Last Updated on February 12, 2022
After reading mostly glowing reviews of the Democratic convention and in particular the speech delievered by John Kerry, I was beginning to wonder if I had somehow watched a feed of a Democratic convention from an alternate universe.
I didn’t find Kerry’s speech nearly as informative as some of his diehard supporters apparently have. I’m not a diehard supporter of either candidate at the moment. Lest you wonder, I don’t expect an eloquent oration from George W. Bush when he takes the mic in September…there have been times when it has been painful to listen to him speak. I don’t expect any less rhetoric from Bush, I do expect more. But I did expect more content from Kerry than what I felt I got.
The trouble is, I kept listening to people who were fired up by the convention giving their reviews. I kept hearing them say how well they now know John Kerry. They never went into specifics, of course; they just stopped after claiming to know him better.
I remain convinced that if you ask a group of people what they do know about John Kerry, the first thing they will tell you is that he is a war hero. Immediately thereafter, they will add that he won three Purple Hearts. The third fact might just take a little longer.
Yep…Kerry fought in Vietnam while Bush was in the National Guard. Kerry was on the front lines. He won three Purple Hearts. Got that much memorized, thank you.
Then I visited Ron‘s journal, “Think It Over.” His entry, “Who is John Kerry?” includes links to some op-ed pieces which put the situation into words that wouldn’t immediately come to me.
He cites a passage from Dick Morris, who questions what accomplishments Kerry has to talk about after 20 years in the Senate. I didn’t get the sense that much, if any, of this information was included in his speech.
What Kerry did say in his speech about those twenty years was this:
“When I came to the Senate, I broke with many in my own party to vote for a balanced budget, because I thought it was the right thing to do. I fought to put 100,000 police officers on the streets of America.
And then I reached out across the aisle with John McCain to work to find the truth about our POWs and missing in action and to finally make peace in Vietnam.”
That’s it.
The complete text of Kerry’s speech is here. Maybe there’s something there that I’m missing?
Ron points out that it is possible that Kerry doesn’t give us a long list of highlights of his two decades in the Senate because there isn’t one. At a campaign stop, Bush said pretty much the same thing. That’s possible. But then again, I’m not sure that it’s a completely valid argument. I imagine that most of our elected officials don’t have laws that bear their name or huge accomplishments for which they alone are responsible. Does that mean they don’t have the right to run? Of course not.
What I find interesting, though, is that Kerry prefaced the all-too-brief comments about his Congressional tenure with this:
“I ask you to judge me by my record.”
That’s what’s been bothering me about it: what record am I supposed to judge him by? Because I wasn’t already convinced that Kerry was the right man for the job, I was expecting that speech to supply a much deeper look at the politician who would be leader, including his prior political record. I can’t say that it did.
When you consider that anyone can take the stage and promise the moon, but that only those politicians who are able to work with others of the opposite party to actually pass any of the measures they want have any success in fulfilling those promises, one might expect that prior accomplishments carry more weight than good intentions.
If Bush is to be accused of “duping” Kerry and other prominent Democrats into voting for war in Iraq when he knew the charges were groundless, what ability does Kerry have when it comes to getting people of a different party to support his initiatives when his intent isn’t regarded as insincere?
Later in the same speech, Kerry promises that as president, he will ask the “hard questions” and demand “hard evidence.” As a voter, that’s what I am doing now.
So what’s different about Kerry versus Bush in Iraq?
According to an article from Yahoo! News, not much:
“John Kerry made a determined effort to define himself as a clear alternative to President Bush at the Democratic National Convention on Thursday but on the key issue of Iraq, he held out only the prospect of greater international participation. “
International participation? Sure, that’s very important. It would be great to have more of our allies on our side, sharing the responsibilities and the costs. That way we could stop splitting hairs about whether the budget deficit is acceptable at $445 billion because it didn’t live up to initial projections of reaching $521 billion.
But to accept Kerry’s position that he can singlehandedly repair the damage Bush has done to America’s image with its allies because of his stubbornness requires that you then back away from the extremist view that Bush has done irreparable damage to those relationships.
Kerry wants to increase involvement in working out the Iraqi situation. He wants more people at the table. That much is definitely reasonable. But those who have been holding out hope that Kerry would be the man to pull the troops out of Iraq immediately must have realized that it won’t happen with him. We’re stuck there for a while with either candidate, folks.
The article also carries a quote from Joseph Cirincione, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who suggests Kerry has failed to realize the enormity of the disaster that is Iraq: “He’s not offering anything new. His position seems to be a carefully calculated to not alienate undecided voters by shying away from a real alternative to Bush’s policy,” Cirincione said.
Is this a major surprise? Not really, says Charlie at “The Other Shoe,” who suggests that “it is a capitalist myth that competition engenders variety. The contrary is true.”
Some of you won’t believe what I’m about to say. You will question my motives. You are convinced that I am going to vote for Bush no matter what anyone says. I can’t help what you choose to believe. I can only say that what I was hoping for was something new. I want to know that Kerry does offer a better alternative, not just an alternative.
Has Bush done everything the way I would like to have seen it done? No. Am I certain that Kerry will do everything better based on what I think I know about him? No.
It’s called being an informed voter. I have to believe that I’m not the only person who isn’t thrilled with either one. Maybe, after being an eligible voter for more than a decade and a half now, I’m just getting the point of the whole thing: that you’re never completely satisfied with anyone.
