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Jewish World Review Feb. 27, 2004 / 5 Adar, 5764
James Lileks
Introducing the AWOLs: Angry White Outraged Libs
Al Gore has become a full-blown AWOL; Howard Dean, with his head full of hornets, may have lost the race because of his AWOL temperament. John Kerry is sour and condescending, and as angry as his room-temperature personality permits him to be. The only one who isn't AWOL is John Edwards, who realizes people don't like to vote for lemon-suckers.
Anger doesn't sell in elections. Ross Perot got a pass because he was more peppery than peeved, more annoyed than infuriated. You got the sense that if this thing didn't work out, well, he'd head back home and resume spending his kazillion dollars on home security systems designed to confound GOP spy satellites. Bob Dole seemed angry, because Bob Dole always seemed to be imitating Dan Aykroyd imitating Richard Nixon imitating Bob Dole.
Cheer works best. Ronald Reagan was a happy guy. Bill Clinton, for all his conspicuous wrestling with his mediocre demons, was a happy guy. George Bush 41 was cheerful, in that late-middle-aged way guys have when the investments are doing nicely and the plumbing still works, but that sort of distracted cheer played poorly in a recession.
The current Bush is a reasonably happy guy no small achievement when you go to bed worrying about small nukes smuggled in container cargos and wake to find the Washington Post obsessing over 30-year-old dental records.
So anger doesn't work. How about lies? Oh, that works much better. Example? Here's what John Kerry wrote to President Bush the other day:
"Over the last week, you and your campaign have initiated a widespread attack on my service in Vietnam, my decision to speak out to end that war, and my commitment to the defense of this nation. As you well know, Vietnam was a very difficult and painful period in our nation's history, and the struggle for our veterans continues. So it has been hard to believe that you would choose to reopen these wounds for your personal political gain. But, that is what you have chosen to do.
"I will not sit back and allow my patriotism to be challenged."
Reopen the wounds? Has he taken leave of his senses? It's been Kerry who keeps prying the wound apart the man couldn't place an order at McDonald's without bringing up his service in Vietnam. It was Terry McAuliffe, Democratic National Committee chairman, who accused the president of criminal desertion. If George W. Bush hasn't spent a great deal of time reopening old wounds, it's because he's dealing with new ones.
Two years into the war against Islamist fascism, Kerry wants no, demands that we relive Vietnam, but only the version he knows: the one where his service was honorable, his dissension noble, and the totalitarian nightmare that befell South Vietnam regrettable but irrelevant.
If he'd been around in 1942, he'd be complaining that our conduct in the Spanish-American War should influence our strategy toward Japanese imperialism.
Kerry's blatheration appeals to people who live in a parallel universe where Bush personally called for the Dixie Chicks to be stoned to death, and John Ashcroft put Tom Daschle under house arrest for insisting that the administration get French approval to invade Iraq. The people who think that Michael Moore sleeps in a different house every night to avoid deportation to Gitmo.
It's also aimed at the general electorate whose knowledge of world events comes from scanning the headlines in the newspaper box. A pre-emptive strike, if you will. Sen. Kerry couldn't accuse the president of questioning his patriotism if it weren't true, could he?
Sure he could. Anger makes people do curious things. But eventually someone's going to notice who makes the AWOLs apoplectic. It's not the United Nations. It's not European officials on Saddam Hussein's payroll. It's not Saddam. It's not al-Qaida that drives them mad.
It's Republicans. Fellow Americans! Why, that's rather unpatriotic of them, eh?
Relax! Just kidding. I apologize. Will Kerry?
02/20/04: Sifting the headlines of election year 1992
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