trumptman
09-30-2004, 12:35 PM
Will nails it (http://www.sacbee.com/content/opinion/national/will/story/10912984p-11830418c.html)
It even includes an analogy for Midwinter.
:p
Presidential debates are to real debates as processed cheese is to cheese.
Will contends that Bush already won this debate when he negotiated the topic. Since Kerry has no clear direction on Iraq, in part because of the voters that make up his support being split on it, he loses everytime he opens his mouth about it.
George W. Bush knows that the more Kerry talks about Iraq, the more he, Bush, prospers. This is because anything Kerry says about Iraq contradicts something else he has emphatically said — and irritates either his liberal base or an American majority. So Bush might serve national understanding, and himself, if, early on tonight, he says:
"Everyone in the solar system knows my thinking on Iraq. But no one, probably not even anyone on my opponent's campaign plane, knows his thinking, as of now, 9:17 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. So, I invite him to take my time — all of it — and tell a bewildered nation what he thinks, at least tonight, at least between 9 and 10:30 p.m. Specifically, he says we must 'succeed' in Iraq. What would he call success? What is more important, success or meeting his deadline of removing U.S. forces in four years? What, aside from the allure of his personality, makes him think 'the world' will help?"
Kerry's problem is that he does not have either the ideas or the courage to take the debate where it needs to go — to an uncomfortable confrontation with some comfortable American attitudes. Bush believes, as most Americans always have, in natural rights: He believes a particular kind of civic order — democracy, representation, the rule of law, a large sphere of privacy and individual autonomy — is right for the fulfillment of human nature. But Bush also seems to believe — at least the slapdash nonplanning for the Iraq project suggests this belief — that a natural right implies a natural, meaning a spontaneous and omnipresent, capacity.
Nick
It even includes an analogy for Midwinter.
:p
Presidential debates are to real debates as processed cheese is to cheese.
Will contends that Bush already won this debate when he negotiated the topic. Since Kerry has no clear direction on Iraq, in part because of the voters that make up his support being split on it, he loses everytime he opens his mouth about it.
George W. Bush knows that the more Kerry talks about Iraq, the more he, Bush, prospers. This is because anything Kerry says about Iraq contradicts something else he has emphatically said — and irritates either his liberal base or an American majority. So Bush might serve national understanding, and himself, if, early on tonight, he says:
"Everyone in the solar system knows my thinking on Iraq. But no one, probably not even anyone on my opponent's campaign plane, knows his thinking, as of now, 9:17 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. So, I invite him to take my time — all of it — and tell a bewildered nation what he thinks, at least tonight, at least between 9 and 10:30 p.m. Specifically, he says we must 'succeed' in Iraq. What would he call success? What is more important, success or meeting his deadline of removing U.S. forces in four years? What, aside from the allure of his personality, makes him think 'the world' will help?"
Kerry's problem is that he does not have either the ideas or the courage to take the debate where it needs to go — to an uncomfortable confrontation with some comfortable American attitudes. Bush believes, as most Americans always have, in natural rights: He believes a particular kind of civic order — democracy, representation, the rule of law, a large sphere of privacy and individual autonomy — is right for the fulfillment of human nature. But Bush also seems to believe — at least the slapdash nonplanning for the Iraq project suggests this belief — that a natural right implies a natural, meaning a spontaneous and omnipresent, capacity.
Nick