Boston Patriot Games
GLASS, ANDREW J.
Election 2004 Boston Patriot Games By Andrew J. Glass Boston Tom Oliphant, the veteran Boston Globe columnist, calls his daughter a "genius" for having coined the populist "two Americas"...
...Furthermore, Bush's record undermines his ability to argue, as Disraeli did 160 years ago, that conservatives can and should equitably represent the interests of rich and poor alike...
...The strategy called for anointing Kerry as someone who could be counted on to safeguard the nation from terrorism as well as—if not better than—Bush, who is expected to make his handling of security matters a centerpiece of his re-election campaign...
...His Democratic challengers could therefore boldly assert that they will end poverty in America, without offering up a detailed program...
...It was a target of opportunity: The event, scheduled for the previous night, had been rained out...
...In Summers' view, the question of legitimacy, of "respecting your government," is primary...
...In his warm-up act for Presidential nominee John Forbes Kerry, Edwards steered as far away as possible from the go-get'em tack Dick Cheney took for George W. Bush in Philadelphia four years ago...
...None of that really seemed to matter as the last of the red, white and blue balloons floated down from the FleetCenter's rafters...
...After alluding to the way things are in his view, Edwards elicited waves of deafening cheers from the faithful present by intoning, in his Southern cadence, "It doesn't have to be that way...
...Both men knew the activists in the hall, with few exceptions, had made a collective, unforced decision to go along with their nonpartisan we're-all-the-same line, including the notion that Republicans would have a prominent role in a Kerry administration...
...When it comes to such core concerns as healthcare, schools and wellpaidjobs, they declared, every American deserves "a shot" at the best...
...But, unintended symbolism aside, everyone could agree that, like the rest of the Democratic week here, it sure sounded patriotic...
...During his prime time remarks to the party's national convention here, he referred to "America" or "Americans" fully 56 times, while not once using the words "Democrat" or "Republican...
...Every speaker in prime time quoted either from the U.S...
...By contrast, in these post-Marxist times the Republicans raised that issue in moving the Bush tax cuts through Congress...
...No one in the Victorian House of Commons ever accused Disraeli of stoking the fires of class warfare...
...Ditto the demagoguery of AI Sharpton, who demanded reparations for slavery...
...That shut out the path-breaking keynote speech of Barack Obama, the Illinois State Senator apparently headed to the U. S. Senate, who said the inner-city poor could not count on government to solve all their problems...
...Both Kerry and Edwards simply suggested that once the wealthy again kick in their fair share of tax revenues, the rest of us will be happy middle-class campers...
...Senate...
...Election 2004 Boston Patriot Games By Andrew J. Glass Boston Tom Oliphant, the veteran Boston Globe columnist, calls his daughter a "genius" for having coined the populist "two Americas" refrain as a speechwriter for Democratic Vice Presidential nominee John Edwards...
...In a sense, though, two Americas were created at Boston's FleetCenter, thanks partly to the broadcast networks deeming the major parties' conclaves infomercials unworthy of more than three hours of airtime each...
...Anyone who watched Kerry, Edwards and former President Bill Clinton on network television was exposed to none of this...
...The networks' inattention allowed the Democratic high command to appeal, without apparent contradiction, to disparate sets of people...
...But he spoke long enough (some 46 minutes) to ensure that network commentators would not have too much time to chew over what he said or had failed to say...
...Only 4 per cent of those polled approve of the Bush tax cuts, and a mere 5 per cent oppose recognizing gay marriages, legalized by the courts here in Massachusetts and nowhere else...
...In his acceptance speech, Kerry stepped on applause lines to make sure he finished before local stations pulled the switch...
...Amid the blaring of horns and the firing of cannons, the music ended with a stirring rendition of "God Save the Tsar"— recycled as the post-Communist Russian national anthem, until President Vladimir V Putin came along and replaced it...
...After Kerry smartly saluted in "reporting for duty" at the FleetCenter, he went on to use the word "strong" a dozen times in his acceptance speech—three more times than his running mate...
...Instead, he sought to raise the social conscience of voters...
...They will no doubt do so again while trying to renew his lease on the White House...
...Was Tchaikovsky's coda an unwitting symbol of the end to U.S...
...He agreed "that there are enormous debates to be had about whether the [education] voucher system is or is not a good idea, whether the Iraq War was or was not prudent, or whether and how prescription drugs should be added to the Medicare program...
...Disraeli similarly sought to raise the social conscience of the ruling class before he became the leader of Britain's Conservative Party in Queen Victoria's reign...
...Standing on the stage under a nearly full moon, they watched the fireworks while patting each other on the back...
...He thus adroitly stole a leaf from the Republicans' 2000 playbook, when Bush effectively ran as a "compassionate" leader with conservative and patriotic values...
...The delegates went along in the widespread belief—which first surfaced in the Iowa caucuses back in January, to the political ruin of Howard Dean—that an appeal to "values" and to moderation, targeted at undecided voters in battleground states, stood the best chance of defeating Bush in November...
...In Boston he portrayed himself as a "strong" leader, tightly wrapped in patriotic values...
...Some issues were not addressed on the floor here, and perhaps could not be without seemingly jeopardizing the quest for votes in an election the polls say will be as close as the last one...
...And yet, for all their appeals to flag and country, neither the Kerry nor the Bush campaigns appear inclined to tackle this subject...
...We will have to wait until November for an answer...
...On the contrary, by spending most of their time and money attacking each other's competency to lead, the candidates seem ready to further delegitimize government as an institution...
...The orchestra, seated behind them, struck up the 1812 Overture...
...We can build one America...
...For Kerry, four months of what was persistently billed as "heroic" service 35 years ago in Vietnam with his "band of brothers" trumped more than 20 years of service as a widely perceived "loner" in the U.S...
...But there are some important differences between now and then...
...Edwards' refrain, "I saw up close what having two Americas does to our country," harkened back to Benjamin Disraeli's novel Sybil, or the Two Nations, described by the author-statesman as "the rich and the poor...
...Nevertheless, serious questions of principle and policy were discussed quietly off camera—for instance, at a post-keynote lunch Obama had for a few reporters, and at a series of Harvard seminars "meant to coincide" with the convention, as the university's president, Lawrence H. Summers, put it...
...In the off-prime hours they directed their message to the fired-up Bush haters who venerate Michael Moore...
...In 1960, another JFK from Massachusetts who was the Democratic Presidential candidate tried in vain to keep Robert Donovan, my one-time Washington bureau chief at the New York Herald Tribune, from recounting his heroic service in World War II as a PT109 commander, which left him with a lifetime of back pain and dependent on powerful drugs...
...But their hearts continued to beat to a different drummer...
...But all that, he concluded, pales in importance against the fact that "there are no examples of countries that have advanced their national purposes...
...Kerry made his initial mark on the national stage in his mid-20s testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about alleged U. S. "war criminals" committing atrocities in Vietnam...
...Members of the military, including a dozen retired high-ranking generals and admirals, were marched to the FleetCenter podium in much the same not too subtle way the Republicans deployed high-profile African Americans during their 2000 convention...
...exceptionalism that a President Kerry promises...
...A New York TimesCBS News survey of a quarter of the 4,322 delegates, taken on the eve of their unified convention, found that nine of 10 oppose the Iraq War, while threefourths support abortion on demand...
...The prime time performers uniformly took the high road, hardly mentioning Bush and then only to appeal to him to follow the high road too...
...Andrew J. Glass, a longtime NL contributor, is a veteran Washington observer...
...without being well and competently governed...
...Summers, who succeeded Robert E. Rubin as Clinton's treasury secretary, is not known for his rhetorical eloquence, but was at his best when he held at one session that you "can't run the government like a struggling business," deferring maintenance and allowing huge debts to accumulate...
...Kerry and Edwards departed behind a phalanx of police motorcycles for an unscheduled appearance at a free outdoor concert given by the Boston Pops...
...Constitution or the Declaration of Independence to buttress the Democrats' overarching patriotic themes...
...Tchaikovsky wrote the piece in 1880, just before Disraeli died, to mark the 70th anniversary of Napoleon's retreat from Russian soil...
Vol. 87 • July 2004 • No. 4
