The Weekly Screed

Bushwacked!

Hello again,

Only a week now until the day 50 or 60 million people will vote to grant George W. Bush "four more years" so that he can finish the job of driving the country and the world into an abyss. I still don't get it. Maybe I'm just wired wrong. Maybe it's not an advantage to have an entirely functional frontal lobe. I guess that's my problem: I think too much. Maybe if I just stopped thinking, I could understand George Bush and the millions who will vote for him.

This dangerous proclivity for cognitive reasoning was made painfully obvious to me after a recent conversation that I made the mistake of starting while perched upon a bar-stool at McCabe's, our friendly neighborhood pub (I think I've mentioned before that we don't live anywhere near McCabe's, but it is in a nice neighborhood...).

Last Thursday, as the Cardinals were putting away the Astros in the final game of the NLCS a woman took a seat to my left and placed a take-out order with Ken, the bartender. While ordering, she made a comment to Ken about the election, but cut off any further discussion by saying "let's not go there." I took that to mean that she and the bartender -- who I knew had already early-voted for John Kerry -- were on opposite sides of the political fence, but I wasn't sure.

A few moments later, the patron seated on my right lit up another cigarette -- probably his third in the 15 minutes I'd been seated next to him -- but had the courtesy to ask if the smoke was bothering me. It was, but it was my choice to come into a bar where people smoke, so I didn't think I was within my rights to tell him to put out his cigarette (we liberal-types, we are accommodating to a fault, aren't we?).

After a few more minutes of choking on this guy's fumes, I decided to move over one seat -- which put me next to the woman who was now drinking a glass of white wine and waiting for her take-out order. Being curious, but not wanting to start anything, I just asked her "Bush or Kerry?" and when she said "Bush," I started to wonder if the guy trying to kill me with his cigarette smoke wouldn't be a more suitable companion for rest the evening.

Blowing It? (or, As The Tanker Stalls)

Hello Again,

I've been feeling really agitated this week, going ballistic over little things like computer programs that don't behave, a water bottle that needs refilling, or laundry that needs folding. This morning it finally dawned on me what's really bothering me -- and some of you are not going to like what I've got to say:

John Kerry is blowing it.

Last week, in the wake of the first debate between Bush and Kerry, I thought I could sense a turn in the tide, and indulged myself in the momentary luxury of believing we'd passed an important turning point for the country and the world.

But that first debate was not so much a triumph of Kerry's vision and oratory as it was a failure of Bush's hollow and clumsy rhetoric. Two days after the debate, in a big speech in Pennsylvania, Bush regained his footing and came out swinging, taking direct aim at many of the things Kerry had said in the first debate -- and he carried that momentum into the second debate.

Despite the rush of Kerry supporters to stack the post-debate polls and make it appear that "Kerry won the debate" (matched, I'm sure, by an equal effort by the Bush squads, thus rendering all such polls completely meaningless), I don't see it that way.

Maybe I'm expecting too much, but I consider Bush's record so lame, his "accomplishments" so indefensible, that if he comes out of these debates still standing, then Kerry has failed.

So we'll call the second one a draw at best, and take a moment to marvel -- quiver? -- at how George Bush still has somehow managed to hang onto the rhetorical upper hand as we go into the final round Wednesday night.

Read a book, Laura

Just a quick note about something I saw on TeeVee last night that mnade me hurl.

Ann and I were watching the last few minutes of a "CNN Presents" about "The Mission of George W. Bush," and it seems we tuned in just in time to hear a whole pant-load about W's religious awakenings, including the clip from the 2000 primary debates when he said his favorite philosopher was "Christ, because he changed my heart."

As if seeing that again was not enough to gag me, in the last few minutes of last nights program, there was some footage from an interview with the First Librarian, Laura Bush, who made the statement that "the Bill of Rights says that our rights come from our Creator...."

WRONG Laura! The Bill of Rights says NOTHING about a "Creator."

The word "Creator" does appear in the Declaration of Independence, in that famous clause from the preamble that says we are "endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights," etc etc. But that's the Declaration of Independence, which pre-dates the Constitution by more than a decade, and holds no force of law in our Republic.

The only thing the Constitution or the Bill or Rights says about God, a Creator, or religion is the part where it says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."

It is precisely this kind of confusion -- between Jefferson's well meaning use of the word "Creator" in the Declaration and its absence in the Bill of Rights -- that explains how these self-righteous evangelicals can justify their insertion of religion into America's political discourse.

It would not surprise me to hear this kind of distortion come from the lips George, but I thought Laura was the one in the family who could read.

--PS

As The Tanker Turns

Hello again,

Well, hallelujah. Now that John Kerry has proven that he's got the gonads to go toe-to-toe with Swagger Boy, I guess we're going to have an election after all, rather than just anointing the naked president as Emperor.

I held off from writing about the big debate for a few days, because, frankly, I really wasn't sure what I saw. I was so put off by Kerry's inability to face the camera that was focused on him through the entire evening that it was difficult for me to focus on what he was saying. He addressed his answer to every question directly at the moderator. Not once did he look up to address the 60 million or so viewers, many of whom might have been getting their first real look at the Democrat's candidate. I kept feeling like the only vote he was determined to win was Jim Lehrer's. Every time the camera cut to Kerry, I felt like Kerry didn't know I was there, like I'd been physically pushed out of the room.

But when Bush came on screen, he somehow managed to look directly into the camera. He may have been fabricating, prevaricating, and lying through his teeth, but at least he was lying to me. I'm sure millions of undecided voters found that very reassuring.

In many ways, I've actually found all the post-debate commentary more illuminating than the debate itself. After all, the debate only lasts 90 minutes; the spin goes on forever. So it's not really the debate that has the impact, it's what all the talking heads say about the debate that has the really sinks in with the electorate.

And mostly what they're saying is Kerry won the debate, which is important because this "foreign policy/national security" business is supposed to be Bush's home turf. But Bush came off like a little wind up doll. You pull the string enough times and pretty soon it starts saying the same things over and over again.

"It's hard work."

"I've made some tough decisions."

"No doubt about it, it's tough."

"It's hard work."

...and the cycle starts all over again.

My favorite comment about Bush's performance was "Bush showed up for a 90 minute debate with 60 minutes worth of material." A lot of other people have said "Bush was off his game." Well, excuse me, but that was Bush's game.

Craig Havighurst on The Nine Things Kerry Didn't Say Last Night

Craig Havighurst, former music writer for the Tennessean and one of my favorite writers on any subject he applies his keyboard to, offers this assessment Thursday night's first 2004 Presidential Debate:

There seemed to be some consensus last night that John Kerry sounded smarter and looked better than George Bush in the debate, and I couldn’t agree more. Kerry was level headed and resolute while the President bludgeoned a short list of talking points to death while looking peevish and genuinely annoyed that anyone would question his policies or conduct or performance. (Even in a debate, Bush doesn’t understand democracy.)

But as I slept on it, I’ve grown quite upset that Kerry didn’t use half the ammunition in his arsenal. He continued to equivocate on the invasion of Iraq. He let Bush distortions go unchallenged. Here are nine things Kerry didn’t say but needs to.

1. Bush’s grand vision in Iraq and the Middle East is a fantasy. How can a Republican president who believes in small government and power coming from the bottom up in a democracy seriously argue that we can install a functional democracy from the top down in a nation he doesn’t understand? The citizens of Iraq don’t trust Alawi and don’t trust us. Any government they choose will be an anti-American government, and if that wasn’t true before the war, it’s a sure thing now.

Talk to ME, John

I'm disappointed in John Kerry's performance in Thursday night's debate. Maybe it's just my high expectations: I feel Bush is so vulnerable, his positions are so simplistic and misguided, that it should be easy for John Kerry to pound him into political dust. To me, if Bush is still standing when it's all over, then Kerry has failed.

But there is one aspect of Kerry's performance last night than I find more disturbing than anything he or Bush said, and that's his abject failure to address his remarks to the camera, as Bush did consistently.

Every time the camera switched to John Kerry, Kerry was facing Jim Lehrer. There were 50 million people tuned into this debate, but it looked to me that the only vote John Kerry was trying to win was Jim Lehrer's.

It's just astonishing to think that, with all the coaching and all the rehearsal, nobody bothered to tell Kerry that he should address the camera, and look straight into the eyes of the American people. The rap on Kerry is that he does not connect with voters, and Thursday night was a perfect example of his inability to do that.

Every time the camera cut to Kerry, I felt like I'd been shoved out of the room. Maybe one of his coaches will mention this to him before the next debate.