queerbychoice (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
queerbychoice) wrote2004-07-29 11:23 pm
queerbychoice) wrote2004-07-29 11:23 pm
Kerry's Acceptance Speech
I don't often turn on my television, and there are many good reasons for that - including the fact that more than half the channels my television receives are in Spanish, and the only way I can get any channel numbered less than 14 to come in at all is to fiddle with the knob for fifteen minutes and then either stand by the TV holding the knob turned to an awkward angle, or sometimes manage to use tape to force the knob to remain at an awkward angle. Even then I can't reliably get any of these channels to come in; it's only that I intermittently get lucky with a random one or two of them. Certainly I could have bought a better television if it had mattered to me, but television has never exactly been high on my priorities list, and I wouldn't even own a television at all if my parents hadn't given me this one for free.
However, I turned on the television tonight to watch John Kerry's speech. It's the only speech I watched during the whole convention - possibly the only speech I could watch, since I gather that most or possibly all of the others were shown only on cable channels rather than on any of the few channels my television receives. I hadn't actually planned on watching it; I normally prefer to read all my news online, and to read politicians' speeches written down instead of hearing them. But reading speech transcripts is only useful what you want to know is what the candidate actually said; you have to hear the speech delivered if what you want to know is what effect the speech had on the audience. And anyway, there's only so many LiveJournal entries I can read about how eagerly you people are all awaiting the speech before I eventually develop an unexpected whim that causes me to turn the television on and try to find a channel carrying the speech.
And I found one, too. I found it on channel 13, and I managed to tape the channel knob in the awkward position of 12 and 3/4 that caused channel 13 to actually come in relatively non-staticky. This was important, because I was busy making sweet-potato bread in my breadmaker and had no intention of sitting in front of the TV holding the channel knob in place if the TV refused to cooperate. (And my TV will now remain taped at channel 12 and 3/4 for the next two months.)
Superficial impressions first: Kerry is extremely good-looking. If the election were a beauty contest he'd unquestionably have my vote. (And that's despite the fact that unlike so many other people, I consider Bush pretty good-looking too.) Kerry has a much happier-looking, less creepy-looking and less stupid-looking smile than Bush's. Kerry also has much more effeminate hair (which won't necessarily work in his favor with most voters, but it does with me - he always looks like he spent hours carefully choosing the exact degree of curl and wave in every hair on his head).
I think his voice is slightly less than ideal though - it's a little flat, a little nasal, a little thin. It doesn't boom commandingly, nor vary its tone a lot to seem more interesting. Not booming commandingly is okay if you're trying to present more of a friendly cuddly image of yourself, but not varying one's tone is pretty much always bad. Still, it wasn't a major handicap - I only really noticed it at the beginning of his speech, when he hadn't yet found his rhythm.
Now for the content. First of all, I was very bored by the meaningless blabber at the beginning about where he was born and how much he loves his mommy and daddy and how he once got grounded just like everybody in the audience so you're supposed to relate to him and want to vote for him because anybody who once got grounded just like you did surely has a lot in common with you. I was somewhat tempted to just turn the TV off right then because the beginning of his speech was so ridiculously cliche and meaningless. If there are other people who did turn off their TVs right then, that would be a bad thing.
Then he moved on to how much he loves his wife and his kids, which was nearly as meaningless except that since so many people seem to be attacking and insulting his wife I decided I was glad he didn't just decide to placate them by pretending she doesn't exist.
After that he definitely got better. Overall, it couldn't have been too bad a speech since I managed to spend more of it not hating him than I spent hating him. And I think his best line - although it didn't appeal to me personally - was the line, "I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side." I think that's the kind of line that most Americans, unlike me, really go for and can be seriously persuaded by. That and the parts about how Americans came together on 9/11 and Bush blew it were truly brilliant speechwriting work.
But the lines where I hated him most were these:
I would like to be offered a choice in this election - a choice on the issue of American foreign policy. The Democrats appear to be asking me to believe that Kerry represents a real choice for no other reason than that he actually fought in a war himself and therefore I'm supposed to just trust that this will prevent him from ever sending anyone else to war without "good" reason. But everything John Kerry keeps saying about what he considers to be "good" reason leaves me distinctly unconfident.
However, I turned on the television tonight to watch John Kerry's speech. It's the only speech I watched during the whole convention - possibly the only speech I could watch, since I gather that most or possibly all of the others were shown only on cable channels rather than on any of the few channels my television receives. I hadn't actually planned on watching it; I normally prefer to read all my news online, and to read politicians' speeches written down instead of hearing them. But reading speech transcripts is only useful what you want to know is what the candidate actually said; you have to hear the speech delivered if what you want to know is what effect the speech had on the audience. And anyway, there's only so many LiveJournal entries I can read about how eagerly you people are all awaiting the speech before I eventually develop an unexpected whim that causes me to turn the television on and try to find a channel carrying the speech.
And I found one, too. I found it on channel 13, and I managed to tape the channel knob in the awkward position of 12 and 3/4 that caused channel 13 to actually come in relatively non-staticky. This was important, because I was busy making sweet-potato bread in my breadmaker and had no intention of sitting in front of the TV holding the channel knob in place if the TV refused to cooperate. (And my TV will now remain taped at channel 12 and 3/4 for the next two months.)
Superficial impressions first: Kerry is extremely good-looking. If the election were a beauty contest he'd unquestionably have my vote. (And that's despite the fact that unlike so many other people, I consider Bush pretty good-looking too.) Kerry has a much happier-looking, less creepy-looking and less stupid-looking smile than Bush's. Kerry also has much more effeminate hair (which won't necessarily work in his favor with most voters, but it does with me - he always looks like he spent hours carefully choosing the exact degree of curl and wave in every hair on his head).
I think his voice is slightly less than ideal though - it's a little flat, a little nasal, a little thin. It doesn't boom commandingly, nor vary its tone a lot to seem more interesting. Not booming commandingly is okay if you're trying to present more of a friendly cuddly image of yourself, but not varying one's tone is pretty much always bad. Still, it wasn't a major handicap - I only really noticed it at the beginning of his speech, when he hadn't yet found his rhythm.
Now for the content. First of all, I was very bored by the meaningless blabber at the beginning about where he was born and how much he loves his mommy and daddy and how he once got grounded just like everybody in the audience so you're supposed to relate to him and want to vote for him because anybody who once got grounded just like you did surely has a lot in common with you. I was somewhat tempted to just turn the TV off right then because the beginning of his speech was so ridiculously cliche and meaningless. If there are other people who did turn off their TVs right then, that would be a bad thing.
Then he moved on to how much he loves his wife and his kids, which was nearly as meaningless except that since so many people seem to be attacking and insulting his wife I decided I was glad he didn't just decide to placate them by pretending she doesn't exist.
After that he definitely got better. Overall, it couldn't have been too bad a speech since I managed to spend more of it not hating him than I spent hating him. And I think his best line - although it didn't appeal to me personally - was the line, "I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side." I think that's the kind of line that most Americans, unlike me, really go for and can be seriously persuaded by. That and the parts about how Americans came together on 9/11 and Bush blew it were truly brilliant speechwriting work.
But the lines where I hated him most were these:
"Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security. And I will build a stronger American military. We will add 40,000 active duty troops, not in Iraq, but to strengthen American forces that are now overstretched, overextended, and under pressure."What does that mean, to "never give any international institution a veto over our national security"? I'll tell you what that means: it means that he supports disregarding the United Nations and attacking countries unilaterally. (He also said way back in March, though not referring specifically to Iraq, "People will know I'm tough and I'm prepared to do what is necessary to defend the United States of America, and that includes the unilateral deployment of troops if necessary.") So I guess Kerry doesn't even actually stand for preventing thousands of Iraqis being killed and maimed without the simple comfort of knowing that their suffering and murder was legally approved by the United Nations. What the hell does he stand for then? Health care reform? I do grant you that if health care reform were the primary issue of concern to me - which if I were motivated by purely selfish reasons it would be, since being laid off means that I now have to either buy m own health insurance or go without any (I'm probably going to be buying a limited, catastrophic-only coverage plan within the next couple of days) - then my vote would be solidly with Kerry. But frankly, people being blown up in Iraq are a bigger issue to me than lack of domestic health care, because usually if American citizens are actually on the verge of death and have no money at all left to pay for it, there are special health care services for very poor people that will take over their care. Lack of health care is more of a problem for more middle-class people who actually do have some money and would therefore be forced to spend their entire savings on health care before any of the services for very poor people would ever kick in. So to me, U.S. military policy is by far the primary issue of concern in this election - and just what the hell is John Kerry going to do about it? Just ask him - he says himself that he's going to continue disregarding the U.N. and declaring war unilaterally, and he's going to add 40,000 active duty troops to the military. Just where the hell is he going to get 40,000 new active duty troops to add to the military? If there were 40,000 reserve troops just lying around easily available to be called up, don't you think Bush would have already called them up? The only way I can see that Kerry could possibly come up with 40,000 new active duty troops who aren't themselves already "overstretched, overextended, and under pressure" and would therefore be of any use in making the military any less "overstretched, overextended, and under pressure" than it already is would be a draft.
I would like to be offered a choice in this election - a choice on the issue of American foreign policy. The Democrats appear to be asking me to believe that Kerry represents a real choice for no other reason than that he actually fought in a war himself and therefore I'm supposed to just trust that this will prevent him from ever sending anyone else to war without "good" reason. But everything John Kerry keeps saying about what he considers to be "good" reason leaves me distinctly unconfident.
no subject
no subject
My mom, sadly, listens to Rush Limbaugh et. al., and one of the canards floating around conservative talk radio these days is that liberals want the United Nations to run U.S. foreign politics and this is exactly why John Kerry is so dangerous because he will allow those foreigners to make our country's decisions and this is just awful and un-American. This is a statement that, according to pollsters, concerns Americans in the middle and left as well.
Now, the plain fact is that the U.N. has no ability to dictate U.S. foreign policy at all -- witness Kosovo (NATO-approved, but not U.N. approved) and Iraq. In fact, the U.N. historically and recently has not done well at dictating any country's foreign or internal policy: we have Israel going right ahead and building that wall, and Zimbabwe merrily crushing human rights, and Sudan disintegrating into chaos again -- you know, this is pretty depressing, so I'll stop thinking of examples. The U.N. can, of course, suggest, and when the U.N. speaks in one voice, it can make a moral statement, or send troops, and it certainly has a political role. But saying that the U.N. is running anyone's foreign policy at the moment...well.
In any case, John Kerry's statement was meant to calm down people who believe that the Democrats would (or could) hand this country over to U.N. rule. The main problem with this statement is that one very good reason to be against the Iraq invasion is that the U.S. did not enjoy U.N. support, and a number of U.S. citizens -- including people in the center -- believe this too.
So my concern is that while I understand why he said it, I'm not sure that it was as politically wise as his speechwriters thought it was; it might have been better to leave out that sentence and announce that "Any attack will meet with a swift and certain response. I will work with global leaders, not against them, so that the world speaks with one voice for peace."
That way, you combine "tough" "will defend country" and "will not follow the antics of our current president and drag down world opinion thus creating trade and security issues" and dodge the entire U.N. question, while including that friendly word "peace." What might have been _really_ politically astute would have been to smile and borrow one of Reagan's relatively meaningless but beautifully delivered lines about America being a country of peace, yadda yadda -- you have a nice little zing at the Republicans while noting that you're the Reagan type who will bomb things when necessary.
But Kerry's handlers went for bland. I think their chief goal is to keep Kerry relatively quiet and let Dubya sink his own ship.
And what _is_ with the Teresa Heinz Kerry hatred thing? Is it too difficult for us to remember yet again that she's not the one running for president? Do people honestly think that anyone is voting either for or against Dubya because Laura Bush has made such an impact one way or another?
Geesh.
no subject
You have my sympathy. Also my empathy, since my dad listens to him.
"But Kerry's handlers went for bland. I think their chief goal is to keep Kerry relatively quiet and let Dubya sink his own ship."
Exactly - that's the really big problem with the whole campaign. Everybody's plenty worked up about hating Bush, but virtually nobody is feeling any great love for Kerry - and instead of working to win over real love, the Kerry campaign just seems to be striving to maintain the status quo of an extremely close race by keeping Kerry's public image as undifferentiated as possible and counting on the voters to be motivated to bother leaving their houses and going to the polls solely from their hatred of Bush, whether or not they actually feel any affection for Bush's proposed replacement.
"And what _is_ with the Teresa Heinz Kerry hatred thing? Is it too difficult for us to remember yet again that she's not the one running for president? Do people honestly think that anyone is voting either for or against Dubya because Laura Bush has made such an impact one way or another?"
I think there's a fundamental difference between wives of Republicans and wives of Democrats. Wives of Republicans are always, by their very nature, utterly invisible and utterly forgettable. The most visible one we've had in my lifetime was Nancy Reagan, and she was only visible to me because I was an elementary school student and she was the face that appeared on all the "Just say No!" pamphlets teachers kept handing us.
Wives of Democrats, however, as every Republican knows, are always by their very nature secretly running the country behind their husbands' backs and require constant daily attacks to try to shove them back into their place in the kitchen. Really, when you think about it, even though Republicans disapprove more than Democrats do of women having any power, Republicans seem to have immensely more faith than Democrats in the superior intelligence of women over men, since Republicans always have complete confidence in the ability of the wives to easily overcome the "minor" obstacle of not actually having been elected president whereas their husbands have been - just as though this mere detail of official job titles weren't any meaningful impediment at all to taking over all the power in the White House.
no subject
I'd say that Betty Ford (in my lifetime, although my main memories of the Ford Administration involve watching Sesame Street) was the direct opposite of invisible and forgettable -- mostly because I sense she really didn't want to be in the White House at all, and wasn't particularly worried about upsetting people, and then, of course, she decided to go public with her breast cancer. I'm not sure we can use her as an example of Republican first ladies, though.
My feeling, though, is that both Barbara Bush and Laura Bush have chosen to take quieter, more traditional first lady roles in response to Nancy Reagan, who was _very_ visible and pretty unpopular, especially in Reagan's first term. I remember people who adored Reagan casting constant invective against his wife. This ranged from the probably truthful but not overly important note that she was stuck-up, and the more serious accusations that she wasted money, spent obscene sums on clothes, china, and so on, didn't give a damn about the majority of Americans, addressed world leaders inappropriately, offended world leaders (there was some big stink when she met Queen Elizabeth II which I have now completely forgotten) was trying to run the country, and was trying to get the country ruled by astrologers.
Reagan got elected anyway. As did Clinton -- and Hillary in 96 could be best described as "controversial." Bush senior, however, was defeated, even as his wife enjoyed something like an 80% popularity ratings and wrote fun stuff about dogs. And why? Because people are voting for the _candidate_, not his wife. Outside of owning a business together, when was the last time your partner ran your job? Gave you advice, certainly, and listened to you rant, and agreed that you had to work with very annoying people, but from this to running your job for you is a very big difference, and I assume most Americans are astute enough to know this.
What I find most irritating is the media's assumption that we are too dumb to know the difference between Laura Bush and Dubya, or between Kerry and Teresa Kerry. I assume Teresa Kerry will be talking to her husband about world matters, as will a lot of other people, and I assume, that, like most couples, they'll agree on a lot of things and disagree on a lot of things -- this is pretty much the way relationships work, and I doubt that entering the White House changes that basic dynamic.
And here I am, feeding the myth that it matters with this post...
no subject
I want a president who knows how run the country better than anyone else who is an option, who will represent the best interests of the people and uphold the laws and values that benefit everyone who wants to contribute to this country, regardless of any category that people use to alienate them with. I don't care if he was raised by wolves, as long as he can do the job.