NEW DELHI, 1 August 2004 — “I’m John Kerry. And I’m reporting,” he said with a smart salute and perhaps a click of the heels, “for duty.” As opening lines go, this one had class even in the full stops.
The stage was set, literally. The Democrats had gathered in Boston to nominate John Kerry as their candidate to challenge George Bush for the most powerful job in the world. No Democrat could have united the party as closely as Bush has managed to, and the delegates were tense with both the excitement of hope and the dread of an anti-climax. But those nine opening words pulled the ultimate trick in political rhetoric.
They defined both the proponent and the opponent. Here was Kerry, the war hero, reporting for duty that could lead to death despite a privileged background, and there was Bush, the war coward, who used his wealth to stick out the Vietnam days in the comfort of his friends and family.
The evasion of war did not make much difference in 2000 when Bush won, because he was seeking an office that had been occupied by another man who did the same, Bill Clinton.
But when you have sent some two hundred thousand Americans to a punishing battlefield increasingly reminiscent of Vietnam, when nearly a thousand Americans have died and some 6,000 wounded, then the mother who has lost a 20-year-old in Fallujah has a right to know what you did when your country called you at the age of 20.
A combat veteran had in two sentences and a gesture made Bush look merely combative. And he did it without mentioning George Bush’s name. That was the class part of the act.
A speech is not the best way to discover a politician. Political speeches come and go, and in worst-case situations they go on forever. They are intrinsically self-serving. They have to be. It is a poor speechwriter who cannot serve sufficient nourishment to feed the master’s needs as well as ego. There is safety in intellectual boredom. It is too risky to suggest an unusual idea that might become counterproductive.
The argument, if any, must suggest competence, not imagination. A politician’s arithmetic is unambiguous. Long before you can add any vote, you must take care to ensure that you have not subtracted any. Flourish and drama, modulation and inflexion — arts that an elocution teacher or an acting guru would applaud -— are confined to reinforcing known positions. A new thought that might illuminate minds? Leave for after the elections.
Ironically, Kerry entered the 2004 race with the same advantage that Bush had in 2000: He was underestimated. Bush was dismissed as mentally challenged in 2000. To be fair, he provided some evidence for the accusation.
His principal enemy during that campaign seemed to be the English language, with which he conducted a running battle. Remember all those laughs we had as he hatcheted a verb and eloped with a noun?
And remember who had the last laugh of the 2000 US elections? We’ve been crying for four years because we had the first laugh and Bush had the last one.
Kerry came to Boston either unknown to most Americans or, worse, known as a long face wrapped around a double tongue. This was the image that Republicans had dumped him with once it was certain that he would challenge Bush. They positioned him as unreliable long before he had the chance to define himself.
This mask was carefully designed to weaken his case when he dismissed Bush as either ludicrously naive or mendacious.
Kerry was trapped in his record over two decades as a senator. A practical politician in the loose, often bipartisan American system of voting has no option except to nuance a complication or finesse a complexity.
Kerry had to look at every side to survive. Bush, in contrast, is a simplifier, a black-and-white-man who can insist that black is white because black is also the absence of color. Such simplicity appeals to Mr. Average Joe, who thinks it must be right precisely because it is simple. However, it would be an error to call Bush the Simplifier, Bush the Simpleton. Bush is too crafty to be a simpleton.
I suspect that most of Kerry’s supporters would forgive him every mistake, including a prevarication or two, if he could defeat Bush. Leading the country by misleading the voter is hardly unknown. Bush campaigned in 2000 as the “compassionate conservative.” He then turned out to be the most right-wing president in memory.
Where did the compassion go after he was elected? To Halliburton, of course. And the two percent at the top who got tax cuts. The rest of America was given the bill for such compassion.
Kerry delivered the line that much of America and the rest of the world wanted to hear: “I will be a commander in chief who never misled us into a war.” Amen. A little cynicism is permitted, I hope, to us plebs outside the golden circle of American power. The point, however, is that we want that commitment to be honored. That will keep not only Americans safe, but the rest of us too.
It is a commonplace that American elections are won or lost over the economy. But if that were completely true then this election would have been over before it had begun, with Bush preparing for four more successful years of misleading. He has built enough residual good will after 9/11 by just being there, spreading his arms, cowboy style, ordering a worldwide hunt of terrorists and invading Afghanistan.
It is Iraq that could cost Bush the White House. For Iraq is not just the story of a battlefield, it is a metaphor for a range of values that Americans, as much as any other electorate in a democracy, hold dear. Kerry dealt with Iraq splendidly. It is easy to blow off your own leg in that nest of minefields. He mentioned Iraq minimally, but referred to it constantly.
He did not preach to the converted; he tried to persuade those in doubt. “Mislead” is the polite way of saying “lies”. When you accuse a president of misleading a nation, you are challenging his sense of values. It was no accident that Kerry used the word “values” nearly 30 times, according to those who had the time and patience to count. And since Kerry is comfortable with English, he was able to deliver a few powerful lines as well: He would, for instance, go to war when “we had to”, and not when “we want to”.
The big boys will not admit it, but the maverick filmmaker Michael Moore has had an impact on this campaign. That is why Kerry made it a point to take an angular swipe at the Saudis.
For me the most important part of the speech came toward the end. 9/11 and Iraq have created the rhetoric of “two Gods”, yours and mine, Christian and Islamic. We are in a time when respectable newspapers like the Sunday Telegraph of Britain can hire columnists who rage against the “vile heart” and “black face” of Islam. Kerry, describing his own beliefs to a nation that values belief, said: “I don’t wear my faith on my sleeve. But faith has given me values of hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday. I don’t want to claim that God is only on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God’s side.”
The loudest cheer of the evening welcomed this conviction. Amen. And this time my heart may be in my mouth, but my tongue is not in my cheek.
