Liberal Oasis says that Inside-the-Beltway Democrats should stop their whining about the perceived weaknesses of the Kerry campaign. I think that's right.
I'm confounded by calls by otherwise intelligent people, inside the media and out, and in the liberal blogosphere, for Kerry to come out with guns blazing, as if going on the offensive is the one and only way to win this election. Yes, it's certainly nice to see Kerry lashing out at Bush when the administration's surrogates have the affrontery (and gall!) to cast aspersions on Kerry's military service, but an "attack" like that on Kerry's part is really a defensive response, and as such will be perceived by most people as being reasonable, and not really an attack at all. Similarly, policy-based criticisms of the administration, even sharply worded ones, are also considered fair game -- but this would not be the case, I think, if Kerry were to go after Bush in the same manner that Bush is going after Kerry.
It may be unfair, and it's certainly inconvenient for Kerry, but many people put a lot of faith and trust in whoever is currently occupying the Oval Office, and one has to be careful about the manner in which one criticizes him in order not to alienate those people, who see the president as in some way personifying the country. We may be a modern democracy, but I'm fairly sure that we're to some extent hard-wired to show deference and respect to our leaders, however they came to their position, which means that Kerry has to be smart about when and where (and, especially, how) he mounts the attack on Bush.
If Kerry could win the election merely by appealing to Democrats, progressives and liberals, this wouldn't be a concern, since he could simply feed his base red meat with rabble-rousing speeches reiterating what most of us already know is wrong with Bush and his administration, getting us all riled up to go out and vote -- but that's obviously not the case. Instead, Kerry needs to carefully pry away those in the middle from Bush's orbit, and he's not going to do it by going after Bush with a sledgehammer. It's got to be a more gradual process, a steady erosion of people's trust in Bush leading to a lessening of their commitment to him. How that is done depends largely on what's going on in the world at the time. In the past month or so, Kerry hasn't really needed to do anything dramatic, as events in the real world (the 9/11 commission, the war in Iraq) and the missteps of the Bush campaign and the administration chipped away at the aura of invulnerability that they used to enjoy. Kerry merely had to respond appropriately, which to a large extent he did.
When real-world events stop being an erosive agent, then Kerry will have to step things up and decide how to go after Bush in such a way as to not annoy or offend those who are vulnerable to withdrawing their support. But even then I would doubt that personal attacks would be very effective, no matter how much better they might make us feel.
(Once again, we have to remember the purpose of the campaign, which is not to validate our political philosophy and provide us with egoboo, but to remove Bush from office and start on the road to restoring this country to some semblence of sanity, fairness and stability.)
When we get to the endgame, things will be different, the rules of engagement will be altered by the new circumstances, and we may then see some fireworks which will warm the cockles of our hearts (I'm told by a friend who lives in Massachusetts that Kerry's campaigns always close very well), but until then we'll have to make do with providing our own comfort, because we shouldn't expect Kerry to run the sort of campaign which will appeal to us, not when it's absolutely vital that it appeals to those who can actually win the election for him.
This circumspect behavior, the delicate process of weaning support away from Bush, will be perceived by the media, and many in the liberal world, as Kerry "running to the right," but that's really entirely the wrong way to look at it. It's much more about the mechanics of how to achieve one's goals then it is about the definition of one's policies and positions.
The other complaint I keep reading about is that Kerry has yet to adequately define himself to the public, that he's still largely unknown, which leaves the door open for Bush to define Kerry with his negative ads and smear campaigns. Again, this is, in my opinion, the wrong way to think about it.
Yes, I agree that Kerry must at some point define himself, but that time has not yet come. Right now, no one's really paying all that much attention to the campaign, except for political junkies and other over-involved members of the public. Most people, the conventional wisdom goes, don't really seriously get into the campaign until after the summer. I think that's true, which means that that is the time by which Kerry must have established his public persona and be prepared to let people know, in as strong a way as possible, who he is and what he stands for, just in time to catch those who begin to see the problems with Bush & Company.
Until then, he can afford to be something of a cipher, as long as he maintains a certain amount of visibility and doesn't disappear altogether. He needs to have enough defensive capability to fend off Bush, but more than that would be overkill at this point.
absolutist
aggresive
anti-Constitutional
anti-intellectual
arrogant
authoritarian
blame-placers
blameworthy
blinkered
buckpassers
calculating
class warriors
clueless
compassionless
con artists
conniving
conscienceless
conspiratorial
corrupt
craven
criminal
crooked
culpable
damaging
dangerous
deadly
debased
deceitful
delusional
despotic
destructive
devious
disconnected
dishonorable
dishonest
disingenuous
disrespectful
dogmatic
doomed
fanatical
fantasists
felonious
hateful
heinous
hostile to science
hypocritical
ideologues
ignorant
immoral
incompetent
indifferent
inflexible
insensitive
insincere
irrational
isolated
kleptocratic
lacking in empathy
lacking in public spirit
liars
mendacious
misleading
mistrustful
non-rational
not candid
not "reality-based"
not trustworthy
oblivious
oligarchic
opportunistic
out of control
pernicious
perverse
philistine
plutocratic
prevaricating
propagandists
rapacious
relentless
reprehensible
rigid
scandalous
schemers
selfish
secretive
shameless
sleazy
tricky
unAmerican
uncaring
uncivil
uncompromising
unconstitutional
undemocratic
unethical
unpopular
unprincipled
unrealistic
unreliable
unrepresentative
unscientific
unscrupulous
unsympathetic
venal
vile
virtueless
warmongers
wicked
without integrity
wrong-headed
Thanks to: Breeze, Chuck, Ivan Raikov, Kaiju, Kathy, Roger, Shirley, S.M. Dixon
recently seen
i've got a little list...
Elliott Abrams
Steven Abrams (Kansas BofE)
David Addington
Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson
Roger Ailes (FNC)
John Ashcroft
Bob Bennett
William Bennett
Joe Biden
John Bolton
Alan Bonsell (Dover BofE)
Pat Buchanan
Bill Buckingham (Dover BofE)
George W. Bush
Saxby Chambliss
Bruce Chapman (DI)
Dick Cheney
Lynne Cheney
Richard Cohen
The Coors Family
Ann Coulter
Michael Crichton
Lanny Davis
Tom DeLay
William A. Dembski
James Dobson
Leonard Downie (WaPo)
Dinesh D’Souza
Gregg Easterbrook
Jerry Falwell
Douglas Feith
Arthur Finkelstein
Bill Frist
George Gilder
Newt Gingrich
John Gibson (FNC)
Alberto Gonzalez
Rudolph Giuliani
Sean Hannity
Katherine Harris
Fred Hiatt (WaPo)
Christopher Hitchens
David Horowitz
Don Imus
James F. Inhofe
Jesse Jackson
Philip E. Johnson
Daryn Kagan
Joe Klein
Phil Kline
Ron Klink
William Kristol
Ken Lay
Joe Lieberman
Rush Limbaugh
Trent Lott
Frank Luntz
"American Fundamentalists"
by Joel Pelletier
(click on image for more info)
Chris Matthews
Mitch McConnell
Stephen C. Meyer (DI)
Judith Miller (ex-NYT)
Zell Miller
Tom Monaghan
Sun Myung Moon
Roy Moore
Dick Morris
Rupert Murdoch
Ralph Nader
John Negroponte
Grover Norquist
Robert Novak
Ted Olson
Elspeth Reeve (TNR)
Bill O'Reilly
Martin Peretz (TNR)
Richard Perle
Ramesh Ponnuru
Ralph Reed
Pat Robertson
Karl Rove
Tim Russert
Rick Santorum
Richard Mellon Scaife
Antonin Scalia
Joe Scarborough
Susan Schmidt (WaPo)
Bill Schneider
Al Sharpton
Ron Silver
John Solomon (WaPo)
Margaret Spellings
Kenneth Starr
Randall Terry
Clarence Thomas
Richard Thompson (TMLC)
Donald Trump
Richard Viguere
Donald Wildmon
Paul Wolfowitz
Bob Woodward (WaPo)
John Yoo
guest-blogging
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recent listening
influences
John Adams
Laurie Anderson
Aphex Twin
Isaac Asimov
Fred Astaire
J.G. Ballard
The Beatles
Busby Berkeley
John Cage
"Catch-22"
Raymond Chandler
Arthur C. Clarke
Elvis Costello
Richard Dawkins
Daniel C. Dennett
Philip K. Dick
Kevin Drum
Brian Eno
Fela
Firesign Theatre
Eliot Gelwan
William Gibson
Philip Glass
David Gordon
Stephen Jay Gould
Dashiell Hammett
"The Harder They Come"
Robert Heinlein
Joseph Heller
Frank Herbert
Douglas Hofstadter
Bill James
Gene Kelly
Stanley Kubrick
Jefferson Airplane
Ursula K. LeGuin
The Marx Brothers
John McPhee
Harry Partch
Michael C. Penta
Monty Python
Orbital
Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
"The Prisoner"
"The Red Shoes"
Steve Reich
Terry Riley
Oliver Sacks
Erik Satie
"Singin' in the Rain"
Stephen Sondheim
The Specials
Morton Subotnick
Talking Heads/David Byrne
Tangerine Dream
Hunter S. Thompson
J.R.R. Tolkien
"2001: A Space Odyssey"
Kurt Vonnegut
Yes
Bullshit, trolling, unthinking knee-jerk dogmatism and the drivel of idiots will be ruthlessly deleted and the posters banned.
Entertaining, interesting, intelligent, informed and informative comments will always be welcome, even when I disagree with them.
I am the sole judge of which of these qualities pertains.
E-mail
All e-mail received is subject to being published on unfutz without identifying names or addresses.
Corrections
I correct typos and other simple errors of grammar, syntax, style and presentation in my posts after the fact without necessarily posting notification of the change.
Substantive textual changes, especially reversals or major corrections, will be noted in an "Update" or a footnote.
Also, illustrations may be added to entries after their initial publication.
the story so far
unfutz: toiling in almost complete obscurity for almost 1500 days
If you read unfutz at least once a week, without fail, your teeth will be whiter and your love life more satisfying.
If you read it daily, I will come to your house, kiss you on the forehead, bathe your feet, and cook pancakes for you, with yummy syrup and everything.
(You might want to keep a watch on me, though, just to avoid the syrup ending up on your feet and the pancakes on your forehead.)
Finally, on a more mundane level, since I don't believe that anyone actually reads this stuff, I make this offer: I'll give five bucks to the first person who contacts me and asks for it -- and, believe me, right now five bucks might as well be five hundred, so this is no trivial offer.
