News Intelligence Analysis
Why Kerry Might Not Lose After
All
And Why Adam Sparks Is Wrong
By Dennis Crews
August 11, 2004
"Why
Kerry Will Lose the Election" by Adam Sparks [San Francisco
Chronicle August 9, 2004] seemed to me like wishful thinking.
Unless the fix is in already via rigging electronic voting machine
software or some other hocus-pocus, events on the ground will
drive this election. Forget the conventions as any indicator
- Republicans won’t get much of a bounce this year either.
Likewise forget Kerry's voting record. As things stand now this
election will pivot on Iraq and the economy. I wouldn't want
to take credit for either one.
As for Kerry's record, the salient fact is he picked a path of
public service early in life and kept showing up for work. During
all those years George Bush flopped from one failure to another.
He got by with luck and help from rich friends. He had zero experience
in governing or public service when he lucked into the gubernatorial
race in Texas mainly because of his name and family connections.
Bush’s war on terror has a definition problem when the enemy changes from one month to another. Iraq is a deepening disaster and history isn’t going to cut Bush an inch of slack on it. It's nothing like being Truman in 1945 when enemies were clearly defined and the path of duty brightly demarcated. We live in a dangerous world but the jury is out on whether Bush has made things better or drastically, irreparably worse. Consequently there is little equity for him in being a "war president" now.
As for the "vile Bush bashing" - many Americans have been trying to make it clear for some time now that this court-appointed president does not speak for the majority who didn't vote for him. They believe the president has been given a free ride and now ought to be held accountable for his actions. He has governed as if he had a mandate, when he actually lost the popular vote and would have done well to show a little humility.
This brief doesn't begin to address the countless misstatements of fact for which the Bush administration has distinguished itself (Sparks actually calls reports of Bush lies an "urban legend"). And isn't it just plain spooky that the coming election is the first in American history to be monitored by international observers because virtually nobody anywhere else in the world trusts the current administration to even conduct a fair election?
I have a Republican friend who bet his father and brother, both Bush supporters, a hundred bucks that Bush would lose this election for the simple reason that outside of his own family he doesn't know a single person who plans to vote for George Bush again. My friend said when his own brother argued in favor of the Iraq war "because of everything Saddam did in Bosnia," he nearly split a gut laughing.
And that is precisely why Kerry will lose, if he does. Because the American people have gone from dumb to dumber. George Bush has set the intelligence bar lower than it has ever been, and the mainstream media consistently elevates stupidity over substance. Listening to an interview with Richard Nixon from the early 90s on C-Span over the weekend, I was struck by what an amazing intellect the man had. Love him or hate him, Nixon was a complicated person whose grasp of history and the geopolitical world was broad and detailed. He could articulate philosophical ideas with erudition in spite of his famously stiff personality.
By comparison George Bush is the lightest of lightweights - a man clever but not wise, shallow in both intellectual experience and curiosity, an individual who hasn't traveled, studied or thought deeply about anything, adept only at small talk and political calculation, gifted with amazing luck and living in a time when neither character nor wisdom matter so much as quick wit and a salesman's patter.
Contrary to Sparks’ assertion there have been no real vindications of George Bush, either by the 9/11 Commission or any other authority. Sibel Edmond's story hasn't yet played out, and there are countless less-than-fully examined chapters in this administration's history. The media abandons most of them before they are even fully reported, rushing breathlessly hither and yon in search not of truth but entertainment - junk that evokes emotion but hardly a shred of analytical thought.
George Bush provides comfort for a frightened, dumbed-down world by bristling and baring his teeth at all comers, while John Kerry at least shows signs of being a complicated, analytical and thoughtful man. I believe what will decide this selection is how many historically aware, analytical, thinking adults are out here, waiting for our votes to be counted. I'm betting there are quite a bunch of us.
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