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Saturday, February 14, 2004
Horse parts 
| | It's about the agenda: During last Tuesday's primary coverage on TV, neither former presidential candidate Bob Dole nor the Washington Post's Watergate star Bob Woodward could come up with any idea why Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich are still in the race, since they aren't expected to win the nomination. Dole muttered something about ego. |
| | It's incomprehensible to these powerful Washington insiders that a black man and an idealist would want to bring their visions of America and the concerns of those who support them to the Democratic convention in June. |
| | I'm grateful to all these folks, and to those who ran out of gas -- Carol Moseley-Braun, Joe Lieberman and Dick Gebhardt -- for slogging around the country, talking to small groups about their visions of America. It's thankless, lonely work for the also-rans, but it's the essence of American democracy -- airing our differences, changing minds, speaking about what's wrong and what could be right... |
| | Al Sharpton, in his own words: "I will continue to campaign vigorously until the last day of the convention to give voice to all Americans who have been too long taken for granted by inside-the-Beltway policies and politicians.'' |
| | His first piece is The Tripping Point: Joe Trippi at an Emerging Technology Teach-In spoke to his Internet troops. He came to teach them about a fateful moment in the campaign, where the Net movement disconnected from Dean's condition. But he also told them: you made us. You are changing American politics. And it's still about the money. |
| | At NYU Jay teaches this kind of criticism. The rest of us are lucky to audit his class. |
| | I thought Bush held his own in speaking to his base. Like his State of the Union speech, I thought everything he said was either meaningless fluff, hysterical fear-mongering, or breathtaking nonsense, but I figured people who didn't already think that wouldn't think it now. Given the fact that he had to know he wouldn't be having this particular sit-down if his ass wasn't crackling over the campfire, he seemed self-confident and comfortable, and he said all the stuff he had to say, or the only stuff he could say, about his pre-war (lack of) intelligence, his splotchy Guard record, and his budget of sand and fog. |
| | On his Guard record (and, lookit, after eight years of bumperstickers calling Clinton a "draft-dodger," I for one am not going to leave Bush's Guard record alone), Bush hauled out a big set piece allowing as to how he wasn't going to sit there and listen to anyone making fun of the National Guard, because a lot of fine people have served in the National Guard, and if you don't think the National Guard is a Real Armed Service, then you don't know anything about the National Guard. He flew planes, you know. In a "squadron," with a cool name like "Freedom Squadron" or something. If any black-jammied VC had creeped on Galveston in a sampan, George W. Bush's "Freedom Squadron" would have been ready. You know, if he was around. |
| | (Monday morning on NPR, Cokie Roberts gave us all what seemed like a little finger-wagging for caring about the AWOL issue at this late date. I think a lot of Americans are hearing about this for the first time, or paying attention to it for the first time because, as he ceaselessy reminded us, Bush is a War President now. During the summer and fall of 2000, we weren't at war, and Bush seemed reassuringly disinterested in getting into one, but now he seems alarmingly interested in never getting out of this one, so his military record kinda sorta matters now. It's a Character Issue. And his records would stop mattering really quickly if it were easier to suss out exactly what they tell us. As it is, there's a big gap in his reports, and there's only one torn half of one document to defend his record against the recollections of officers who would have been his commanders, but don't recall that he ever showed up and saluted.) |
| | Anyway, stylistically, I figured Bush appealed to whoever he's always appealed to. It does seem like he's been watching a lot of The 700 Club--he really acts like Pat Robertson, smiling weirdly, as if to indicate sad, condescending amusement at anyone who doesn't agree with what's coming out of his mouth. ("Because you and I know they're going to Hell, don't we?") People respond to the kind of reckless self-assurance that comes from a lifetime of privilege and party-crashing. They take it for "leadership." No one could be that sure of himself and be wrong, right? |
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