MaroonBlog

A friend of mine tracked me down a little while ago to relate a dream. He was walking through a big office that he realized was the headquarters of the Kerry campaign. He saw a door marked 'Campaign Manager' and entered, to see Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill, appropriately enough, sitting behind the desk. As he drew nearer, however, the woman suddenly ripped off her Cahill mask, behind which was ... Susan Estrich, Michael Dukakis' campaign manager! At that point, he woke up screaming.

There was no overriding theme to President Bush’s speech, except for the unspoken one: “This is who I am.” No, wait -- let me amend that. The unspoken theme was, “This is who we are.” As Americans.

For all its faults, for all its overtly- and overly-religious tones, this small-l libertarian prefers George Bush’s America to John Kerry’s. I don’t care for NASCAR. I’m not much for country music, Sundays at church, blue-eyed soul, or faith-based initiatives.

But Bush made me feel welcome all the same. No, wait – let me amend that statement, too. Bush made me feel like his place is somewhere I’d like to spend some time and get to know the locals. You know -- down a few beers, chat up the natives and learn their quaint customs.

I don’t feel as welcome, as at home, in the America Kerry painted for us tonight.

My brain does, too.

John Kerry, the challenger, is running as an incumbent. He’s hoping you’ll vote based on his history (even if that history is 35 years in the past). He’s relying on endorsements from people he served with. He’s betting on the status quo, only better.

George W. Bush, the incumbent, revealed tonight that he’s running as a challenger. He wants to shake things up on the domestic front. He wants to fight the good fight abroad. He’s betting he can change the status quo, even though he’s responsible for some of it.

A challenger-as-incumbent is someone with nothing to offer. An incumbent-as-challenger is someone who, despite four years in office, has yet to go stale.

Personally, I like my presidents how I like my news, my website, and pretty girls in short skirts:

Fresh.

None of that matters, however. Because the President's address was--to my mind--the best speech he gave since September 20, 2001.
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But overall, this speech was a boffo performance. Gone was the stilted delivery and the awkward body language that marked so many Bush speeches. Instead, we had a polished delivery that was backed with passion and conviction. George W. Bush got up this evening and gave a speech he believed in to his very bones. Some will agree and some will disagree with the content of that speech. But few will be able to deny that on a night when the President's political fortunes demanded that he stand and deliver, he did just that.

NEW YORK, Sept. 2 -- President George W. Bush accepted the Republican nomination for a second term Thursday night with a lofty speech casting his reelection as crucial to the spread of democracy across the world and to the security of Americans at home.

In an address that subordinated domestic policy proposals to the campaign against terrorism, Bush delivered an emotional appeal that he be viewed as the leader best suited to keep the nation safe. The president proposed a simplification of the federal tax code and renewed his call for a revamped Social Security program and a host of smaller initiatives ranging from medical savings accounts to more testing of high-school seniors. But he devoted the bulk of his speech, and his rhetorical flourishes, to the national security message that forms the core of his candidacy.

George W. Bush accepted the Republican nomination to run for a second term as president last night, outlining proposals that he vowed would create new jobs and expand health care and educational opportunities over the next four years, while he battered Senator John Kerry for what Mr. Bush said was a wavering record on national security and the economy.

At the culmination of a four-day convention in New York, Mr. Bush repeatedly and soberly referred to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks as he portrayed his first term in the White House as one shaped by that tragedy. Defining his presidency with historic sweep, he suggested that Mr. Kerry would falter in the face of the continuing threat to America.

The question bouncing around the Corner yesterday: Although we conservatives loved Zell Miller, did Miller’s speech change any votes?

Well, folks, this just in from Paul Crichton, my publicist at HarperCollins. Paul is a hip young denizen of Manhattan and master of media—not, in other words, the most promising material for the GOP. But just listen:

“What a speech by Miller last night. He might have secured my vote for Bush with that speech. Being the loose free spirit that I am, I don't necessarily agree with Bush's social and moral values -- FCC media censorship, religious fundamentalism etc. But I think I really have to put those issues on the back-burner and look at the real issue at hand--national security.”

National security, the real issue. Zell done did it.

KERRY IMPLODES [09/02 11:58 PM]

Kerry, just now: “Now that the president has finally finished his speech…”

Finally? Finally, drone-man? My hair has turned gray waiting for you to finish a sentence!

“I have five words for Americans: This is your wake up call!”

That’s six, bonehead.

Mark it. 11:56, September 2, 2004, the Kerry campaign imploded during a hastily-thrown-together, poorly-thought-out late night rally in Ohio.

Ladies and gentlemen, I will be blunt: This was easily one of the best political speeches I have ever heard. It was one of the best texts, and one of the best performances. I thought, when it was through, "If America doesn't want to reelect this man — this measured, proven, smart, brave, canny, compassionate, balanced, inspired man — then America is a country with extremely serious problems."

Four decades after a Republican convention in San Francisco nominated Sen. Goldwater, sealing the ascendancy of conservatism in the party, his kind of conservatism made a comeback at the convention here. That conservatism -- muscular foreign policy backing unapologetic nationalism; economic policies of low taxation and light regulation; a libertarian inclination regarding cultural questions -- is not fully ascendant in the party. But the prominent display and rapturous reception of Rudy Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger demonstrated that such conservatism is not an insurmountable impediment to a person's reaching the party's highest echelons.
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The reemergence into Republican respectability of conservatism with a socially libertarian cast -- Goldwaterism -- is a development with a large potential to discomfort the Democratic Party. The reemergence can make the Republican Party more appealing to many young and suburban voters, two cohorts in which Democrats have recently made substantial gains.
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The Republican Party's challenge is to keep its old fissures closed while relaxing the stringency of its social issues catechism. Republicans can derive encouragement from a long-lived coalition that was composed of elements far more discordant than a Republican Party that includes John Ashcroft as well as Giuliani and Schwarzenegger. FDR's "Roosevelt Coalition," which was born with the New Deal and did not crumble for four decades, balanced Northern liberals, intellectuals, organized labor and Southern segregationists.
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The Republican Party remains firmly on the side of the pro-life and religiously motivated social conservatives. But here this week the party began in earnest the task of making others not only more comfortable within the party but eligible to rank among its leaders.

Goldwater was, in a way, the first angry man of the angry '60s. But he actually smiled far more than he scowled. In his last years some conservatives excommunicated him because of his support for abortion rights and his relaxed views regarding homosexuality. However, this week his spirit is smiling broadly.

"If Gore's America (and presumably John Kerry's) is reproducing at a slower pace than Bush's America, what does this imply for the future? Well, as the comedian Dick Cavett remarked, 'If your parents never had children, chances are you won't either.' When secular-minded Americans decide to have few if any children, they unwittingly give a strong evolutionary advantage to the other side of the culture divide. Sure, some children who grow up in fundamentalist families will become secularists, and vice versa. But most people, particularly if they have children, wind up with pretty much the same religious and political orientations as their parents. If 'Metros' don't start having more children, America's future is 'Retro.'"

Zell Miller? What a speech. Genuine emotion is rare enough in politics, but anger? Righteous anger? Zell Miller stands in a line that runs all the way back to Jeremiah — but of which we see almost nothing in today’s Oprahfied context. And once again, the contrast with the Democratic convention could hardly have proven any sharper: Whereas the Democrats suppressed any display of anger in Boston, in the Republicans, the milquetoasts of American politics, went right ahead and cut loose in New York, cheering Miller with gorgeous abandon. And take a look at Miller’s text. Political prose just don’t get any hotter — or more memorable — than this:

[I]t is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest.

It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag.

No one should dare to even think about being the Commander in Chief of this country if he doesn't believe with all his heart that our soldiers are liberators abroad and defenders of freedom at home.

But don't waste your breath telling that to the leaders of my party today. In their warped way of thinking America is the problem, not the solution.

I suppose I’d have to grant that at least Dick Cheney did his job, conveying a sobriety and maturity that contrast with the boyishness and, well, lightness of John Edwards. But Zell Miller? Mine eyes have seen the glory.

For the record, I don't think there will be a more compelling speech given this fall on Bush's behalf than the one Zell Miller delivered last night. He would surely resent the comparison, but Zell blitzkrieged Kerry like Sherman did Atlanta. I kept thinking last night: this is like listening to my dad in 1979, when the rage and contempt we Southerners felt toward Jimmy Carter for his weakness, which brought on national humiliation, drove so many Democrats to the Reagan camp. If you ask me, I think Zell just dug up the stinking corpse of the effete Carter presidency, and rubbed it all over John Kerry. On the national security issue, and to a lesser extent the God thing, Zell reminded Reagan Democrats why they became GOP voters in the first place. If the Republicans are smart, they'd turn Zell loose this fall in Ohio, Pennsylvania and other battleground states where there were a lot of Reagan Democrats a generation ago.

Similarly with Monday night's speeches from John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Good, solid, stirring speeches, both of them, right on target. Again, these guys aren't on my personal top-ten list of favorite Republicans, but who cares? George W. Bush is on that list, and if they help him get re-elected, and help bring out voters for the congressional races, they are welcome at my house any time. Besides, as Brit Hume pointed out in the after-show commentary, one thing being demonstrated here is that Republicans have a way bigger tent than the Democrats, with far wider tolerance of dissent on policy positions. All of this helps appeal to ordinary non-political people.

All in all, it's been a great two days. This time last week I was glum, with the polls wobbling around 50-50 and the media droning on about Iraq, gas prices, a flat economy, and the rest. Now, seeing these great speakers — big-name American stars and heroes with wide appeal — praising the president, speaking forthrightly about the war, expressing good American optimism and faith, I'm getting that winning feeling.

Sure, a lot can happen in nine weeks. The Bush haters still hate Bush, Soros and the Hollywood crowd still have plenty of money to hose around, and Iraq is still unstable. Sure, sure, things might go wrong; but I do believe we're going to win this one.