Boston
TERRY EDMONDS WAS RIGHT. The Kerry campaign’s 54-year-old chief speechwriter told reporters yesterday not to expect John Kerry’s acceptance speech to contain a lot of detailed policy proposals. And that’s not what they got.
Instead, Kerry spoke in the abstract about “trust” and “credibility” and how he would “restore” those things to the White House. As Jeffrey Bell pointed out recently in THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Kerry is turning the Iraq war and David Kay’s failure to find WMD into a character issue for President Bush. The Massachusetts senator’s speech last night was the fullest expression of this new Kerry campaign strategy.
A few examples:
“I know what we have to do in Iraq. We need a President who has the credibility to bring our allies to our side and share the burden, reduce the cost to American taxpayers, and reduce the risk to American soldiers.”
“As president, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House.”
What’s interesting is that if you replace the word “credibility” with “dignity,” you have pretty much George W. Bush’s message during the 2000 presidential campaign. Remember? Bush spoke incessantly in 2000 about his pledge to “restore honor and dignity” to the White House.
This rhetorical tipping of the hat was not an isolated incident. For example, Kerry repeated and repeated the phrase “help is on the way”–a line that was used also at the GOP convention in 2000.
And here is Kerry on terrorism:
That last sentence sound familiar to you? It should. Here is President Bush’s address to the Joint Session of Congress on September 20, 2001:
“The course of this conflict is not known, yet its outcome is certain. Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.”
When Kerry talked about nonproliferation, he again echoed Bush.
This is Kerry last night: “We need to lead a global effort against nuclear proliferation–to keep the most dangerous weapons in the world out of the most dangerous hands in the world.”
This is Bush in January 2002: “The United States of America will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.”
That was from the “Axis of Evil” speech much derided by Democrats. But when held side by side with the quote from Kerry, there’s not much difference, is there?
And it wasn’t the national security issue alone in which Kerry took his cues from Bush.
Look at how Kerry talked about faith last night. “Faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday,” he said. He quoted scripture: “We believe in the family value expressed in one of the oldest Commandments: ‘Honor thy father and thy mother.'” Then at one point Kerry quoted Abraham Lincoln. “I don’t want to claim that God is on our side,” he said. “As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God’s side.” Bush has mentioned the same quote before.
What’s going on here? Two things. Polls show Bush enjoys an advantage on national security issues. The Kerry campaign’s strategy to narrow that gap is to–well, sound like the president. The same goes with faith. Some Democrats have argued cogently in recent months that their party suffers from a religion deficit. In order to combat this deficit, the Kerry campaign has turned to American politics’ most successful and prominent deployer of religious language: Bush.
It’s too soon to tell whether the Kerry campaign’s strategy of rhetorical copycat will work. But let’s say it does. And if that’s the case, and if Kerry emerges victorious come November, he won’t be able to take full credit for his victory. The rest will have to go to George W. Bush.
Matthew Continetti is a reporter at The Weekly Standard.
