Susan Lenfestey: Blow whistle on our jujitsu president

[Nicholas_J]

September 17, 2004 LENFESTEY0917
In jujitsu, the trick is to move quickly to leverage your opponent's strength to your advantage. In this way a lightweight can attack a person of substance and flip him.

We're watching the biggest jujitsu flip ever seen in American politics. President Bush, a slacker, a draft evader, a failure in business, a man so devoid of world curiosity that he rarely left America's shores (even checked "no overseas service" on his Air National Guard application) and a president who has misled the American people about everything from the invasion of Iraq to the cost of Medicare, has managed to flip John Kerry onto his back by turning Kerry's strengths -- his valor in Vietnam, his intellect, his expanded worldview and, yes, his nuanced thinking -- against him. In jujitsu that's how it's meant to be. In politics it's cynical and destructive -- and shamefully effective.

Like all sports fans when their man is down, Kerry's supporters are now cat-calling and quarterbacking from the sidelines.

Take the Democratic Convention. Americans, so it's said, don't like negative campaigns, and by golly this convention didn't go there. It was an attack-free, on-time event (except for Al Sharpton, bless him) and proved that the sometimes undisciplined Dems have grown up enough to run the Pentagon, not just a protest.

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/4985360.html

[Stew225]

1. Domo Arigato! eom

[xchrom]

2. i'll cut kerry slack -- as long as i'm not helping

into second place.