What am I missing?
by ChrisSeptember 27th, 2004 9:17 pm
From tomorrow’s Washington Post:
Majorities say Bush is a strong leader, has taken a clear stand on issues, has an appealing personality and will make the country safer. A plurality gives Bush the edge on who is honest and trustworthy and who “shares your values,” while the two receive roughly equal marks on who understands “the problems of people like you.”
Needless to say Bush has a pretty healthy lead in this week’s Washington Post/ABC News poll, 51 to 45 percent among likely voters. Once again, others can deconstruct the polling methodology and tell you whether or not these results are meaningful. My question is this. What strange universe is this where a paragraph like the one I quoted above is a reasonable assessment of public sentiment? I’m not saying that it’s not, I really don’t know. I just know that I don’t get it. Do you?
I’m beginning to get that same old feeling I had during the run up to the Iraq war where everything I hear in the media and everything I see in that same media in terms of polling makes me believe that public opinion is skidding dangerously towards irrationality.
Back to the Milbank article:
Appearing in the Rose Garden yesterday with Iraq’s interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, Bush said Kerry’s statements about Iraq “can embolden an enemy.” After Kerry criticized Allawi’s speech to Congress, Vice President Cheney tore into the Democratic nominee, calling him “destructive” to the effort in Iraq and the struggle against terrorism.
[snip]
Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said terrorists “are going to throw everything they can between now and the election to try and elect Kerry.” On Fox News, Hatch said Democrats are “consistently saying things that I think undermine our young men and women who are serving over there.”
Does a sitting President of the United States of America who says that his opponent’s campaign is emboldening the enemy really “share your values”? Does he? When a senior United States senator, serving as that President’s surrogate says that al Qaeda is “going to throw everything they can between now and the election to try and elect Kerry” is that really an accurate reflection of the values of the American people? Unless it’s Ann Coulter channeling McCarthy I sure as hell hope not. That’s nothing but batshit crazy.
Calling incompetence incompetent, which is what Kerry has been doing of late, doesn’t harm America. Incompetent leadership and bad policy harm America. Pointing out that this administration failed to plan for war and its aftermath, failed to listen to its top military leaders prior to said war, and chooses to live in a fairy tale where progress is on the march, is just stating the obvious. The truth will never hurt America. A failure of a president with batshit crazy policies and fairy tale beliefs will.
So what is going on here? Where do these perceptions of a “strong leader” who shares “your values” come from? Is it the half assed everyman act? Who is that blind? I’ll probably say it a million times between now and November 2nd but I just don’t get it. I think we have an excellent candidate, many of whose values I do personally share, who I think is a clearly superior choice in every way. I don’t get how this president isn’t down 40 points let alone up by a bunch.
To end this ramble of a post let me say this. I’m not down on John Kerry’s chances one bit and I’m not trying to get anybody else down (not that anybody is reading this anyway). The more weirdness I see the harder I want to work to get him elected and to do the right thing for our country, even if my personal contribution is tiny and mostly worthless in the grand scheme of things.
