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WHAT KERRY DIDN'T SAY
By Tim Siggia
August 06, 2004
"Reporting for duty."
With those words, Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) began his nomination acceptance speech at the Fleet Center in Boston on Thursday, July 29, the final night of the 2004 Democratic Convention. It was the first of many allusions to the candidate's military service that would be made throughout his speech, all to the tumultuous applause of the assembled delegates, who, of course, would have applauded wildly no matter what he said. What is interesting here is that while Kerry made much mention of his three years as a naval officer, he said virtually nothing at all about the 19 years he has spent as a United States Senator. And perhaps with good reason.
Had he done so, he would have revealed a record that belies every claim Kerry made this night as a champion of defense, of the working class, and yes, of ethics and responsibility in government. Candidate Kerry says he will strengthen the military, but Senator Kerry's voting record has been consistently anti-military ever since he first took office in 1985. He has voted against every nearly measure for strengthening the military, including those on new armament and pay raises for military personnel. He also says he will never misguide us into war nor overextend our troops, yet for eight years he supported the policies of a president who did all of that. Under Bill Clinton's watch, U.S. forces were slashed in numbers and pitifully overextended, sent into combat in places where there was neither national interest nor any discernible threat to the United States. These actions took place with no consultation with either the United Nations nor our own Congress, but purely on the whim of the commander-in-chief. Where was the outrage from Sen. Kerry then?
Candidate Kerry proclaimed that if elected his cabinet will contain a vice president who doesn't meet in secret with polluters, a defense secretary who listens to his military commanders, and an attorney general who keeps his oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States -- the implication being, of course, that Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General Ashcroft have failed in these respective regards. Yet for eight years Sen. Kerry supported a president who lied under oath, obstructed justice, abused his office, sold our national security to a hostile government, stole government property, and diminished and disgraced the presidency -- and then voted for that president's acquittal when he was impeached.
"Help Is On The Way."
Isn't it amazing that the Democrats are so lacking in imagination that they cannot even come up with their own campaign slogans, but must co-opt the Republicans even on so mundane a matter? Under the Bush administration, a flagging economy has been turned around and a strong recovery is underway. But according to the Democrats, everybody's miserable, and America needs their "help". This would be done, says Kerry, by a combination of a tax cut for the middle class (does this sound familiar?) and a tax hike on the rich. Kerry was more specific earlier in his campaign about this, saying then that he would keep the Bush tax cuts in place for those earning under $200,000 a year, and restore the levels of taxation for those earning $200,000 or more to those imposed by President Clinton. Kerry also alluded to the prosperity and balanced budgets of the Clinton years, failing to mention, of course, that it was a Republican Congress, not the president, who balanced the budgets then, and that Clinton did not create a good economy but merely rode one. But if Kerry is so put off by all the misery he supposedly sees, he has had 19 years in the Senate to at least try to do something about it. What significant legislation to that effect has he authored?
Under a Kerry administration, the candidate declares, America would no longer be dependent on Saudi Arabia for oil. That Kerry even brings this up is outright laughable. The obvious way to decrease our dependence on foreign oil is to produce more of our own, and President Bush had a plan for accomplishing just that -- with no significant threat to the environment. It was the Democrats in the House and Senate who stood in the way of that plan, thus keeping us at the mercy of OPEC -- and John Kerry, with the most liberal voting record in the Senate, was among those legislators who blocked that initiative. Now he decries the situation he and his own party created, and says he's going to solve it, without so much as a word with regard to how he will accomplish this. Are the voters really supposed to believe this?
One point frequently brought up by television commentators is that Americans historically are not inclined to change presidents during a time of war, though CBS's Dan Rather noted that Americans did just that in 1968, during the height of the Vietnam War. What he failed to mention of course, is that they had no choice: Lyndon Johnson had already announced that he would not seek another term, and America would have had a new president no matter who was elected. But if tradition holds true this year, then John Kerry just may have already seen his finest hour, delivering a powerful speech to a sympathetic audience. The better discerning voters get to truly know John Kerry, the less inclined they will be to vote for him.
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