“When I hear Bush say, `You’re either with us or against us,’ it reminds me of the Germans. It conjures up memories of Nazi slogans on the walls, Der Feind Hort mit (The enemy is listening).’ My experiences under Nazi and Soviet rule have sensitized me.” Wealthy supporter of Left-wing causes George Soros.
“The administration works closely with a network of rapid-response digital Brown Shirts who work to pressure reporters and their editors for undermining support for our troops…” former Vice President Al Gore.
Americans are typically a congenitally open, friendly, and hopeful people, and they find mean-spiritedness distasteful and off-putting. Americans prefer happy endings over smug, sophisticated cynicism. Former President Ronald Reagan played to these virtues and easily defeated an incumbent pessimistic president, who looked to future and only saw decline. When President Bill Clinton was mired in the muck surrounding his prevarications under oath, Clinton managed to shoulder the mantle of victim-hood and make his accusers appear vindictive. Vindictiveness appeared to many as even tinier than Clinton’s smallness. This comparison worked to Clinton’s benefit and made it politically impossible to convict Clinton in the Senate.
The Republicans have recently carefully crafted a campaign commercial that plays on the American aversion to excessive partisanship by splicing together vitriolic anti-Bush ads and speeches by Democratic and Left-wing leaders. The commercial can be found at www.georgebush.com.
The campaign ad begins with a title scene: “The Faces of John Kerry’s Democratic Party. The Coalition of the Wild Eyed.” The title scene is followed by the wildest eyed partisan of all, the person with a soul of a vice-president, Al Gore. To a background of hearty cheers, Gore shouts: “How dare they drag the good name of the United States of America through the mud of Saddam’s Hussein’s torture prison.”
The MoveOn organization is a limitless reservoir of anti-Bush hatred and exaggeration. The Bush ad inserts a clip submitted to a MoveOn campaign ad contest. It shows a red stylized image of Adolf Hitler over the words “What were war crimes in 1945…” followed by a similarly stylized image of George Bush, with his hand up vaguely reminiscent of a Nazi salute, and the words, “…is Foreign policy in 2003.” All the time in the background, there is the drum beat of voices shouting “Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!”
Next the Bush ad sequences through facial close-ups of speakers addressing anti-Bush crowds worked up to a fever pitch:
- Former Democratic presidential candidate Governor Howard Dean barking, “I want my country back.”
- Film maker Michael Moore and chief propagandist for the Left asserting, “We live in a time where we have a man sending us to war for fictitious reasons.”
- Normally, well-mannered Representative Dick Gephardt screaming, “The president is a miserable failure.”
Dipping once again into the infinite well of MoveOn’s anti-Bush venom, the Bush ad splices in another clip submitted to MoveOn. It shows a photographs of Adolf Hitler and George Bush, with the words “God told me to strike at Al Qaeda and I struck at them … and then he instructed me to tike at Saddam, which I did.”
The Bush ad picks up pace as it switches once again to Gore shouting to a frenzied crowd, “He betrayed this country. He played on our fear.”
Finally, we see John Kerry, angrily telling us that “Today George Bush will lay off your camel, tax your shovel, kick your ass, and tell you there is no promised land.”
The ad suddenly switches to soothing piano music and we see a flattering image of George Bush. The ad ends by seizing the moral high ground with the words, “This is not a time for pessimism and rage. It is a time for optimism, steady leadership, and progress.”
This commercial will be studied for some time because it cleverly turns the anti-Bush ads on their heads. The MoveOn ads and the Democratic rhetoric try to portray Bush as an evil and even Hitlerian character. By exhibiting this extreme position to a moderate general audience rather than to true-believers on the Left, the Bush ad makes Kerry supporters appear radical and pushes Kerry’s perceived position further to the Left. Even many who disagree with Bush do not find him evil or malicious. The Bush ad reveals some Kerry supporters to be mean-spirited, angry partisans, characters distinctively offensive to most Americans. That message is obvious.
The incredibly ingenious part of the Bush ad is that the Democratic and Left wing denunciations of Bush have the same cadence and pace as the MoveOn clips of Hitler. The Bush ads reverse the association of Nazis with Bush, making Kerry supporters appear with the same heated oratory, the same wild crowds moved by angry rhetoric, and the same bitter resentment of the Nazis. In a campaign ad jujitsu reverse move, this Bush ad succeeds in using MoveOn ads and the angry rhetoric of the Left against them.
The Bush camp must now be careful. The point has been made. Playing that ad too long could eventually backfire. Republicans do not need to be bringing images of Hitler into people’s living rooms. Now that the stage has been set, all the Bush team needs to do is follow Al Gore around with a film crew.
Chirac’s Lack of Class
Sunday, June 13th, 2004It is not clear whether having class or being a gentleman is an inherited trait or a learned behavior ingrained through years of instruction and practice. However, it is clear that some people have class and some do not and politics is not a place gentleman with class tend to aggregate. Yet, the former Senator Paul Wellstone from Minnesota was a gentleman who could argue passionately without malice. As his son said at Wellstones public memorial after his untimely death just before his potential re-election in October 2002, “it was never about Paul Wellstone. It was about the ideal, it was about the dream that he had.”
Unfortunately, Wellstone was unable to pass along the class and integrity with which he conducted his own life to some of his supporters. His public memorial degenerated from the celebration of a life well-lived to ugly and inappropriate partisanship marked with the jeering of political opponents who had come to pay their respects. The distasteful transformation of the service to a political rally offended many who watched the event on television. It was probably the reason that former Senator Walter Mondale, who assumed the Democratic nomination for Wellstones Senate seat, lost several days later to Republican Norm Coleman.
The recent public state funeral and remembrance of former President Ronald Reagan, another politician and gentleman, fortunately passed with little public rancor. Sure there are always small people with small attitudes like Ted Rall who said of Ronald Reagan, “I’m sure he’s turning crispy brown right about now.” Some Reagan haters populate the DemocraticUnderground.com, griping about the coverage of the Reagan funeral. But these voices were few and largely ignored. The public wanted to come together to honor the former president. Shrill voices echoed unnoticed, serving only to illustrate the anger and hatred of those who cannot wait until a person is buried before launching into vicious criticism.
On the other side of the aisle, Republicans generally refrained from taking overt political advantage of sympathy for Reagan. Save for some remarks that bordered on the political by Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, Republicans conducted themselves properly. The eulogies at the funeral struck just the right tone: remembrance without excessive effusiveness.
All this generally splendid behavior by responsible people made the small and sour actions of French President Jacques Chirac that much more conspicuous. Many foreign leaders were in Georgia for the G8 summit this last week. Thus, for many leaders, attending Ronald Reagans funeral in Washington only required extending the US trip by one day and adding couple hours in the air. Many leaders did attend, including German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Other leaders came from as far away as Uganda and the Czech Republic. Even though French Foreign Minister Michel Barnier and former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing did attend, Chirac quick get away can only be interpreted as a deliberate insult.
Despite being hobbled by minor strokes, the Iron Lady, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, not only took the long flight across the Atlantic against the orders of her doctors, she took the trouble to tape a eulogy she knew she would not be able to deliver. She then accompanied the Presidents casket and family on a flight back to the burial in Simi Valley, California.
Now Thatcher was an exceptional case. She was both a contemporary and friend of Reagan. Nonetheless, her actions make Chiracs refusal to attend the funeral appear so much more mean spirited. To borrow words from playwright Harold Pinter, Chirac “youre no bloody gentleman.”
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