Venue and Consistancy, Bush Wins!

[Annie]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ideas_opinions/story/234304p-201239c.html

W uses world stage to put Kerry down

In any presidential campaign, the incumbent has a lot of advantages. One of them is venue.
On Monday, John Kerry delivered what he billed as a major critique of President Bush's Iraq policy from the stage of New York University's Kimmel Center. His crowd was made up mostly of professors and students, with a few dignitaries sprinkled among them.

Yesterday, Bush offered his rebuttal from the podium of the UN General Assembly. His audience was a collection of world leaders. When you're President, you get to pitch at Yankee Stadium.

Not that Bush had a home crowd. But he did not come to the United Nations to talk to his fellow excellencies and potentates. When he has an important message for one of them, he picks up the phone. Yesterday, they were TV extras.

According to advance word, Bush's speech was supposed to be conciliatory. Instead, he was politely blunt. He made it clear that he has no regrets. He is proud about going to war in Afghanistan and Iraq. He sees them as fronts in a wider war on terror (as usual, the President's honesty stopped short of the adjective "Islamic"). He intends to keep fighting until victory.

The speech was a slap at Kerry, who at NYU called the war in Iraq a "profound diversion" and a "colossal failure of judgment."

For months, peacenik Democrats have been longing for Young John Kerry, anti-warrior. At NYU, they got him. Kerry sounded like a man for whom Iraq is a Vietnam flashback and to whom Islamic fascism poses no greater threat to America than Southeast Asian communism. Fighting in Iraq (and, by extension, elsewhere in the Middle East) is, he made clear, a futile mistake. As he famously put it more than 30 years ago, how can you ask someone to die for a mistake?

Such defeatist sentiments were sweet music to the Bush camp. For one thing, they have Kerry on videotape back in December contradicting himself on virtually everything he said at NYU. Better yet, the Bushies had been hoping for months that the pessimistic side of Kerry's split personality would assert itself. On Monday, it did.

With Bush a day away from center stage, Kerry's timing could not have been worse. The President was merciless. "The proper response to difficulty is not to retreat," he told the General Assembly. "It is to prevail."

The UN audience greeted this stirring sentiment with total silence. Most of the diplomats in the house represent governments that are rooting for a U.S. defeat in Iraq. But Bush couldn't have cared less. He was talking to America, where most voters are on the American side.

"We will stand with the people of Afghanistan and Iraq until their hopes are fulfilled," he declared. As for Kerry, he can stand with France.

In politics, where you stand (and whom you stand with) determines how you run. For reasons known only to himself, Kerry has chosen to stake out a position as the new George McGovern, a can't-do standard-bearer of American defeat and retreat. That leaves Bush just where he wants to be - the candidate of national resolve and optimism.

Only about 24 hours and 40-odd blocks separated the speeches of John Kerry and George Bush in New York this week. But the distance between them could scarcely have been greater. Not since the Democratic debacle of 1972 have two presidential candidates stood so far apart.

Originally published on September 22, 2004

 

[Bonnie]

Just one more reason he is worthy to be president yet again! doesn't have time for nuance (flip flopping) :bat: