I apologize if anyone was offended by this post
Consider these two famous political gaffes:
| “You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t you get stuck in Iraq.” - John Kerry, October 2006 |
“There are some who feel like that the conditions are such [in Iraq] that they can attack us there. My answer is bring them on.” - George Bush, July 2003 |
By now everyone knows about Kerry’s “mangled joke”. As the expression goes, the switchboard lit up. Democrats wondered; what was he thinking? Kerry’s enemies were certain they knew.
Bush lost no time condemning Kerry’s remark as a slam against the intelligence of American soldiers. A storm surge of bloggers, media commentators, and cartoonists washed over Kerry’s explanations. Bill O’Reilly has been going on for days about how this one comment will turn the election back over to the Republicans.
When I heard the comment I was certain that Kerry had intended a slam against Bush, not against the soldiers. The implication was that a smarter president, one who had paid attention in his more difficult classes, would not have invaded Iraq. Later this was exactly what Kerry claimed:
Mr Kerry’s office said he had intended to say: “You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush.”
It’s all too easy to leave out the most important connective tissue of a sentence when it conveys an idea that seems perfectly obvious to the speaker. Just ask Neal Armstrong.
But the SwiftBoats did their damage a long time ago. While Bush can say “Bring it on” without the slightest consequences from his base, Kerry cannot sneeze without someone making it into high treason.
Kerry is inept at apology. After counterattacking, he trotted out the old; “I’m sorry my words were misinterpreted” stuff. The last public figure to apologize well was Bill Clinton:
“What I want the American people to know, what I want the Congress to know, is that I am profoundly sorry for all I have done wrong in words and deeds,” Clinton said. “I never should have misled the country, the Congress, my friends and my family. Quite simply, I gave in to my shame.”
- Bill Clinton, 1998
None of that “I’m sorry if anyone was offended” two-step. He said “I am sorry for what I did.” It was a real apology. His friends were sure he meant it; his enemies dismissed it out of hand. Personally his apology didn’t mean much to me because I was furious with him. I knew his personal foible would overshadow his presidential record, and some total loser would occupy the Oval Office in 2000.
As someone once said; “In politics, when you’re explaining, you’re losing.” The result is a delicate balance between the candidate who weighs every word so carefully that he is accused of being “wooden” and “scripted”, or the one who speaks extemporaneously with the risk of giving negative sound bites to his opponents. Rare is the candidate who combines spontaneous speech with enough charm to weather the inevitable storms.
If you hate John Kerry, you can take comfort from the fact that his political career is pretty much over. Because…
“Political image is like mixing cement. When it’s wet, you can move it around and shape it, but at some point it hardens and there’s almost nothing you can do to reshape it.”
- Walter Mondale
Personally, I’m not deciding my votes on the ‘outrageous gaffe of the week’. And the vast amounts of money candidates spend attacking each other on TV is completely wasted on me; I don’t watch professional wrestling.
I make no apology for that.
It’s too bad that no one really pays attention to what the Bush administration gets away with. He made a joke at a White House dinner asking the guest, “So where are the WMD’s? There not here… [pause for laughter] How about over there?”
So my question is what is funnier? A joke that might cause some slight mental anguish over intelligence of soldiers? Or a joke about what lead to almost 3000 deaths?
Hey DOF, how about a vote for Obama?
“I’m not deciding my votes on the ‘outrageous gaffe of the week’.” “I make no apology for that”
And so you shouldn’t. But surprisingly or not, a lot of people will. I wonder who they’ll vote for? Hmmmmmm….
What I find offensive it the number of democrats that actually supported what he said, and didn’t think it was a joke.
I actually can’t remember a single Democrat that “supported” what he said. But I can think of a few that defended what he said and saw nothing wrong with what he said.
WEB05
Try the democratic underground web site. There are few more that have same attitude. For the record, President Bush and Sen. Kerry both graduated from Yale,with about the same grade average, so throwing rocks about the others education doesn’t hold much water.
I was reffering to ranking Democrats, as in those that serve an elected position, as I assume that was what you were referring to. Why would we discuss the position of regular citizens?
As for Bush’s grades, I remember watching a documentary about Bush and Gore on PBS and Bush’s grades from Yale were mostly B’s with a few C’s and a few A’s. But if you want to make the claim Kerry had just as good of grades as Bush, you need to back it up with a source. For all you have to do is listen to the man speak and you will be able to ascertain his intelligence rather quickly.
Two people can go to the same school and get very different educations. Bush has a famously short attention span, which does not help in study. Kerry’s attention span is much longer – so long in fact that it often gets him in trouble as there are conceptual connections that seem so obvious to him that he fails to make them plain in rhetoric.
Whatever their grades, Kerry IS objectively more studious than Bush. He has written several books, his sentence structure habits are much more complex than Bush’s, and he often refers to actual sources when he speaks and writes. So he is a perfect target for anti-intellectualism. It is a puzzle to me that people want an average bloke to hold what is arguably the most complex job in the world.
Despite his frequent mangling of the English language, Bush is by far the better public speaker than Kerry. Neither man is in the same class as Clinton or Reagan. There is a danger, too, of associating public speaking ability (or the lack of it) with intelligence (or the lack of it). For instance, many people look to Obama as a sort of savior. This is due in large part to his speaking ability. Just as an aside, although I like him a lot, I don’t think Obama is ready to be president. He is too trusting, as evidenced by his being tripped up by a notorious Chicago-area land developer into the appearance of impropriety.
It’s all summed up by Doc Brown in the Back To The Future epic:
“No wonder your president has to be an actor! He has to look good on TV!”
Please tell me you’re joking here. I can believe an intelligent person such as yourself would truly think this. For god’s sake just do a youtube search on the two to find out the difference in speaking ability.
Having done quite a bit of public speaking myself, I am most assuredly not joking. Bush is much better at connecting with his audience. He commits one grammatical atrocity after another, but people listen to him and tune out Kerry. No doubt Kerry would receive a better grade in homiletics class, though.
To say one politician connects better with their audience then another is an absurd way to compare any two politicians. Those events are always scripted and over 3/4 of the people at the events are hand chosen, and the rest are screened before they are allowed to enter. Then if it is a “town hall meeting”, all the questions are screened before the politician is asked, and they know exactly what they are getting asked.
I judge a speaker on how well they deliver the message, and every time I hear Bush speak I want to stab myself in the eye. It is painful. I know junior high students that can structure sentences better than he can. “I am the <strong>decider</decider>, I make the decisions.” Give me a break!
How bout a fix to the above:
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Another good reason not to blog when on flu drugs.
I did not say that Bush had better grammar, or that he was more logical, or that his policies showed an ounce of moral courage, or really ascribe any virtues to him at all… except that he is better at connecting to an audience. he uses slogans and sound bytes, which are very effective. Kerry talks like a college professor; Bush like a televangelist. People don’t like being lectured to, but they do like “hearing the word” – a distinction that is lost on most of us academic types.
Yes, they’re pretty selective of the audiences they put physically in front of Bush, because he doesn’t handle dissent well. But the vast majority of his audience is on TV.
Hope you feel better soon. Flu is horrible.
Thanks, so do I. I am pretty confident the drugs will help.
I see your point. On the issue of connecting with his audience he does that better than Kerry and probably better than Gore did back in 2000. Cause like you said, people don’t like to feel like they are being talked down to.
But in terms of getting a message across, I think Kerry still does a better job. An intelligent person will more likely have an easier job getting a message across with fewer words, than one that has to repeat the same message back to back because they can’t think of an addition to the point.
Which seems to be Bush’s biggest problem with in prompt to speaking. He clearly has a hard time getting the message across when there is no script to read from.
“I was reffering to ranking Democrats, as in those that serve an elected position, as I assume that was what you were referring to. Why would we discuss the position of regular citizens? “
Why does that statement strike disgust in me?
Not sure, I actually have no idea why that would disgust you but maybe I need to clarify…
Who cares what a bunch of random people on a website think? What really matters is the opinions, beliefs, morals, and ideas of those that actually have an impact on our country and the world.
If a bunch of Dems on website XYZ.com think Kerry is a God for what he said I could care less. What matters more to me is what those who can make an impact on our country think.
That is why when an issue such as this one arises I look at what others in the political spectrum think and say. This way I don’t have to waste time and energy that I do not want to waste. I can spend my time and energy appropriately and for discussions that truly matter.
“Why would we discuss the position of regular citizens?”
Webs – this is a perfect example of a political gaffe. It sounds as if you are saying that regular people do not matter, only the elite, the effite, the ones who pay a lot to eat. I guarantee that if you were running for office the attack ads from your opponents would be airing before the echo of this statement died down.
(Deep scary campaign ad voice) “Webs05… out of touch with the common people. Do we really need an elitist like him in Washington?”
Because I know you, I can speculate that what you mean is that public figures, and in particular candidates and elected officials, do the actual steering of the ship of state and you prefer to spend your time discussing that. But it’s a good example of the topic of this post.
Right, what I meant, was that in terms of the topic being discussed why would we care what “Democrats” on some random site are saying.
For instance, James originally wrote:
What I took this to mean was the Democrats in office. On the issue being discussed, which is what Kerry actually meant, it really makes no sense to talk about what some Joe said on some random site. Of course there are going to be individuals with opinions outside of what everyone else thinks.
So if James is going to be pissed at Democrats because of what some guy posted on a website, that to me is a waste of time and energy. That would be like me saying Republicans are dingbats because of what this guy said. I actually know quite a few Republicans that are good, intelligent people.
But getting back to the issue at hand… is there anyone here who truly believes a veteran was insulting military personnel?
Maybe James will clarify what he meant, better than guessing and getting it wrong. James?
The answer is most definitely yes. And you shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking those individuals are without foundation for what they say, either. Often each can actually make a sound argument for their position.
All too often our beliefs are driven by our affections, by what we want to be true.
To me this is the single most fascinating thing in politics; how two people can look at the same thing and see something completely different. And – each is convinced their point of view is SO OBVIOUS that the other person must be a fool for thinking otherwise.
Here is why I would say they are without foundation:
This is what I was going to post over at mostly cajun, but apparently I am on some kind of blacklist there. Not really sure why, I have never posted anything outrageous. Maybe he doesn’t care for dissenting opinion, who knows.
If the media actually reported his full statement, with the lines leading up to the “I hate troops” and the lines following, it would be plainly obvious that he was referring to Bush. It makes no sense to think he wasn’t after reading the transcript.
It would be comparable to me telling a botched joke about a stupid blogger, where I mentioned the blogger before and after the joke, and everyone here assumes I was referring to DOF cause they just read the joke.
People who took the statement as an insult to troops already disliked Kerry and have a preconceived notion about him. There really is no other rational explanation.
I can see you are determined to believe that. But there are other, rational expanations. Try not to be too quick to accuse others of prejudice.
What someone is willing to believe about Kerry may be caused by some blind prejudice, or it can be caused by years of following (and disagreeing with) his political career. Neither you or I are veterans but you may find it helpful to understand that military training and culture is one of support for the unit and the service. Good or bad, that’s what it is.
There is a large subset of veterans who felt that Kerry’s 1971 testimony before congress was a betrayal of his comrades-in-arms. There is some justification to that because Kerry did, for a while, associate with an anti-soldier contingent of the anti-war movement. Not everyone involved is prepared to forgive him for that. Note that it is not the same as being anti-soldier but he should have stayed miles away from those people especially if he needed to testify to Congress that soldiers had committed atrocities.
You and I give Kerry the benefit of the doubt for all the reasons we have both noted above. Others are not obligated to do the same. That is why politicians need charm – to smooth over the rough spots between expression and image. And Kerry simply is not very charming. Bottom line, it is a huge handicap to a politician not to be charming.
Give it a rest for a while. Let’s see what the election does.
I have a dislike for Kerry but it personal not political, I was in Viet-nam the same time as he was . I have no use for the man based on personal experience.
James you are a man of few words. If you wouldn’t mind elaborating on that, it sounds really interesting.