The Fight for The High Ground
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4467449/
Bush's new ads try an uplifting message, but the subtext is clear: we
should be afraid, very afraid, for our physical safety should he lose
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
March 15 issue - Did you hear the one about John Kerry? Kerry walks
into a bar and the bartender says, "Why the long face?" The joke isn't
so funny for the Kerry campaign. The history of presidential elections
is that the candidate with the sunny, uplifting "vision thing," as
George H.W. Bush put it, usually wins. Richard Nixon, whose narrow
triumph over the joyful Hubert Humphrey in 1968 is the exception that
proves the rule, clunkily called it "the lift of a driving dream."
Ronald Reagan in 1980 beautifully conjured America as a "shining city
on a hill." This was a line from John Winthrop, the founder of the
Massachusetts Bay Colony and Kerry's ancestor. But for both the
Democratic candidate and President Bush, the question remains: Whose
city? Whose hill? Beyond the day-to-day negative skirmishing, the real
battle is for the high ground.
Jonathan Alter
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