Many folks from all points on the political spectrum had begun conceding the election to our robust and resolute warrior-president.\u00a0 They had to.\u00a0 The polls were revealing the most horrifying perception of John Kerry.\u00a0 Married middle class white women, whose support he\u2019d been counting on, had decided he couldn\u2019t protect them as well as George W. Bush, and about ten percent of them skedaddled into the president\u2019s embrace, pumping him into a lead of several points.\u00a0 As a reward, the \u201csoccer moms\u201d were given the weightier designation \u201csecurity moms\u201d and, at least by allusion, the assurance that all aspects of life would be better in the arms of the one true stud.<\/p>\n
But that wasn\u2019t all, I was sure, and resolved to conduct my own poll.\u00a0 Thursday morning before the first debate, I faced the adult students in my English as a Second Language class.\u00a0 The group was overwhelmingly Mexican and female, and of course they readily proclaimed their dislike of most Republicans, even the post-celluloid Arnold. \u00a0\u00a0I nevertheless suspected they were withholding something.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you think Bush looks good?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like him\u2026 He doesn\u2019t care about us\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you think he looks good?\u201d<\/p>\n
The room was silent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018Does Bush look good?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d at least twenty women said in unison.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s about over, I thought.\u00a0 If these non-voting but aggrieved females think the president is attractive, imagine how the security moms feel.\u00a0 Poor Kerry.\u00a0 Legions are joking about his orange face and his flip-flopping and questioning his manhood in Viet Nam and his worthiness to be a leader.\u00a0 He\u2019s really about to be overwhelmed.\u00a0 But there is a debate tonight, I reasoned. \u00a0Let\u2019s see happens.<\/p>\n
A little after nine p.m. Eastern time John Kerry, tanned, towering at six-foot-four, and determined, strode onto the stage and smiled as he pumped the smaller hand of George W. Bush.\u00a0 This image was an omen.\u00a0 While Bush spent much of the evening hunched over the podium, grimacing and pouting, Kerry stood erect as he stated the United States is safer when leading strong alliances, and that diverting the real war on terror in Afghanistan \u2013 where Osama bin Laden likely was and is \u2013 was a \u201ccolossal error in judgment.\u201d\u00a0 Now, Kerry noted, the United States is suffering ninety percent of the casualties and bearing ninety percent of the cost of the war in Iraq.\u00a0 And Iraq, he stressed, \u201cwas not even close to the center of terror\u201d before Bush attacked it.<\/p>\n
The president, thoroughly programmed by his theretofore effective but not terribly artful advisers, quoted Kerry as calling Iraq \u201cthe wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time,\u201d and said you can\u2019t lead like that.\u00a0 You can\u2019t lead if you change positions as politics change.\u00a0 Nor can you lead if you send mixed messages.\u00a0 And if you say it\u2019s the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, that\u2019s bad.\u00a0 You can\u2019t keep changing positions.\u00a0 Nation building is hard work.\u00a0 It\u2019s all hard work.\u00a0 And that work is undermined when you call Iraq the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time.\u00a0 You keep changing.\u00a0 Stop that.\u00a0 Actually, keep it up, Kerry, look at the polls.\u00a0 My message is getting across.<\/p>\n
To ensure that his audience of sixty million got it, as well as to compensate for his apparent inability to say anything else, Bush continued to repeat his few stale points until even chief strategist Karl Rove must have winced.\u00a0 It was getting late, well past his bedtime, and the alpha president was not delivering his simple lines with much energy.<\/p>\n
Excepting the aforementioned sound-bites brought in cold and stiff from the stump, Bush\u2019s most unfortunate line was that Saddam would have been \u201cstronger and tougher\u201d if he, George W., hadn\u2019t attacked Iraq.\u00a0 That is a blatant falsehood.\u00a0 Who really believes that Saddam was getting, or had any prospect of getting, stronger and tougher?\u00a0 By any standard, he\u2019d been getting weaker and older since the Gulf War in 1991 when Bush\u2019s father put together a politically and militarily powerful international coalition and said at the time and later in his book that it would have been unwise to continue the invasion and become mired in attritional warfare in the city streets of Babylon. \u00a0Economic warfare was waged instead, and the sanctions strangled the Iraqi military machine and starved the citizens. \u00a0By the spring of 2003, Saddam and Iraq were in fact a threat only to themselves, not to the United States.<\/p>\n
In contrast to the president, who must have guzzled a large Shirley Temple with extra sugar before the debate, Kerry appeared to have downed a testosterone cocktail.\u00a0 Standing ever straight and often using his large hands for emphasis, he articulated points that are more nuanced than the Bush administration is accustomed to: bringing countries together is essential; a \u201cfresh start and new credibility\u201d will enable the United States to build much stronger alliances; vigorously pursuing a democratic victory in Iraq is vital but so is ensuring that the Iraqi people understand the United States \u201chas no long term designs\u201d on their country.<\/p>\n
That is diplomacy.\u00a0 That is strong leadership.\u00a0 That is coherent vision and a huge contrast to the incessant and petulant cheap-shots by a president who didn\u2019t much want to debate or even discuss.\u00a0 A lot of the security moms no doubt noticed.\u00a0 And ladies, like nations, often reassess who really can best protect them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many folks from all points on the political spectrum had begun conceding the election to our robust and resolute warrior-president.\u00a0 They had to.\u00a0 The polls were revealing the most horrifying perception of John Kerry.\u00a0 Married middle class white women, whose support he\u2019d been counting on, had decided he couldn\u2019t protect them as well as George…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,57,40,56],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n