Boston
TONIGHT, like every other night, is Vietnam Night at the Democratic National Convention. We get Wesley Clark, Max Cleland, and a host of John Kerry’s Vietnam buddies, testifying to the candidate’s bravery, courage, and valor.
No news here: Team Kerry seems to believe that their man’s military accomplishments are his big selling point, and what they need to beat George W. Bush, who served in the Air National Guard while Kerry shooting, and being shot at.
Not to be pedantic, but has anyone on Team Kerry ever heard of Bob Dole? Or George H.W. Bush? Both of those men had heroic service records, like Kerry’s. And they ran against a guy who wasn’t serving in the National Guard, but actually dodged the draft.
Just in case you’re keeping score at home: Over the last 12 years, veterans seeking the White House are 0 for 3.
But it seems uncharitable to dwell on such things tonight. John Kerry enters the hall to the sounds of Bruce Springsteen. He’s loose and relaxed looking; his smile is warm and easy. “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty,” he says with an unselfconscious laugh. The line works on all levels. You’ll be hearing it again.
Kerry then proceeds to deliver a very, very good speech; the kind of speech that will confound Republicans who dismissed him as a stilted, awkward phony. It is the kind of speech that should cause serious concern at Bush HQ.
As a performance, it’s top-notch stuff–easily the best talk Kerry’s given on the campaign trail. He smiles throughout and keeps his Don’t-I-Look-Like-a-President voice under control. One of the mysterious things about Kerry on the stump has always been that he’s very good with small audiences (groups with fewer than about 300) and very bad with larger crowds (and on television). For the first time, he shows that he can handle the big stage.
The biggest improvement in his delivery is that tonight, Kerry looks as though he’s having fun, that he’s happy to be here. It is the same spirit his campaign has had since the night of his massive upset at the Iowa caucuses. It’s not the thrill of victory he’s feeling; it’s the exhilaration of having been shot at and missed.
THE SUBSTANCE of the speech is also quite effective, although it doesn’t hold up under, say, an hour’s worth of scrutiny. For starters, Kerry moves headlong into Iraq and the war on terror. He says that we need a president who “starts by telling the truth to the American people.” All week long Democrats have sounded this note in reference to the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They should be careful.
The Bush administration made a strange calculation when they chose to give heavier weight to the WMD argument during the run-up to the war. It was strange because, of the three primary reasons for deposing Saddam, WMDs were the only one which was potentially falsifiable. By leaning on “Bush lied,” Democrats are exposing themselves in the same way.
Kerry walks a fine line with his foreign policy section. He hits the administration for fighting the Iraq war “on the cheap.” He says he wants to add 40,000 troops. He says that he will protect America from threats which are “real and imminent” and that “any attack will be met with a swift and certain response.”
Addressing the terrorists directly, Kerry says, “You will lose and we will win. The future doesn’t belong to fear; it belongs to freedom.” Each of these lines could have been delivered by President Bush.
Yet Kerry also included enough language to appeal to liberals wanting to believe that he wouldn’t really continue taking Bush’s hard line on the war on terror. After announcing his call for 40,000 new troops, he quickly added “not in Iraq.” That qualifier elicited a massive cheer from the crowd. In a nod to liberal isolationists, Kerry said that he wants to make certain that America “never goes to war because we want to” but only “because we have to.”
There were other sops to the left folded in here and there. “Our purpose now is to reclaim democracy itself,” he said, echoing Howard Dean’s “take back America” mantra. In another olive branch to the angry left, he alluded to John Ashcroft (by title, not by name). It was the first reference I’ve heard to the attorney general all week.
In the low point of the speech, Kerry says, “You don’t value families by kicking kids out of after-school programs and taking cops off our streets, so that Enron can get another tax break.” The irony, of course, being that Enron profited wildly–and quite fraudulently–under Bill Clinton. It was only under Bush’s Justice Department that the crooked company’s executives were exposed and prosecuted.
However there were many more sections designed for conservative consumption. Kerry gave an extended and moving tribute to the importance of our flag. This from the party which gleefully defends flag burning. He included a section on faith meant to assure church goers that he’s one of them.
BUT THE TWO BIGGEST OFFERINGS to conservatives were in things Kerry didn’t say: He did not mention either abortion or gay marriage. At least he didn’t mention them by name.
Kerry’s reference to gay marriage was quite oblique. Toward the end of the speech, he tucked in the following sentence: “Let’s never misuse for political purposes the most precious document in American history, the Constitution of the United States.” Whether or not Republicans understood what he was talking about, the Democrats at the Fleet Center did–they let out a cheer.
Kerry’s defense of abortion was even craftier. In the section of the speech talking about his mother, Kerry said, “she showed me that we can and must finish the march toward full equality for all women in our country.” Not only did he avoid saying either “abortion” or “choice,” he placed the entire matter in his mother’s voice. That’s pretty sophisticated code.
(A brief aside: In one of the creepiest moments of the convention, Kerry’s daughter, Alexandra, defended abortion with the following formulation: “If we want our children to breathe clean air and drink clean water, if we want them to control their own bodies, if we want them to protect the liberties and opportunities that are our birthrights, we must be involved in the struggle.” It’s one thing to defend abortion for yourself, I suppose. Or even for unspecified “other people.” But to claim that we need to defend abortion so that some day, our babies can grown up to abort our grandchildren? That doesn’t seem like a winning message.)
John Kerry did what needed to do tonight. What’s more, he did what many people thought he was incapable of doing.
Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.
