BOUNCE? WHAT BOUNCE?
David Frum's diary - NRO
Number Time
So the polls have arrived, and they report virtually no bounce at all for the Dems from last week’s convention. Indeed, among registered voters, Kerry actually dropped a point. Among all adults, the results after Kerry’s best week of the year stand at 50-46 according to Gallup. Kerry now has nowhere to go but down.
The Dems are blaming low viewership for the weak result. Still, it could have been worse: If more people had tuned in, and actually seen John Kerry speak, the Dems might actually have lost ground.
Pride Goeth ...
Almost every report from Boston agrees that the Dems are hugely confident that they will win in November, and possibly win big. That certitude explains a number of details that otherwise boggle the mind – such as John Kerry’s salute at the beginning of his speech. Memo to Kerry’s speechwriters and handlers: When you have a man as naturally solemn as John Kerry, you work with that. You try to persuade voters that he is not so much solemn as sad, and sad because he has seen too much, suffered too much, on behalf of his comrades and his people. You don’t, don’t send him onto the stage to perform operatic gestures in the style of Douglas MacArthur.
Against most media opinion, I remain convinced that Kerry’s speech Thursday was a failure. He presented himself as something that he pretty obviously is not: a man who defines himself first and foremost as a warrior. That definition might be immediately attractive to voters, but there are three months between now and Election Day for Republicans to explain that this definition is false. And the voters punish this kind of deception.
It would have been much better for Kerry to tell the whole of his life’s story on that stage. He should have said that he was both a warrior and an antiwar protester. Then he could have pulled a jujitsu anti-expectations maneuver like this: “From my time in Vietnam, I learned that we must never send our brave troops to war except when blah, blah, blah.” Then: “And from my time in the antiwar movement, I learned that we must never permit criticisms of our country’s policies to enlarge itself into anger at our country.”
He could have seized his greatest vulnerability and instantly disarmed it. All it would have taken was a small dose of candor and a willingness to accept personal responsibility for past mistakes. What Kerry showed is that he possesses neither of those virtues.
Who says you learn nothing from convention rhetoric? |
