Lingering memories of August.....

Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I didn't even need to set my VCR to catch John McCain's speech.

A bit late, perhaps, but well worth the wait. Senator McCain is an inspiration to me (even though I disagree with him on campaign finance reform as well as gun control). There's a lot of talk about war heroes lately, but McCain is the real thing. I don't think anyone could have rattled Michael Moore's cage as he did. That alone is worth seeing. John McCain is one of those guys who practices what he preaches, and genuinely believes in forgiving the past. This forgiving nature is one of the things that pisses off the conservatives, but when someone as reasonable and forgiving as McCain does get angry (as he did at Moore), that honest, righteous condemnation is something to behold. It's not as if McCain is a partisan hack taking orders from Bush (remember there was even speculation that he might be Kerry's running mate), but the common sense --and the enough is enough tone -- really got the crowd going:

After years of failed diplomacy and limited military pressure to restrain Saddam Hussein, President Bush made the difficult decision to liberate Iraq.

Those who criticize that decision would have us believe that the choice was between a status quo that was well enough left alone and war. But there was no status quo to be left alone.

The years of keeping Saddam in a box were coming to a close. The international consensus that he be kept isolated and unarmed had eroded to the point that many critics of military action had decided the time had come again to do business with Saddam, despite his near daily attacks on our pilots, and his refusal, until his last day in power, to allow the unrestricted inspection of his arsenal.

Our choice wasn't between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war. It was between war and a graver threat. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Not our political opponents. And certainly -- and certainly not a disingenuous filmmaker who would have us believe...

AUDIENCE (Booing filmmaker Michael Moore who attended the convention):

[The noise went on for so long that McCain was a bit taken aback.]

Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

MCCAIN: Please, please, my friends.

That line was so good, I'll use it again. Certainly not a disingenuous filmmaker who would have us believe, my friends, who would have us believe that Saddam's Iraq was an oasis of peace, when in fact -- when in fact it was a place of indescribable cruelty, torture chambers, mass graves and prisons that destroyed the lives of the small children inside their walls.

Moore was visibly agitated, and I'd have loved to have had a cardiologist present to report his pulse and heart rate. The whole thing reminded me of Robert Welch's devastating remark to Senator McCarthy:
Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
These things happen only occasionally in politics, and are not to be missed.

Kerry is a genuine fool. He had an opportunity to do the same thing to Moore.

If he had, he might have turned things around, and won the confidence of middle America. (He can't say I didn't tell him so!) Instead, Kerry went after elderly Swift Boat veterans, leaving McCain there to speak up for middle America and against Michael Moore. Middle America will remember it when summer is over, when Halloween has passed, as it starts to get cold.....

MORE: Might there be a plan to put McCain on the ticket? Soxblog thinks it's a distinct possibility:

the stakes of this election are huge. If subbing McCain for Cheney will make a huge difference, as it likely will, it’s the proverbial offer we can’t refuse. (Via Glenn Reynolds, who'd prefer Condoleeza Rice.)
I guess we'll find out soon enough about that!

UPDATE (9/03/04): Obviously, McCain never made it onto the ticket. But the WaPo's Richard Cohen thinks Kerry would do well to emulate McCain's style:

This is a moment for Kerry to speak plainly, to embrace all Vietnam veterans and say that any suggestion that they were war criminals does not represent how he feels now and how he felt then -- and if he gave the opposite impression, he's sorry. If it takes an apology -- if it takes saying he was once an angry young man who saw blood spilled in a dubious cause -- then that's what he should say. Otherwise Vietnam and its immediate aftermath will stick to him as has his complicated and too-nuanced position on the Iraq war.

Kerry's inability or refusal to walk his cats back to the origin of his problems -- a wrong vote on Iraq and some incautious words on Vietnam -- has trapped him in a kind of rhetorical molasses. He's always trimming weeds that need to be yanked out by the roots.

Either by happenstance or design, I've been with John McCain for three nights in a row and have watched the magic he works on people. At a dinner one evening, someone asked the secret of his appeal. A colleague and I looked at each other in disbelief. It's his honesty, his willingness to (mostly) say what's on his mind. He just clears his throat and says what has to be said. John Kerry ought to try it. It could make him president.

Good advice, but I don't think Kerry can follow it. That's because in his mind, any apology for his Vietnam era conduct would erase the only semblance of moral authority that he has.

posted by Eric on 09.01.04 at 04:52 PM





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