What's Wrong With John Kerry?
Is it the hair? The lack of charisma? Or do we just wish he was more angry
and ruthless?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist Friday, September 24, 2004
He is not Bill Clinton.
Just gotta say it again, right off, because it is, quite possibly, still
the most difficult fact for most moderates and Demos to accept, even now:
Kerry is not Clinton. Kerry is not JFK. Kerry is not quite even Al Gore.
We have to accept it. Let's go from there.
It bears repeating because, as tens of millions (billions, even) across
the planet realize, Bush is so obviously ripe, so obviously dripping with
glaring misprision, so deeply rife with flaw and bumble and moronism, and
his policies are so full of gaping holes and his ethics are so full of
hostile lies and his wars are so lacking in WMDs and "nukuler" plants and
any sort of justification, well, you'd think any decent opponent worth his
sound bite would have a veritable cakewalk stomping Dubya's little cowboy
brain into powdery AWOL Texas cow-pie smithereens.
But so far, it ain't happening. The BushCo spin machine is lethal and
malicious and formidable indeed, for one thing. The Repubs are
phenomenally well funded and absolutely heartless, and it cannot be
understated how effective your campaign can be when you have zero ethics
about attacking your opponent and zero moral compass and zero
accountability and when you have Karl Rove for an underhanded heat-seeking
attack-dog missile of bile and innuendo and slander and smear.
But for two, it has to be acknowledged: Kerry ain't exactly a firestorm of
magnetism and inspiration. He is, unfortunately, more than a little staid,
pedestrian, beige. On Letterman, on "The Daily Show," on Leno, he was
finely honed and well groomed and grinning and likable enough, a true
die-hard patrician politician almost completely devoid of modern-day
TV-ready sparkle and zing. He's just so ... solid. And book learned. And
experienced. And deeply intelligent. American translation: yawn.
But is this really why many moderates just can't get themselves to like
Kerry all that much, even if they agree with his policies and his stellar
environmental record and his Vietnam heroism and even if they know Bush
really, really has to go? Because he's just too sober and conventional? Or
is it the hair? The WASP entitlement? The booming, deadening oratory
style?
Or is it the lack of a winking charm, of a flirtatious Clintonesque gleam
in the eye that says he's onto this whole bulls-- game and knows how to
play it better than anyone and can flaunt the well-known fact that any
8-year-old can outmaneuver George W. Bush in a contest of intellect and
acumen and simple algebra? Yea, verily.
Simply put, Kerry is disliked because he is just not enjoyably slick
enough. Or cleverly cold blooded enough. Or deftly manipulative enough.
And in this day and age, if you ain't massively and strategically
calculating on a hundred different levels (or if you don't, like Bush,
have a snarling team of demon dogs to orchestrate it all for you), you're
hamburger.
This, then, is the bizarre conundrum. Where Bush is all bumbling
mispronunciations and massive stacks of warmongering lies and foreign
policy like an international cancer, Kerry is simply "annoying."
Where Bush has let more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers die in Iraq with nary a
shrug and has allowed tens of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians --
women and children included -- to be killed over his bogus and lie-strewn
war and when he openly refuses to admit his appalling mistakes and holds
an absolutely unwavering and imbecilic brick-headed conviction that war is
good and God is on our side and money and stick size decide all conflicts,
Kerry is ... what, again? Oh, right, a little bit "flip-floppy."
Normally, Kerry would be an impressive enough contender, especially
against Dubya. Kerry can, after all, speak in complete, polysyllabic
sentences. He can read above a high school level. He can speak
extemporaneously, without a TelePrompter. He is not loathed the world over
and is not widely considered the most dangerous and reckless and hostile
leader of any free-world country on the planet.
Kerry may not be Mr. Charisma, but he is clear eyed, and lucid, and
genuinely seems to care about making the country slightly more respectable
among our furious allies again. How very horrible.
But, then again, this ain't no normal election. The GOP, they are dialed
in like never before. They are on point. They know how to violently
exploit the NASCAR dad's fears of gays, of women, of "furriners." They
know how to terrify gullible soccer moms with images of swarthy
fundamentalists who want to eat their precious babies.
Call it the Rove effect. It's all in the spin, baby. It's all in the
presentation. It has little to do with your own atrocities and lies and
contemptible actions, nothing to do with your inept military service or
environmental records, nothing to do with letting Osama run free while
bombing other nonthreatening countries at will. It has everything to do
with image, with personal vendetta, with "character."
Same as it ever was? Maybe. But this time, there's a decidedly malicious
GOP-bred methodology at work, one that seems to be operating at a level
normally reserved for dictatorships and military coups and brutal
autocratic regimes.
After all, any administration that would shamelessly hijack the 9/11
tragedy for its own hateful, isolationist agenda is capable of just about
anything. And if they get four more carte blanche years to really gut the
world and go after the heart of this nation, all bets are off.
Which is exactly why so many of us desperately want Kerry to be cutthroat
and ferocious and deadly. We want him to be savage and quick witted and
able to effortlessly tick off the shopping list of astounding BushCo
atrocities on one hand while rabbit-punching Karl Rove's big puffy face
with the other, all while knocking out a clever pun related to Dubya
sitting on Cheney's lap and burping softly, like a stupefied baby.
Instead, we get a Kerry who appears to want to take the Gore-like,
policy-wonk, issues-first approach. Kerry, like the Dems overall, hasn't
seemed nearly heartless and merciless enough for this fight. Kerry wants
to have a respectable duel with pistols, whereas Bush wants to kick you in
the genitals while your back is turned and then run away giggling and
snorting and jump into Rove's open arms for a big homoerotic hug.
The good news is, as this bizarre election races toward us, Kerry is
indeed stepping up his attacks, getting his focus, nailing Bush on a wide
array of issues like never before. And we can only pray that in the
upcoming debates that Bush tried to shun like bright sunlight, Kerry will
make Dubya stumble and mutter and bonk his baffled head into the podium
and wail for Jesus to save his shriveled, spoon-fed soul.
But I suppose this is the saddest part of all. That is, how cheerless and
heartbreaking is it when you are essentially forced to wish that your
candidate would be more ruthless, more cutthroat, more ferocious. When
deep down you long for a little dignity among your leaders, some
humanitarian deftness, some way to salvage a shred of spirit and hope
amongst the political carnage.
Not this time. After all, sometimes, when playing badminton with the
devil, you gotta screw the birdies and lob a couple grenades.
Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on
SF Gate, unless it appears on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which it never does.
Subscribe to this column at sfgate.com/newsletters.
--
If you can only do one, *single* thing to serve your country this year - vote. If you can do *more* than one thing, convince your friends, family and co-workers to vote. Everything else is secondary."
- James "Gun Boat" Jones
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