What a formidable campaign machinery the Republican Party enjoys. What
discipline to stay on message and to craft a continuum of argumentation
that echoes from the dirtiest of political hacks to wily but shiny White
House talking heads.
While at their Boston Convention, the Democrats hardly fired directly at
President Bush – not even when seeing “the whites of his eyes.” But at the
recent New York Republican National Convention, all guns were fired – every
caliber discharged, no quarter given. Democrats, it now appeared, took a
back seat, John Kerry vacationed, and all watched as the incoming rounds
resounded.
Republicans know how to kick rear; they live for it. The rabid right-wing
loves a free-for-all fight. This combative style fits a hatred-driven
agenda and willingness to smear and taint and destroy people with the
phoniest and flimsiest of evidence or documentation. It is an astoundingly
indecent way of doing politics. As long as they can get it aired, again and
again, on public and satellite channels, any raised question can interrupt
a campaign. These folks go for the jugular. John McCain suffered the bite
of their big lies during the 2000 primaries, and Senator Kerry must be
reeling from the kick still this week.
The GOP strategy works. The attacks on Senator Kerry’s war record
intensified just at the proper strategic time for the Republicans, who
masterfully put the Democrats in a vise: Ignore the hateful attacks, and
the question gets louder; respond, and the ensuing dialogue will deviate
your best positive messages just long enough for the Republican message of
resoluteness versus flip-floppiness to dominate.
And dominate it does. Propaganda and highly-partisan programming is the
latest media trend. Fox News leads in this department as that major network
grows in clearly ideological bents. But the constant radio talk show
hammering of Kerry and the “liberals” by horribly disdainful and dominant
political commentators has become the blight of the national airways. The
talk radio brethren, who are little more than GOP operatives with loud
voices, often dominate mainstream American political commentary for weeks
on end. The Democrats have nothing nearly equal to that, though they appear
to be trying to build their own such capacities.
Where is John Kerry in all this? Will John Kerry get the chance to speak to
the broad range of issues that concern the American public? Will the lies
and distortions of the GOP Convention attacks be investigated and explained
to the electorate in sufficient detail? Does Kerry have enough time, enough
crispness, enough gravitas, to recast George Bush’s claims of divine
inspiration into just more dangerous foolishness? Will the facts ultimately
penetrate the debate on subjects ranging from the Iraq War to the economy?
President Bush has been successful in projecting himself as an affable man
who would not hurt a puppy and who yet has been called by history – and God
– to respond resolutely for the benighted country. No indecision is the
best decision, in the Bush positioning. All the cowboy good-guy image of
Ronald Reagan blended to the swagger of John Wayne – that is George W.
Bush. What you see is what you get. This swagger is ready for action,
however, and this has its appeal, although what it has in horsepower is
often lost on wrong-way turns and expensive after-the-crash fix-ups and
revisions. True enough, the Bush Defense Department focused the U.S.
military into taking out a fifth class army in Iraq, which it did,
admirably, but under what pretenses? And since then the administration has
abandoned the troops to serious and unclear dangers.
The brilliant if dishonest GOP caricature of John Kerry as an indecisive
self-promoter obscures a lot of reasoning and good argumentation that the
Democrats are putting forth on issues of economic well-being, sounding the
alarm against the growing deficit and national debt, while understanding
and supporting real working people, not the euphemistic “ownership
society.” The Democratic ticket this year has a much better range of ideas
on health insurance and social security and energy self-sufficiency beyond
primacy of oil and coal. The Democrats at this time seem to include more
variety of peoples in the American social fabric, including a more cohesive
sense of partnership with American Indian tribes and peoples. The GOP
profile of Kerry is a smoking mirror of anecdotes, skillfully and
slanderously constructed out of complex legislative procedures. The
legislative voting process follows sometimes contradictory tactics that can
make any senator or congressman look contradictory – thus the disingenuous
media construction of the Kerry as flip-flop caricature. But, unlike George
W. Bush, John Kerry actually has a legislative record and the experience
that grows from studying numerous issues in detail over a long and
distinguished career.
Bush’s sails fly in the winds of the global war on terror. He is the only
leader to wage that war so far. He is projected as a leader defined by the
events of 9/11. He has fought two wars since, reshaped the procurement
protocol for international contracting (major scandals breaking and ignored
all the time). Undeniably, President Bush has managed to force the world’s
agenda in the direction of his choosing.
American voters in November will hopefully ponder that, in fact, Bush
defined a whole portion of the war on terror and the war in Iraq in his
choice of responses, some more obvious than others. There exists the
strongest argument that invading Iraq was unnecessary, at the very least
premature. The war has certainly backfired and produced a much larger
security gap for the United States than it had before landing an army of
140,000 young Americans in the middle of an Islamic vortex. We submit
respectfully that U.S. Armed Forces and other security entities should have
pursued the destruction of al Qaeda network, Osama bin Laden and the
terrorist base that ordered the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Control
Afghanistan, calm and guide Pakistan, and reserve your wrath for the points
of attack without widening a conflict based on severely ideological and not
pragmatic decisions. Over 1,000 Americans and 10,000 Iraqis are now dead
while a recent report by the prestigious British Royal Institute of
International Affairs suggests Iraq is headed toward a major civil war if
current conditions persist. Meanwhile no weapons of mass destruction have
been located and no formal relations between the previous Iraqi government
and al Qaeda have been proven. We submit that these facts reveal the Iraq
War to be an executive error of epic proportion.
The arbitrary decision to invade Iraq was the present administration’s
chosen policy. Instead of diligent pursuit of justice and incapacitation of
the actual perpetrators, Americans got a deadly and costly long-term war in
Iraq. So now we have a perpetual war in the heart of Islam, where every
piece of firepower that kills and every smart bomb that damages only
multiplies the dozens into tens of thousands of new American-hating
jihadists.
Before this campaign is over, we hope Americans listen intently to what
Senator Kerry has to say and offer, even if it requires breaking through
the veil of off-topic slander produced by his opponents. A man of Senator
Kerry’s real service and sacrifice to country as an experienced soldier and
distinguished senator deserves a serious hearing on details of both
domestic and international policy issues – not the least of which is the
advancing debacle in Iraq.
