The Meat of the Matter

Surprise, the Democratic Candidate Resurrects Kennedy. Second Surprise, it Works this Time.

It's part of the election year script, after all. The Democratic candidate compared the current Republican candidate to Kennedy. This time, however, the comparison was fair, and results in an incredible contrast. First, if anyone can find the text of yesterday's speech, please forward it to me. I can't find the whole speech, but I heard a snippet on NPR, and it was so brilliant it nearly brought me to tears. Democrats would typically want Americans to forget that the Bay of Pigs was linked to JFK, but Kerry brought up this blight on the Democratic record on purpose. Because when the Bay of Pigs met its catastrophic failure, JFK went before the nation and said, "I am responsible." He did not skirt the blame, or, as some might call it, he did not "stand resolute amid the chorus of critics." He shut everyone up by saying he was wrong to do it. WOW. JFK had a little thing called accountability. And JFK could have very easily blamed bad intelligence because that is exactly why the Bay of Pigs failed. Kennedy believed his intelligence reports that said the Cuban populace would rise up and join the Americans. They didn't. American soldiers were slaughtered. Kennedy took responsibility. But when Iraq failed--and it has, miserably--Bush has never come before the nation and taken responsibility for the mayhem, confusion, and death. Nor has he taken responsibility for his bad intelligence. Instead he blamed the intelligence gatherers, and has stood resolute amid the ... blah blah blah. I was saddened yesterday to watch two guys go at it in the comments of this blog. One is an old friend, and one is someone I like (and agree with) but have never met. What saddened me is that in the face of such an utter preponderance of evidence--of truth--that some people simply cannot, or will not, see it. In an effort to keep an open mind, I tell myself that Bush supporters say the same things about liberals. They think we cannot see what is plainly true. The difference between the two, however, a difference that I am seeing as an absolute constant in this referrendum on Bush, is that us liberals offer facts, while the conservatives can only offer platitudes, and attack our attitudes. (Hey, that rhymes.) For conservatives, the plain truth based on facts is that liberals are simply out to "get Bush." To support this theory, they offer lots of facts. Well, duh! Yes we are out to get Bush! And that is based on our plain truth, which is that Bush has been an abysmal failure. And to support that, we can offer facts as well. Egad. I'm ranting. Four more days ...