. Democratic Leadership Council-types will claim he was too liberal. (Damn that Bob Shrum!) Lefties will insist he was Bush Lite. And the resulting internecine chaos will not only aid Rove's sinister quest to cement a Republican majority for the next 50 years, it will pave the way for another Nader run in 2008.
If that's not enough to convince Dems to suck it up, circle the wagons, and keep their premature hysteria to themselves, I don't know what is.
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