As I’ve said previously, newscasters and various pundits have said that the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001 boosted Dubya’s respect and popularity. Why?
Can anyone come up with a stirring quote that roused our nation? What heroic or generous acts did he do?
And Paul In Saudi, I too thought the draft would be reinstated.
A Where’s Waldo? -style book, with pages cluttered with hundred of tiny turbaned guys with AK-47s leaning on the wall behind them, would be challenging indeed.
Not quite, since a lot of the Japanese army was in China (and had been since 1937). So invading China would make sense, by taking out that part of the Japanese military, and freeing the part of China that was occupied by Japan.
But in thoser terms, for invading Iraq to make sense, Al Qaeda would at least have had to have a major presence in Iraq, and of course it didn’t. (Saddam Hussein wanted those religious extremists out of his secular state).
Because as much as Bush is fucking up the War On Terrorism, most Americans believe the Democrats would do worse. In the CNN exit polls of the 2004 elections, Bush beat Kerry 58% to 41% on the “Who would better handle the War On Terror?” question.
Doesn’t matter if Bush is a shit sandwich when it comes to TWAT; as long as the Democrats are a shit submarine sandwich with shitchips and a malted shit shake, Bush is better off focusing talk onto Terrorism.
And yet, we have no objective evidence that the Dems would be worse against terrorism than Bush et al. That mindset is strictly the unsubstantiated opinion of the right-wing noise machine and its numerous tentacles of rage.
And the complete lack of the Democrats to stand up and say “This is what we would do.” At best, the Democrats have stood up and said, “Well, we’d never do the horrible excesses that the Republicans did with wiretapping or torture; no, we’d do exactly what the Republicans are doing, but be more honorable about it.” And unfortunately, the Democrats are running headlong into the message that Hollywood has been sending out since Dirty Harry: that people who insist on being honorable and not “stooping” to the level of their opponents get fucked over and disemboweled, while the anti-heroes willing to get their hands dirty with a little co-opting of their opponents’ tricks come home to their families and a heaping of apple pie.
It’s also a carry-over: it was accepted conventional wisdom in the '70’s and '80’s that Republicans won national elections by talking about foreign policy, and Democrats could only win when they could move the conversation to domestic policy. I’m not sure whether that bias has meant that Democrats are frightened of talking about foreign policy, or whether it means most Americans don’t believe Democrats can handle foreign policy.
But it’s there, and until the Democrats either find a way to fix it or find a way to make domestic policies like health care more important than OMG A TERRORIST MIGHT POP UP AND KILL YOU OR YOUR LOVED ONES!!!, they’re going to lose Presidential elections.
Sheer nonsense. When have the Democrats even come close to “stooping to the level of their opponents”? Where does this idea even come from?
I… huh? I think you’re misinterpreting me. Badly.
What I’m saying is, Democrats seem to be saying “We’ll fight the terrorists without stooping to their level with torture or innocent casualties or wrongful imprisonment!”
But most Americans were raised on a diet of red-meat action movies where the cop or soldier who said “We can’t do that - that’d be stooping to their level!” invariably let the bad guys get away, and would either let his platoon/squad/partner get killed for his nobility and have to ‘ditch the rules’ to avenge them, or gets himself killed, and has to be avenged by the hero who is willing to beat the enemy at their own (dirty) game.
And so, when Democrats stand up and say, “We can’t fight the War on Terrorism using dirty methods!”, I think a large portion of Americans flash back to the interpreter in Saving Private Ryan, or the guy holding the bus hostage in Dirty Harry, or any number of other movies or TV shows.
Oh, shit. Never mind. I thought you meant politically. I’m sorry. I’m just a bit used to hearing people on the right offer up their “analyses” of how Democrats are doing politics and those analyses inevitably fail to be terribly cogent or even factual.
At any rate, isn’t this why us Democrats are always railing about Hollywood and the messages they send out to the American public? 
I think this is 100% correct. Regardless of the objective reality, the only way the Democrats are going to have a chance against the Republican spin machine in the public perception war is to grow a collective sack and take definitive stands on issues like domestic security and terrorism. It’s not like it’s hard – there are a million holes in port security and domestic emergency response that they could focus on patching, while at the same time hammering the Republicans for sitting on their thumbs and ignoring for five years.
But, first they have to grow a collective sack.
I think blaming Democrats for not taking a stand is just part of the problem; the other side of the coin is when Democrats do take a stand on issues, but those stances either get ignored by the media or slanted against them.
Yeah, I think John Corrado hit the nail on the head.
With terrorists, Americans don’t care if you pursue, catch, stop or kill them. Elected officials (Republicans) only have to present the appearance of being tough against terrorism and that’s good enough to get re-elected.
This would explain why John Wayne is such an icon to the vast majority of Americans.
You know that’s a made-up “quote”, right? That’s not what Bush said in that press conference, although he did say something along those lines as part of a much longer answer to a question. I’ll never understand why folks around here have to make shit up in order to criticize Bush-- doesn’t he give us enough real material to work with???
Still, Bush set himself up for that one with his bold and reckless claims that he’d get ObL “dead or alive”. That makes good political theater but not necessarily good policy. And the fact of the matter is, capturing ObL isn’t that critical in the so-called War on Terror. I mean, seriously folks, if we captured or killed ObL how long would it take for a thread entitled “ObL captured/killed: Will it make a difference” to get started? And most of the folks in this thread would be saying that it doesn’t matter. Just like we did with Zarqawi. Sure, we all would like to see him come to justice, and it would be a symbolic victory, but it would be just one of the many, many things we need to do to fight the Islamists who are plotting terror acts against us.
BTW, I’m not sure what the latest polls say, but the traditional edge that the Pubbies have had wrt “national security” has been wasted away-- mostly by Bush’s failed Iraq policy. The Dems may actually poll higher on that issue now. As for the Dems “taking a stand”, they might even be able to get away with not doing that this time around. It didn’t work in 2004, but the country is so fed up with Bush that it might not even matter. I have to say, though, that Harry Reid gave a very disapointing interivew on the PBS News Hour a day or so ago. Jim Leher asked him what the Democrats would do if they come to power, and he proceded to give a laundry list of all the terrible things the Republicans have done, starting off with Iraq.
Not true. There were two separate quotes by Bush on the same date (March 13, 2002), one of which is the quote provided by RedFury, one of which is the press conference you are undoubtably thinking of:
The Daily Show showed the footage of RedFury’s Bush quote just a couple of days ago (on the 9/11 anniversary), and it was as he said, word for word.
So, he strung quotes together from two seperate speeches? I don’t see that that’s any better. But I’d still like to see an original source cite that supports those quotes-- not: I heard it on The Daily Show.
Reread what I said. Bush gave a press conference on March 13, 2002. He also gave an interview in which he said the quote RedFury provided, word for word. You originally implied that RedFury’s quote was a distortion of the press conference quote, which is not true.
Sorry, that’s all I’ve got. Because it’s a politically charged statement, my Google searches turn up nothing but references to the quote. If it helps, I did see it and I wouldn’t lie about it. But I can’t prove it happened, as I deleted the show after I watched it, so it’s just anecdotal support.
Today on NPR I happened to catch parts of a speech by Joe Biden, given on September 7 to the National Press Club.
The bits I caught were compelling enough to send me in search of the full text. I recommend it as a starting point, at the very least, for a Democratic platform.
Of course, his analyses and proposals suffer from the flaws of nuance, reasoned consideration of the facts, and complexity, and wouldn’t boil down well to a soundbite, so would probably prove ineffective in a campaign against TERROR 9/11 TERROR FIGHT THEM OVER THERE OR OVER HERE TERROR 9/11 TERROR THEY HATE OUR FREEDOMS TERROR TERROR STAY THE COURSE TERROR DISSENT IS TREASON TERROR
I’m familiar with the press conference, but all that supports is that Bush said he didn’t know where ObL is. He then goes on to say that he doesn’t think about ObL much, which is often cited as one of his fubars. But I’ve never seen a cite for the other interview. If it is shown to exist, I’ll happily retract my statement.
I’m sure you heard something on the Daily Show-- I’m not saying you’re lying. But don’t they purposely take stuff out of context to enhance the humor value?
Absolutely. But my memory is of Bush speaking the full quote provided by RedFury. (Of course, considering what I’ve read about the unreliability of eyewitness testimony, it’s going to turn out Bush said he wasn’t worried about tin watermelons and I’m going to feel like an idiot.) I’ll see if I can’t dig it up on YouTube or something later tonight.