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A comment!
"So if Kerry can't rely on jobs, the economy, the war or homeland security as vote winning issues what has he got left? The budget deficit?"
Many Americans are asking that question right now. It's not really clear to me that Kerry even needs "something run on," given the split in American political demographics. Unless the President goes duck hunting with bin Laden, or something equally out of character, 40 percent of Americans say they will vote for Bush in November. Another 40 percent have pledged their troth to John Kerry, for the simple reason that he is not George W. Bush. That leaves 20 percent of the electorate for Bush and Kerry to woo. They are the undecideds.
So who are the 20 percenters? It's hard to generalize. Many are independents, some Libertarians, and some are people who just aren't paying the much attention to the whole political scene.
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One thing the majority of Americans can agree on is that the terrorist threat is real, and something needs to be done about it. Bush, for all his faults and brazen dishonesty, is doing something about it. Whether he's doing the right thing is questionable, but the question is best answered if Kerry could tell us what he would do, rather than what we wouldn't do. I consider myself more attentive to political considerations than most Americans, and I haven't a fricking clue what Kerry would have done on 9/11, or what he would do as Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the United States of America.
Kerry also needs to puncture the myth of Republican competence. This might be Bush's weakest point, which is why the Bushies are having coniption fits over the 9/11 commission. For years it's been a given in GOP talking points that Clinton is to blame for 9/11, that he had his chance to take out bin Landen and blew it, that his reluctance to commit force to the fight against transnational terrorism emboldened our enemies. But Richard Clarke is telling us, convincingly methinks, that bin Laden barely registered on W's radar screen. The White House wasn't ignoring terrorism - it was merely continuing Clinton's policy, and simultaneously fishing for a long term strategy.
Clarke's critics say that what matters is how Bush addressed terrorism post 9/11. Of course that matters, but that's not all that matters. Bush made character a central part of his 2000 campaging. In fact, that's just about all he ran on. He was the un-Clinton, and he promised not to lie, and to keep his pants on in the Oval Office. Well you know what? Rewriting history and pretending to be somebody you're not is lying, and Clarke is right to call Bush on it, and the American people are justified in asking what the President knew and how long he knew it before the towers fell.
The defecit is huge, in all senses of the word. Not only does it saddle future generations with more debt, but it weakens the American dollar, which forces OPEC to raise the price of oil. And while we're on the subject of oil, Kerry can talk about our cozy relations with the Saudis, which I think most Americans don't like, or at least the ones that can find Saudi Arabia on a map.
Kerry's challenge is not a lack of issues, but rather keeping his campaign focused on the future, and coming up with concrete proposals that are palatable to the undecideds amongst us. Otherwise he falls into the trap of only criticizing Bush for the way he has conducted his Presidency, while failing to come up with clear, simple solutions of his own.
4.4.04 19:04