Blank Resume
Thomas Sowell
September 23, 2004
If someone applied to you for a job but didn't want to talk about what
he has been doing in the last 20 years, wouldn't you be suspicious?
Might you not think he was insulting your intelligence by expecting you
to hire him on the basis of what he did decades ago?
Yet for the most important job in this country -- indeed, the most
important job in the world -- Senator John Kerry has applied by talking
about what he did in a wholly different job back in the 1960s.
Never mind that people who were actually there with him in the 1960s
dispute what a great job he did then. Let us assume, for the sake of
argument, that he did all the things he said he did and none of the
things that eyewitnesses in Vietnam said he did. How does that qualify
anyone to be President of the United States?
The Kerry campaign and the liberal media want to make this election a
referendum on President Bush, especially as regards Iraq. That too is an
insult to our intelligence.
If the same job applicant who won't discuss his own qualifications just
keeps complaining about the performance of someone whose job he wants to
take, would you think that was enough reason to hire him?
Anybody can complain. Anybody can make great promises. And anybody can
insult your intelligence by expecting you to vote for him on that basis.
Has the war in Iraq gone according to plan? No! But name any war that
did.
Even World War II -- the "good war" of "the greatest generation" --
didn't go according to plan. The invasion of Normandy was a historic
feat but lots of things went wrong.
Our paratroops who were dropped behind enemy lines were dropped in the
wrong places. Intelligence reports about the big gun emplacements our
troops were supposed to knock out turned out to be wrong.
Our own bombers accidentally dropped bombs on American troops, killing
over a hundred men. We got caught completely by surprise by the German
counter-attack that led to the Battle of the Bulge. But we won the war
-- and that's the bottom line.
Any Civil War buff can spend hours telling you all the mistakes that
were made on both sides. Robert E. Lee, whom many regard as the greatest
general in that war, was so mortified by one of his disasters that he
offered his resignation.
Mistakes in war are not new. What is new is a widespread lack of
realism about war, especially among people who have never been in the
military, who are like the proverbial little kid on a trip who keeps
asking: "Are we there yet?"
This is the constituency that Senator Kerry is appealing to with his
reckless attacks on the President and his loud assertions that he could
do better. But just what has Senator Kerry actually done better during
his long political career?
Not national defense, with his record of having voted repeatedly to cut
the military budget and the budget of the intelligence agencies. The
whole gambit of making Vietnam the centerpiece of the Kerry campaign
makes sense only as a way of enabling his spinmeisters to say: "How dare
you question his record on national defense, when he has defended this
nation in battle?"
Nor do Senator Kerry's denunciations of the intelligence agencies mean
that he would do a better job in that department. As a member of the
Senate committee on intelligence, John Kerry missed three-quarters of
its public meetings.
Confronted with this, the Kerry camp replied that this does not count
what he did in the closed meetings of the intelligence committee.
Moreover, his spinmeisters added, he was vice-chairman of that
committee.
But Senator Kerry refused to give permission for the committee to
release his attendance records at the closed meetings. And, as far as
being vice-chairman, that was Senator Bob Kerrey.
How many times must John Kerry insult our intelligence before the
voters get it? Incidentally, have you noticed how both the Democrats and
the liberal media avoid referring to him as "Senator"? Using that title
would raise the awkward question of what John Kerry has actually done in
the Senate. Not much.
C2004 Creators Syndicate, Inc. |
