Campaigning On The Snide

What Karl Rove, George Bush and Dick Cheney consider campaigning is really nothing more than cheap shot artistry. They sneer and smirk and flippantly snicker about John Kerry, who -- from all accounts I've seen -- has lived an admirable life. Perhaps it hasn't been anything particularly outstanding, but he surely isn't the comic book figure that the Mother-of-All-Comic-Book-Figures Bush. As Kerry has said many times -- and as the Bush/Cheney record clearly illustrates -- Bush and Cheney cannot run on their record.

If the Associated Press were to subpoena the White House for its record of accomplishments, they would no doubt get the same results they got when they subpoenaed his military records: Nothing.

GOP Convention's Looney Tunes

An advertising guru once warned his acolytes never to confuse the thing being sold with the thing itself. Good sizzle can always sell a lousy steak.

This strategy is on brilliant display these days as the Republicans emerge post-convention bristling with tough-sounding talk about "girlie men" and shamelessly attacking decorated war veteran John F. Kerry as some kind of traitorous wimp. The same leaders who have never apologized for being totally oblivious to the terrorist threat before Sept. 11 continue to mawkishly exploit the tragedy for political gain, all while trumpeting far-off victories for democracy that dissolve like mirages under the mildest scrutiny.

The Republicans' strategy is to counter critique with caricature, and they do it with all the panache of an old Road Runner cartoon, effectively smashing Kerry with rhetorical frying pans.

"Even in this post-9/11 period, Sen. Kerry doesn't appear to understand how the world has changed. He talks about leading a 'more sensitive war on terror,' as though al Qaeda will be impressed with our softer side," Dick Cheney mocked in his convention speech, reusing a joke that wasn't funny the first time.

This from a man who secured five deferments from Vietnam because he had "other priorities" at the time. But it was Cheney's own war "fever," as Colin Powell described it to the Washington Post's Bob Woodward, that was crucial in the president's reckless decision to chase U.N. inspectors out of Iraq – lest they confirm that the White House was hyping a WMD threat that didn't exist.

[...]

And if you disagree with this son of privilege – a man who never earned an honest dollar on his own but acts as if the lives of the unemployed and working poor are of no consequence – well, you must be an "economic girlie man." At least, so says mega-millionaire Arnold Schwarzenegger, the macho Hollywood warrior who has never experienced combat himself.

This cartoon is all a great joke, except for the price we will pay if the audience buys into it. We are not watching a movie, and the stakes are very real. Bush's convention acceptance speech was a clear ideological endorsement of the neoconservative vision that America can and should dominate the world with military force.

Four more years of George W. Bush would mean more blood flowing – and none of it would be fake.

more >>