Re: Meet the Next President--Kerry's Second Shot
- From: Scotius <wolvzbro@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 22:44:39 -0700
On Thu, 14 Sep 2006 12:55:26 -0500, tabbott@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Found at:
http://www.examiner.com/printa-284761~Meet_the_Next_President:_Kerry's_Second_Shot.html
Bill Sammon, The Examiner
Sep 14, 2006 5:00 AM (5 hrs ago)
Current rank: # 1 of 5,491 articles
KEENE, N.H. - Moments before Sen. John Kerry shows up to campaign for
a local politician at a backyard rally here, voter Sue Borden wrinkles
her nose at the mention of the man who lost to President Bush.
?You get one chance,? the Democrat tells a reporter. ?If you can?t
win, then it?s time to let someone else try.?
But less than an hour later, after she meets Kerry and listens to him
deliver an impassioned speech from a wooden deck, Borden softens and
says she would consider voting again for the Massachusetts Democrat.
?I always liked what he stood for but felt that he was very snobbish
and arrogant,? she says. ?He?s not that way. People told me I would
change my mind once I met him. And they were right.?
It is not clear whether Kerry will have enough time to personally meet
and convert every disaffected Democrat in the nation by the election
of 2008. But he appears determined to at least counter the
conventional wisdom that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has all
but locked up the Democratic presidential nomination.
?I don?t buy it,? he said in an interview with The Examiner this week.
?You know, people sit with you and talk with you here, and they?re
going to make judgments about who can be president. They?re going to
make judgments about who can run.
?I think I?d be a good president,? he adds, sitting on the wraparound
porch of an old house in Keene. ?I don?t care what the dominant,
conventional wisdom is today; it will not be the dominant,
conventional wisdom in a year.?
But even if Clinton were to stumble or withdraw, other Democrats are
poised to step in. Some are already hinting that Kerry had his chance
and blew it by losing the all-important swing state of Ohio in 2004.
Similar arguments were made against former Vice President Al Gore when
he lost the crucial state of Florida to Bush in 2000.
?We are making a mistake if we put up candidates that are only
competitive in 16 states, and then we roll the dice and hope we win
Ohio or Florida,? says former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, another
Democrat eyeing the White House.
Far from being offended by this remark, Kerry says he agrees with it.
?I would say the same thing,? he says. ?If I were lucky enough to do
it again, I?m going to make sure we?re campaigning in way more
states.?
Kerry says the only reason he didn?t compete in more states in 2004
was that he ran out of money. He says this was also the reason he did
not adequately respond to a series of devastating TV ads by Swift Boat
Veterans for the Truth, a group that questioned Kerry?s service in
Vietnam and criticized his later opposition to the war.
?They had money behind the lies, and we did not have sufficient money
behind the truth,? Kerry laments.
[It does not cost any money to make one's military record public.
All Kerry had to do was sign a form authorizing the release of his
military records, and then we could all see for ourselves whether it
was Kerry who was lying, or it was all the Swiftboat veterans who
served with him.. To this day, Kerry has not made his complete
military records public, even though he publicly stated he would do
so. It looks to me like Kerry is the liar, here, based on past
experience. Will he ever come clean? I doubt it, since coming clean
would probably mean he shows himself to be a liar, almost as much of a
pathological liar as Bill Clinton himself.]
Asked if he dreads the prospect of being ?Swift-Boated? all over
again, Kerry counters that he would relish such a fight.
?I?m prepared to kick their ass from one end of America to the other,?
he declares. ?I am so confident of my abilities to address that and to
demolish it and to even turn it into a positive.?
[If you will not make your military records public, then people will
naturally think you have something to hide and you won't be able to
refute this tendency. And as long as you keep your records secret,
the Swiftboat veterans will be kicking *your* ass, just like they did
the last time.]
Kerry?s tough talk triggers laughter from John O?Neill, a fellow
Vietnam veteran who helped found Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth and
wrote a blistering 2004 book on Kerry, ?Unfit for Command.?
[Yeah, I got a pretty good laugh out of it, too.]
?Well, he?s got eight times as much time to prepare for us as he spent
in Vietnam,? says O?Neill, referring to Kerry?s short tour of duty.
Kerry?s blunt rhetoric on the Swift Boat Veterans
[It should more properly be described as "bluster".]
is a far cry from his 2004 attempt to straddle the question of
whether to fund U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
?I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it,?
he said during the election, cementing his reputation as a
flip-flopper.
[The truth *wil* come out eventually. Just like it did in this
case.]
The utterance was draped around Kerry?s neck and was widely viewed as
a factor in his defeat. And yet now he voluntarily alludes to the
gaffe while criticizing Bush?s recent reversal on the handling of
enemy combatants.
?No American president should be for torture before he?s against it,?
Kerry said at Boston?s Faneuil Hall last weekend, allowing himself a
rueful smile as the crowd erupted in cheers.
[Another Kerry lie. President Bush has never been in favor of
torture, and Kerry could not prove his slander if his life depended on
it.]
Eager to shed his image as an overly cautious politician, Kerry now
prefers to ?let it rip,? according to several of his closest advisers.
?I learned a lot of lessons in the campaign,? Kerry tells The
Examiner. ?And one of them is to keep it simple. Direct.?
Yet Kerry?s stance has been anything but simple on the question of
whether to implement a specific timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops
from Iraq. While Kerry opposed such a timetable last year, he now
supports it.
?I don?t see that as a contradiction,? he says while munching
chocolate chip cookies.
[That's one of your major problems, John. You don't recognize a
contradiction when you see one, if it applies to you. You have a
talent for rationalizing anything you do, contradictory or not.]
He explains that the politics of Iraq have changed dramatically since
he opposed a timetable.
?We didn?t have an election; we hadn?t had a constitution; there was
no provisional government,? he says. ?To set a timetable in that
circumstance would have been wrong.
?But once you?ve had the election, once they?ve accepted democracy,
once they?ve put together a government, the only thing left to do is
complete the task of security transformation,? he adds. ?And I think
it?s reasonable, then, to have a standard by which [the Iraqis] assume
a sense of urgency and responsibility.?
[The security transformation has not been completed and setting a
timetable in this circumstance is wrong.]
Charlie Cook, publisher of the Cook Political Report, says it will not
be easy for Kerry to convince Democrats to give him another chance
after coming up short in 2004.
?Kerry came out as damaged merchandise,? Cook says. ?Badly damaged
merchandise.?
[Good! We are very lucky Kerry lost. Just to mention one reason:
Kerry opposed continuing to develop defenses against incoming
ballistic missiles. Considering the current world situation, with
North Korea and Iran and other rogue states acquiring missile launch
capabilities, do you think not building defenses against such threats
is a good idea? John Kerry did and I assume still does. President
Bush, on the other hand, pushed missile defense development as fast as
possible, and because of this, we now have a rudimentary ability to
defend ourselves against maniacs with missiles and WMD, and a robust
missile defense system will not be far behind. Had we listened to the
Clintons and Kerrys of this world, we would not have any defense
against missile blackmail from rogue states.]
Kerry acknowledges there is some ?legitimacy? to such analysis.
?If you have hundreds of millions of dollars spent saying something
about you, some of it sinks in,? he shrugs.
[Aw, you poor thing! "Hundreds of millions"! What a joke! The
Swiftboat veterans didn't come close to spending that much money
saying something about you. Something you could not refute. Your
military records presumably would have proven the Swiftboat veterans
wrong, but you refused to allow the public to see those records. Why
wouldn't people think you have something to hide?]
And yet such damage was part of an invaluable experience ? passing
through the crucible of a presidential campaign.
?On the plus side, I think if I were to decide to run again, I?d bring
a lot of assets, including the fact that I?m the only guy who?s fully
vetted,? Kerry says.
[You failed said vetting, pal. That's why you lost.]
?I have the experience of three presidential debates and a
convention, of having come out of the campaign being accepted by
50-whatever million Americans with being able to be president.?
[50-whatever million fools. It still wasn't enough to get you
elected.]
That?s a resume that cannot be matched by others in the crowded
presidential sweepstakes of 2008.
[Al Gore can match your resume.]
?If you win 10 million more votes than Bill Clinton did in 1996, a
sitting president, and you come within 59,000 votes of beating a
Republican president in a time of war, it seems to me you?ve done
better than others who ran and didn?t win the nomination, who are
thinking of running again,? he says.
[Al Gore could make the very same arguments in his favor.]
As for those who believe politicians get only one chance for the top
job, Kerry rattles off a list of Republicans who lost elections, only
to rise again.
?I mean, John McCain got just beat up in South Carolina, and he?s
fighting,? he says of a possible 2008 foe. ?Ronald Reagan ran three
times. Richard Nixon ran after a miserable loss in California.
?So the question is, what do you offer? What do you bring to the
table?? he adds. ?I think the agenda I laid out is viable, is as
urgent today, and that?s why I think about this.?
[What agenda? Oh, you mean that flip-flopping you do. That's not
an agenda, John. Your "agenda" is to be non-specific. When you get
specific, you hurt your chances.]
He points out that while his 2004 candidacy failed, many of his
foreign and domestic policies remain popular among Democrats.
[I wouldn't hold that up as a plus.]
In fact, his anti-war stance may resonate more in 2008 than in 2004
because more Americans are tiring of the bloodshed.
[Kerry does not have an anti-war stance. He does not favor an
unconditional removal of U.S. troops. Instead, he sets conditions on
what should be done. This is the same thing President Bush does. The
conditions are different, but neither favor turning our backs on the
Iraqis, which is what a true anti-war stance would require. Kerry has
an anti-Bush stance, not an anti-war stance.]
?If my ideas had been rejected overwhelmingly, if I was wrong, then
maybe I should just go put my head down and go somewhere and work in
the garden,? he says.
[Yes, that's what you should do. For the good of the Nation.]
?But I don?t think I was. And a lot of people, as I go around the
country, reaffirm that with me.?
[You need to speak to me. You might change your mind.]
People, indeed, like Sue Borden.
bsammon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Examiner
end excerpt
TA
The last election was a joke. Kerry (John Forbes Kerry) is a
cousin of Bush's, went to the same university (Yale), and was a member
of the same club there ("Skull & Bones"). He is supposedly the
opposition, but he voted to go to war in Iraq. The only difference
between Bush and Kerry is that Kerry would sound better explaining why
the US can't leave Iraq yet.
That said, it's interesting to note that Tony Blair is also a
Bush relative.
.
- References:
- Meet the Next President--Kerry's Second Shot
- From: tabbott
- Meet the Next President--Kerry's Second Shot
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