Tale of Two Kerrys Monday, Aug 2 2010 

History and Politics , victorgold 10:21 am

That rumble we’re hearing — some would call it a surge — is the sound of a growing anti-war movement in search of a leader. Michael Steele? I doubt it.  Give the RNC chairman credit for speaking out, but it’s hard to see him filling that role. (Besides, he’s been muzzled by Sarah and her grizzly offspring on the Republican National Committee.)

Who then? Logic would tell us a natural leader would spring from a wartime veteran who experienced first-hand the bitter lesson learned the last time American lives were lost in a tribal war in which “winning the hearts and minds of the people” was the primary rule of engagement.

Someone, say, with the passion of the young Vietnam veteran who appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April, 1971, to decry the callous passivity of the country’s political leaders in sustaining a war in which “men charged up hills because a General said a hill had to be taken and after losing one or two platoons they marched away, only to see the hill retaken by the enemy.”

Yet the fighting and dying went on, said young John Kerry, because “we couldn’t retreat and …it didn’t matter how many American bodies were lost to  prove that point.”

“We found,” testified the impassioned Kerry, “that most of the people on whose behalf American troops were fighting and dying practiced the art of survival by siding with whatever military force was present at a particular time”;  and that “all too often, Americans were dying . . . from want of support from their allies.”

Sound familiar? The same words could be applied to what’s going in Afghanistan today.  (July registered the largest number of American deaths  in the Afghan-Pakistan war since its beginning nearly a decade ago.)

But there’s still more to hear from young John Kerry:  How, he asked those Senate elders in April, 1971, how could they “ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

Fast-forward four decades to the same John Kerry, the subject of a Washington Post feature the day after the Afghan WikiLeaks papers were published. In flattering detail the Post describes Kerry as being passionate  about an issue he’s devoted full time to for the past year. Is the issue young Americans dying overseas “for a mistake”?  Guess again. It’s . . . climate change!

Not that Kerry, now himself chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has nothing to say about the Afghanistan war. In a separate story on the WikiLeaks papers he’s quoted as saying, “These documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right more urgent.”

To repeat that passionate statement: “These documents may very well underscore the stakes” . . .  Oh, what the hell.  What else should we expect from the man who famously said that he was “for that bill before I was against it”?

 

Quote of the Day Monday, Aug 2 2010 

Politics victorgold 10:20 am

“He was a terrific Lieutenant Governor.”

—  Michael Dukakis re John Kerry, July 27, 2004

 

The Great Over-Communicator Monday, Jul 26 2010 

Politics victorgold 10:08 am

An odd thing happened in Washington last week: Two days passed without the President’s appearing on television.

My first reaction was to call my TV repairman, but on second thought I checked with friends at broadcast and cable news to see if I’d missed something.  Also ESPN, on the possibility that the Nation’s Sports Analyst-in-Chief hadn’t appeared at some off-hour to offer his opinion on whether the New Orleans Saints would repeat as Super Bowl champions. (I was told no, but they did have that penciled in for mid-August, an interview with Erin Andrews in the Oval Office.)  Finally, a call to a producer at the Family Network to ask whether, in the absence of all other possibilities, Barack and Michelle had taken a turn on America’s Funniest Home Videos. . . .

To the point, though stating the obvious makes dull table-talk (except around the CIA lunchroom), Barack Obama in eighteen short months has become the most-over-exposed president in American history.  A comparison? All right: Even Bill Clinton, in one of his most egocentric moments,  would never have called a full-dress Rose Garden news conference in 100-degree-heat to announce the firing of an insubordinate general (Harry Truman did it with a perfunctory statement.)

All of which leads to a personal observation as to why, for all his legislative victories, Barack Obama’s poll numbers keep falling. It’s an observation based on received wisdom from an embattled office-holder I worked for in the 1970s who, despite my urging that he go on a Sunday morning talk show, refused for the following reason:  “Politics,”  he said, “is a business of hills and holes. When you’re in a hole, the more your face shows on television the deeper it gets.”

Ancient history, but translated for the Twenty-first century political world of Barack Obama, still on target: Unemployment at 9.7 percent, the Louisiana wetlands soaked in BP oil, our troops fighting overseas, and what do Americans turn on their television sets to see? Their President on the Larry King show, advising LeBron James to stay with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Not to say that a President should disappear during hard times, but Rose Garden Specials five times a week? A suggestion: If by chance there’s a camera-addiction clinic somewhere near Martha’s Vineyard, it might be a good place for POTUS to check in for a weekend this August.

 

Baseball Quote of the Day Monday, Jul 26 2010 

Sports victorgold 10:08 am

“Being with a woman never hurt a professional ballplayer. It’s staying up all night looking for a woman that does him in.”
—  Casey Stengel, manager, New York Yankees (pre-Steinbrenner)

 

Whatever happened to Wesley Clark? Wednesday, Jul 21 2010 

Politics victorgold 2:31 pm

Any  week now we’re going to see David Petraeus’ spartan  visage on the cover of  Time or  Newsweek   — certainly The Weekly Standard — with a cut-line proclaiming him  the GOP’s Great White Hope for 2012.  That  Petraeus  has done nothing to discourage this sort of  speculation is a given.  The General didn’t show  up  for  accolades  and applause from a fawning AEI  audience a few weeks ago because  he doesn’t like the Washington spotlight.  But before the start of a lemming rush to launch a Draft Dave movement in the Republican heartland, a few questions are in order.  For instance:

What will Candidate Petraeus have to say when asked by inquiring reporters or town-hallers,   “How do you stand on the Value Added Tax?”   or “Do you favor repeal of the Jones Act?”  or  “Are you for a constitutional  amendment  to ban abortion or should it be left to the states?”

Then there’s the matter of  the uniform coming off,  along with the aura that goes with it.  Gripping stories about  the Surge in Iraq are likely to wear thin after the first week in New Hampshire , and as far as Afghanistan is concerned, history tells us that an Army General’s best shot at getting elected President is to win a war.   Sorry, “The Washington  politicians tied my hands and wouldn’t let me win” excuse won’t cut it.   (Reference:  Douglas MacArthur.)

 

Nation-Building Quote of the Day Wednesday, Jul 21 2010 

Politics victorgold 2:31 pm

(In case you thought the rigging of the recent election in Afghanistan was an anomaly):  “This is an exercise in democracy.  Let them exercise it twice.  We can’t be perfect.”

— President Hamid Karzai on being told that many Afghans had voted multiple times in the August 2004 elections

 

Speaking of the Year of the Republican Woman… Thursday, Jul 15 2010 

History and Politics victorgold 7:28 am

It was 46 years ago this month that  the  then-reigning queen of  GOP conservatives delivered a seconding speech to Barry Goldwater’s nomination for president.  To measure the downward  trajectory of Republican conservatism  since that time, all we have to do is compare the woman who fills that role  today to Barry’s seconder,  Clare Boothe  Luce — congresswoman (Conn.), playwright (“The Women”), editor (Vanity Fair), ambassador to Italy.  A woman best described by her biographer as “brilliant, idealistic, tough as a Marine sergeant but almost quixotically kind to unfortunates;  the complexities of her character are as numerous as the facets of her career.”

Any difference between that and the reigning queen of Republican conservativism, 2010?   You  betcha!

 

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