It should be noted that, after a long, lifeless recitation of an illusory domestic policy, George W. Bush's acceptance speech at the Republican Convention came alive when the President gleefully skewered John Kerry's foolish claim to be the candidate of "conservative values." It was the pivotal moment of the speech. From there, Bush went on to his favorite topic—his decisiveness in the war against terrorism, the need to stand firm, the need to be plainspoken. For those who hadn't fallen asleep during the domestic policy trudge, this was a very effective speech—and it followed a very effective, if sometimes sleazy convention.
The message of the week was: You know where Bush stands. You can't be sure about Kerry. But that headline also came with a misleading subhead: Bush is fighting the war against terrorism, and Kerry wouldn't. It was a theme that was pounded from the very start of the convention, and it depended on a sly conflation— the notion that the war in Iraq and the war against the 9/11 terrorists were one and the same. We heard far more about Bush in the World Trade Center rubble than we did about the U.S. in the Iraqi quagmire. And when Iraq was raised, it was done in a deceptive and simpleminded way. Even John McCain, who gave the most serious foreign policy speech of the week, presented a false choice: "Our choice
wasn't between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war. It was between war and a graver threat."
http://www.time.com/time/election2004/columnist/klein/article/0,18471,692822,00.html?cnn=yes
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