Viking
11-07-2004, 03:58 PM
Retrospective: Blame Democratic Values, Character, Candidates, & Message
ROSS MACKENZIE
Richmond Times-Dispatch Nov 7, 2004
Retrospecting the presidential campaign and Tuesday's results, the memory is very sweet . . . .
Early in the primary campaign the Democrats rejected Joe Lieberman - the only centrist Democrat in the fight, the only one with a good chance of winning the presidency - who said he was running to prevent the implosion of the party. Evidently the Democrats still don't get it - if they ever will.
A post-Tuesday head- line read: "Humbled Democrats Wonder What to Do." They're groaning low over the need for an internal debate on what went wrong and what to do now - about terrorism, about values. An AP reporter wrote: "The Democratic Party appeared yesterday to be trying to find God, or at least to find a way to talk about the subject."
John Edwards sought to make the election one between two Americas, one rich and one poor. John Kerry, trying desperately to hide his leftism in an inky cloud, sought to turn the contest from a debate about ideology (liberalism vs. conservatism) into one about competence - who can govern better, who can better prosecute the war. Some of the names now offered to carry the Democratic banner forward are Hillary Clinton (from a Chicago inner suburb), fatuous Al Gore, and Virginia's Governor Mark Warner, who has the same problem with sincerity John Kerry does - seeking to sell his liberalism in an overwhelmingly conservative climate.
If the Democrats need a voice to listen to, they can end their search at one of their own: Zell Miller.
KERRY IS the second Massachusetts liberal in 16 years to be battered by a Bush in a presidential race. The leftist values of Massachusetts and Michael Moore's Hollywood and big-buck Esperanto-speaking anti-Americans clearly are not the values embraced by the U.S. electorate. For all his rhetorical soft-shoe, Kerry embodies the essence of the liberalism that America obviously does not.
So this election came down to a debate about character and values after all - and the character and values represented by John Kerry emphatically lost.
Enter the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Kerry made his Vietnam career the centerpiece of his nominating convention in Boston. The Swiftees said in effect, "Whoa. This guy is bogus. He's not for real. He didn't do in Vietnam what he says he did - far from it. We know because we served with him. Regarding his record, Kerry has embellished, fabricated, and lied."
The POWs chimed in, speaking of the damage Kerry did to them and all Vietnam veterans when he came home and led U.S. peaceniks as a useful tool - and fool - of the Vietnamese Communists. POW Medal of Honor winner Bud Day put it this way in "Stolen Honor" - the made-for-TV video the Kerry campaign managed to keep off the airwaves: "[Kerry] destroyed the good name of all Vietnam veterans. This man committed an act of treason, he lied, he besmirched our name. He did it for his own self-interest. And now he wants us to forget. I can never forget."
As it turned out, a majority Remnant of American voters couldn't forget, either - couldn't forget Kerry's Vietnam-era activities or his subsequent actions and statements and Senate votes.
THE REMNANT - essayist Albert Jay Nock's descriptive phrase in "Isai- ah's Job" for the silent majority that is the heart of the nation. As Nock wrote:
You do not know and will never know who the Remnant are, or where they are, or how many of them there are, or what they are doing or will do. Two things you know, and no more: first, that they exist; second, that they will find you.
In this election the Remnant found George Bush.
Here is, powerfully, one member of the Remnant:
I've been teaching our son about honor. It means knowing the difference between right and wrong and choosing to do what is right. I've been delving into the Kerry record. As the wife of a service-member currently in Iraq I feel more nervous about allowing someone with a "less than honorable" [military discharge and] past, and a questionably honorable present, to lead my husband than I do about him serving in a war zone.
I am neither brainwashed, blind, nor a registered Republican. I do know that honorable people can make mistakes sometimes, but that they also make hard, unpopular decisions when it is warranted. Any parent knows this. There have been campaign issues that have momentarily swayed my focus, but the years and years of facts available give me no reason to vote for Kerry, to ask my children to respect him, or God forbid trust my husband's life to him.
Despite Nock's "you will never know who the Remnant are," there is one of the Remnant's rock-solid members. And they voted for Bush in droves.
HONOR. Values. Character. God.
Want to know, at bottom, what carried Bush to victory? Zell Miller has tried to explain it. Here's another effort.
Partly it's the abiding belief on the part of many voters - the Remnant? - in traditional American values: honor, loyalty, trust, virtue, knowing right from wrong. The importance of character based on those values. The primacy of the family, which is of course based on the marriage of a woman and a man - and is impossible without that union. The existence of a higher power: God, the Big Fella, whatever - something beyond mere reason and the self.
And partly it's their fear the culture is tracking in the wrong direction - perhaps even has reached the chasm's edge. They draw their fears from today's horrific tugs at the young. They fear the drift - the gadarene rush - aided by Hollywood, television, and rock "artists"; they fear a corresponding collapse of education. They fear the enervation of once-strong religious denominations, now effete. They fear the mindless materialism of Seventh Avenue and Madison Avenue; they fear the relentlessly pushy special interests of K Street and beyond. Finally, they fear the extent to which the Democratic Party seems either ignorant of this cultural swill, or incapable of resisting its advance.
So the Democrats can debate all they wish - and all the while miss the point.
They can blame the candidate, the campaign, and Karl Rove. They can blame the Establishment Media, which are more part of the problem (viz. Dan Rather and The New York Times) than part of the solution. They can deplore the religious right and dismiss what's happening on the religious left. They can disparage the American voters for possessing neither the brains nor the perception to see the Alfred E. Neumanism and the screaming incompetence of George Bush.
But they will do so - and thereby fail to see the fault of their message - at their own continuing peril. For the Remnant, not so dumb after all, will continue to see through to the heart of the problem - the values and character championed by the Democratic Party, as embodied in the candidates it lately has chosen to offer for President of the United States.
http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArti cle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031778985568&path=%21editorials%21oped&s=1045855935007
ROSS MACKENZIE
Richmond Times-Dispatch Nov 7, 2004
Retrospecting the presidential campaign and Tuesday's results, the memory is very sweet . . . .
Early in the primary campaign the Democrats rejected Joe Lieberman - the only centrist Democrat in the fight, the only one with a good chance of winning the presidency - who said he was running to prevent the implosion of the party. Evidently the Democrats still don't get it - if they ever will.
A post-Tuesday head- line read: "Humbled Democrats Wonder What to Do." They're groaning low over the need for an internal debate on what went wrong and what to do now - about terrorism, about values. An AP reporter wrote: "The Democratic Party appeared yesterday to be trying to find God, or at least to find a way to talk about the subject."
John Edwards sought to make the election one between two Americas, one rich and one poor. John Kerry, trying desperately to hide his leftism in an inky cloud, sought to turn the contest from a debate about ideology (liberalism vs. conservatism) into one about competence - who can govern better, who can better prosecute the war. Some of the names now offered to carry the Democratic banner forward are Hillary Clinton (from a Chicago inner suburb), fatuous Al Gore, and Virginia's Governor Mark Warner, who has the same problem with sincerity John Kerry does - seeking to sell his liberalism in an overwhelmingly conservative climate.
If the Democrats need a voice to listen to, they can end their search at one of their own: Zell Miller.
KERRY IS the second Massachusetts liberal in 16 years to be battered by a Bush in a presidential race. The leftist values of Massachusetts and Michael Moore's Hollywood and big-buck Esperanto-speaking anti-Americans clearly are not the values embraced by the U.S. electorate. For all his rhetorical soft-shoe, Kerry embodies the essence of the liberalism that America obviously does not.
So this election came down to a debate about character and values after all - and the character and values represented by John Kerry emphatically lost.
Enter the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
Kerry made his Vietnam career the centerpiece of his nominating convention in Boston. The Swiftees said in effect, "Whoa. This guy is bogus. He's not for real. He didn't do in Vietnam what he says he did - far from it. We know because we served with him. Regarding his record, Kerry has embellished, fabricated, and lied."
The POWs chimed in, speaking of the damage Kerry did to them and all Vietnam veterans when he came home and led U.S. peaceniks as a useful tool - and fool - of the Vietnamese Communists. POW Medal of Honor winner Bud Day put it this way in "Stolen Honor" - the made-for-TV video the Kerry campaign managed to keep off the airwaves: "[Kerry] destroyed the good name of all Vietnam veterans. This man committed an act of treason, he lied, he besmirched our name. He did it for his own self-interest. And now he wants us to forget. I can never forget."
As it turned out, a majority Remnant of American voters couldn't forget, either - couldn't forget Kerry's Vietnam-era activities or his subsequent actions and statements and Senate votes.
THE REMNANT - essayist Albert Jay Nock's descriptive phrase in "Isai- ah's Job" for the silent majority that is the heart of the nation. As Nock wrote:
You do not know and will never know who the Remnant are, or where they are, or how many of them there are, or what they are doing or will do. Two things you know, and no more: first, that they exist; second, that they will find you.
In this election the Remnant found George Bush.
Here is, powerfully, one member of the Remnant:
I've been teaching our son about honor. It means knowing the difference between right and wrong and choosing to do what is right. I've been delving into the Kerry record. As the wife of a service-member currently in Iraq I feel more nervous about allowing someone with a "less than honorable" [military discharge and] past, and a questionably honorable present, to lead my husband than I do about him serving in a war zone.
I am neither brainwashed, blind, nor a registered Republican. I do know that honorable people can make mistakes sometimes, but that they also make hard, unpopular decisions when it is warranted. Any parent knows this. There have been campaign issues that have momentarily swayed my focus, but the years and years of facts available give me no reason to vote for Kerry, to ask my children to respect him, or God forbid trust my husband's life to him.
Despite Nock's "you will never know who the Remnant are," there is one of the Remnant's rock-solid members. And they voted for Bush in droves.
HONOR. Values. Character. God.
Want to know, at bottom, what carried Bush to victory? Zell Miller has tried to explain it. Here's another effort.
Partly it's the abiding belief on the part of many voters - the Remnant? - in traditional American values: honor, loyalty, trust, virtue, knowing right from wrong. The importance of character based on those values. The primacy of the family, which is of course based on the marriage of a woman and a man - and is impossible without that union. The existence of a higher power: God, the Big Fella, whatever - something beyond mere reason and the self.
And partly it's their fear the culture is tracking in the wrong direction - perhaps even has reached the chasm's edge. They draw their fears from today's horrific tugs at the young. They fear the drift - the gadarene rush - aided by Hollywood, television, and rock "artists"; they fear a corresponding collapse of education. They fear the enervation of once-strong religious denominations, now effete. They fear the mindless materialism of Seventh Avenue and Madison Avenue; they fear the relentlessly pushy special interests of K Street and beyond. Finally, they fear the extent to which the Democratic Party seems either ignorant of this cultural swill, or incapable of resisting its advance.
So the Democrats can debate all they wish - and all the while miss the point.
They can blame the candidate, the campaign, and Karl Rove. They can blame the Establishment Media, which are more part of the problem (viz. Dan Rather and The New York Times) than part of the solution. They can deplore the religious right and dismiss what's happening on the religious left. They can disparage the American voters for possessing neither the brains nor the perception to see the Alfred E. Neumanism and the screaming incompetence of George Bush.
But they will do so - and thereby fail to see the fault of their message - at their own continuing peril. For the Remnant, not so dumb after all, will continue to see through to the heart of the problem - the values and character championed by the Democratic Party, as embodied in the candidates it lately has chosen to offer for President of the United States.
http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArti cle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031778985568&path=%21editorials%21oped&s=1045855935007