Will the Real John Kerry…
Thanks to Fire for the quote from Sean Hannity about John Kerry, “He has no core”.
It reminded me of what Christopher Lasch said in “The Revolt of the Elites” that the American elites today live lives detached from any place and are not rooted in anything except a comfortable life style…and power.
There was nothing about John Kerry’s five houses and opulent life-style in last night’s DNC presentation.
More interestingly, there was nothing about his 20 years in the Senate in which he was resolutely liberal and did very little of any significance.
What John Kerry did last night was to shuck a life-time of devotion to liberalism and tacitly admit to this country that the only way he could become President was to run as a Republican.
Did anyone else notice the expression on Jesse Jackson’s face, blank, empty and betrayed as the Democratic nominee made not one reference to race in his speech?
As I thought about George W Bush today, it struck that the first time I saw what was inside him was when he was at that school on 9/11 and an aide informs him quietly what has happened at the World Trade Center.
There is no change in expression, no momentary fear or panic, as he quietly excuses himself to start on the way to bringing down the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq plus capturing Saddam Hussein, who now resides in an American jail, and hopefully a democracy in Iraq, all this despite opposition and betrayal from “friend” (Thank you M. Chirac)and foe alike.
I am not “a fan” of George W Bush as I was of JFK but I was a lot younger then.
But one thing I know about GWB is that he has “a core”.
Side-bars: The TV shot Hilary Clinton in her orange suit and cropped hair standing in the shadows as the Democratic nominee “masculinizes” the party before her very eyes was haunting.
Was last night the end of Sen Clinton’s Presidential hopes? There have been great comebacks in American Presidential history: FDR and Richard Nixon to name two, but can anyone see Sen Clinton acting on the international stage as she has on the national stage when stakes were abstract and the weapons verbal instead of life-and-death with live ammunition?
And Ron Reagan Jr. whose obnoxiousness was so egregious that it provoked William F Buckley to address him personally in a column saying that he was being financially aided by his mother (apparently RR, Jr had denied it because WFB said,” You know it and I know it and you know that I know it”)and that RR,Jr lied when he said that his father didn’t care when he left Yale to pursue ballet because “your father asked me to talk to you about it.”.
I have no animosity towards RR,Jr. FDR.Jr and Randolph Churchill both never solved the problem of being the son of “A great man”. Robert Lincoln and Gen Theodore Roosevelt, Jr did but it is not an easy situation.