Tuesday, August 31, 2004

Bush smears, the Note cheers

Just how disgusting is it that a major news organization would breathlessly report on the "cleverness," the "political poetry," and the "good cop/bad cop" routine of the GOP's smears on Kerry while juxtaposing that with descriptions of the Kerry campaign in yesterday's edition as "wobbling" and asking if they "can take the pressure of being behind" due to a scandal the media promoted and the Bush campaign is complicit in.

From The Note:

    Q. Just how comprehensively clever is the BC04RNC good cop/bad cop plan?

    A. Very.

    In a remark reminiscent of Ronald Reagan saying of Michael Dukakis, "I'm not going to pick on an invalid," 41 told CNN yesterday "I have great confidence in Bob Dole&I don't think he'd be out there just smearing," when asked about the Swift Boat charges about the medals.

    Maybe the touch isn't as deft as Reagan's, but the light cleverness of it is manifest. (Recall this week's Laura Bush Time quotes on the same topic -- like mother-in-law, like daughter-in-law&.)

    There is more political poetry in the fact that the Bushes are able to take advantage of the skills and prestige of their former most bitter intraparty rivals -- John McCain and Bob Dole.

    (If you want a preview of the future, remind yourself of this 1992 quote from the Robbins Field House in Richmond, VA during a presidential debate:

    "My argument with Governor Clinton -- you can call it mud wrestling, but I think it's fair to put in focus is -- I am deeply troubled by someone who demonstrates and organizes demonstration in a foreign land when his country's at war. Probably a lot of kids here disagree with me. But that's what I feel. That's what I feel passionately about. I'm thinking of Ross Perot's running mate sitting in the jail. How would he feel about it? But maybe that's generational. I don't know." -- President George H.W. Bush)
Of course George H.W. Bush lost that election...