The Question all the Candidates Must Face-Can you make us feel safe?

[papau]

http://www.time.com/time/election2004/columnist/klein/article/0,18471,578921,00.html

The Question all the Candidates Must Face
Can you make us feel safe? Not every Democrat has a convincing answer
By JOE KLEINSunday, Jan. 18, 2004

<snip>He (Clark) not only has a stump speech but he's got the body language down too. During a town-hall meeting in New Hampshire last week, Clark was confronted by a man waving a thick sheaf of insurance forms—the paperwork required in treating his wife's breast cancer. His question was, "Isn't this ridiculous?" but Clark didn't respond immediately. He first turned to the wife and asked how she was feeling now. Fine, she said. Then he asked the husband a series of thoughtful questions about the nature of his health insurance. This sort of aerobic empathy has been standard, if subtle, political tradecraft ever since Bill Clinton—but the general has assimilated the playbook at warp speed. Clark's new stump speech has a quality not often found in political oratory: it is charming. He is able, somehow, to shed his brass and re-create his lonely, impoverished childhood in Arkansas: his patriotic attempt to master chemistry and build a backyard rocket after the Russians launched Sputnik; his decision, at age 5, to attend the Baptist church in Little Rock because the stained-glass windows reminded him of the Methodist church he'd attended in Chicago before his father died; his struggle to raise a family on a military salary; the car he totally rebuilt because he couldn't afford a new one. There is a careful structure to the speech. The anecdotes connect to four core values—patriotism, faith, family and inclusiveness—that Clark then turns against the Republicans. After the Baptist-church story, for example, he talks about the Republican Party's misuse of religion: "They act like they have a direct pipeline to the Lord God Almighty ... but every religion I've ever studied agrees that people who have advantages in life have an obligation to help those who don't have advantages." The emotional heart of the speech, though, is Clark's dismay over the Bush Administration's misuse of "the precious lives of our men and women in uniform" in Iraq—and that is where he will often run into problems. At times, his passion spills over into an almost Deanian imprudence. At a Texas fund raiser last week, Clark thundered, "We're dealing with the most closed, imperialistic, nastiest Administration in living memory. They even put Richard Nixon to shame. They are a threat to what this nation stands for." <snip>



Howard Dean was early and clear against the war, which provided the initial propulsion for his candidacy, but he's had no second act. When asked about his lack of foreign and military expertise, he has said that all the candidates "talk to the same experts"—as if talking to experts were enough. But Dean has a far more serious problem, his Ruth Bedinger problem: his intemperance. It is difficult to imagine this huffy, impertinent man in a delicate diplomatic negotiation; it is difficult to imagine him showing the resolute but gentle public touch that George W. Bush displayed after Sept. 11. That leaves—in addition to Clark—Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman as the only plausible foreign policy candidates in the Democratic field.


Both Kerry and Lieberman are solid men; both have emphasized their foreign policy expertise—and both have serious problems with the Democratic electorate. Lieberman's problem is the more serious: he is an inveterate hawk with a reliably neoconservative—if not quite unilateral—view of America's role in the world. Most Democrats disagree with that. Kerry's problem is political. He voted for the war resolution, but it seemed a tactical vote, taken so that Republicans couldn't accuse him of mortal dovishness (Kerry voted against the first Gulf War). The Senator has criticized Bush for his conduct of the war almost since the day the Iraq resolution passed, and he has voted against the $87 billion needed to demonstrate America's resolve in Iraq. But Kerry has never disavowed his vote to authorize the war. It is difficult, to this day,


To know whether or not he thinks the invasion was a good idea, and in this tangled confusion lies an uncertainty that diminishes his presidential stature. Clearly, none of the Democrats present the perfect, strong-willed, adult foreign policy package. But the President doesn't seem all that daunting either—he's a slave to his TelePrompTer, rolling out empty nostrums, unable to sustain a serious discussion of his own policies. In the end, Bush and a Democrat will stand on the same stage. The central question will be a simple one: Have George W. Bush's policies made us safer in the world? The question for Democrats now is equally simple: Which of these guys can stand on that stage and make the case against Bush? Everything else is window dressing.

[DrBB]

1. Klein preaching the Gospel of Niceness?

I mostly agree with this piece. But this bit--
The emotional heart of the speech, though, is Clark's dismay over the Bush Administration's misuse of "the precious lives of our men and women in uniform" in Iraq—and that is where he will often run into problems. At times, his passion spills over into an almost Deanian imprudence. At a Texas fund raiser last week, Clark thundered, "We're dealing with the most closed, imperialistic, nastiest Administration in living memory. They even put Richard Nixon to shame. They are a threat to what this nation stands for."
--I think Clark's got the credibility to express a little outrage about the misuse of our military. And like Dean's comment about not being safer after the capture of Saddam, this comment about the secretiveness and imperial nastiness of this adminstration is well founded.

I have no use for this Kleinian approach that gets all nervous and worried when candidates start saying tough, true things about Bush. He notes that Lieberman is a severely compromised candidate, but he's calling for a Lieberman strategy. Heard JL on that radio debate talking all about how we shouldn't be harsh to the other guys just because of people like Tom Delay. His whole attitude is like going to the GOP and asking if they wouldn't mind letting him be president for a while, pleeeeeease?

Call Dean harsh, but nobody will vote for a candidate who looks like he's on his knees all the time.