Prometheus 6

Quote of note:

The country is turning against the people who thought they knew better. This change in mood goes beyond ideology, because Americans are as pragmatic as they are idealistic. Beyond the rights and wrongs of whether the United States should have gone it alone in Iraq - based on at best flimsy and at worst fabricated evidence - is the unavoidable fact that the policy has not worked. Horrific images of Americans being beheaded underpin the nagging anxiety that the country is at least as vulnerable to a terrorist attack today than it was before the incursion into Iraq, if not more so.

In short this administration made a compact with the American people that they have failed to keep. They declared they would make the country safer by taking on Iraq, but they clearly have not delivered. In fact the opposite has ensued with the result that the experience card they had hoped would work to their advantage is now working against them.

Experience you can't trust
Any effort by the Bush administration to portray the Kerry-Edwards ticket as unprepared for government is likely to backfire, writes Philip James

Friday July 9, 2004

Ronald Reagan may have once joked that he would not make an issue of his opponent's youth and inexperience, but George Bush was deadpan as he tried to do exactly that to the newcomer entering this year's race for the White House.

Hewing to a line of attack already prepared by Republican message crafters, Bush's first substantive reaction to the choice of John Edwards as Kerry's running mate was to insist that his resume was too short to put him a heartbeat away from the presidency.

…The Bush campaign is hoping that while voters may be jittery over national security, they are even less likely to take any chances with an untested leadership. This might have been a reasonable ploy had the current president not come to the White House with only five years political experience as governor of Texas - a state that affords its governors the constitutional authority of a town crier. In fact if we are going to count, Edwards has one more year as senator under his belt than Bush had as governor.

The Kerry-Edwards campaign is rightly staying above the pettiness of such a numbers game. The images of their clans gathered together on the lawn of Kerry's Pennsylvania estate to introduce the full ticket harked back to the archival footage of the Kennedy family at play - all vim, vigour, youthfulness and promise.

Choreographed to include horseplay between Kerry and the youngest Edwards family member, the scene brimmed with the visual grammar of forward-looking optimism.

In stark contrast, Bush's trademark smirk was absent at his news conference. The man who emulates Reagan's sunny disposition looked grim and embattled as he went negative on Edwards. And while Edwards is already grinning with confidence on the campaign trail, Cheney can barely manufacture a smile out of the side of his face on the hustings. "Do you want to hear this speech or not?" he barked at one over-enthusiastic crowd last week.

This is not where the Bush White House thought they would be four months from election day. They were confident that a sitting war president from a party traditionally thought stronger on national security than the Democrats would sail to re-election. But it has not worked out that way.