Kerry’s speech

[avram]

Did anyone else expect the “Band of Brothers” to burst into song at some point in that intro?

I wouldn’t say it was a great speech. Certainly nothing on par with either Clinton’s or Obama’s. Kerry just isn’t that gifted a speaker, but then, very few people are. It was a good speech. It hit lots of the right notes, it carried a lot of jabs at Bush, and it had a positive, optimistic tone. Even his attacks on Bush were phrased as positives:

I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war. I will have a Vice President who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a Secretary of Defense who will listen to the best advice of our military leaders. And I will appoint an Attorney General who actually upholds the Constitution of the United States.

And, of course, this blast from the past:

As President, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House.

I guess that’s what David Brooks meant when he said it sounded like a speech a Republican would give. That’ll probably be the GOPster talking point for the next while, that the Democrats are trying to position themselves as light-weight Republicans. And it might backfire on them — the general populace doesn’t trust the Bush administration like it did two years ago.

Not that it’s true. Patriotism, support for the military, none of these are things the GOP has a monopoly on. And I certainly don’t expect to hear Republicans talk about the asthma rate in Harlem, or executives who rob pension funds.

And the White House’s plan to shove Kerry off the front pages with a July Surprise doesn’t seem to have worked either.

Comments

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

As President, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House.

Yep, sounded familiar to me too.

I liked the speech, overall, despite my sneers.

[avram]

Oh, that line was brilliant. It reminds voters that Bush had campaigned on trustworthiness and betrayed that trust.

a little asanine, baroque example of adolescent intellect

[jcb.livejournal.com]

the thing about the dirty tricks the bush administration play with these press releases is that they're only to be expected in an atmosphere of intellectual capitalism - the "marketplace of ideas" is the hip neocon slang to which i refer. the whole attitude of that culture is undemocratic; that's what leads to things like florida 2000 (and 2002) and the goddamned national security advisor of the united states stating publicly that the spanish people should hold off on their democratic process until popular fervor over recent terrorist incidents has died down. but believing that you ought to maintain yourself in power and doing everything that your society deems acceptable to that end is only to be expected of people who consider themselves to be motivated to defend that society; it's to be expected of the commander in chief. the most awful thing about george bush is that he's tolerated by his own constituents - and by his own party.