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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (514092)	12/21/2003 8:55:42 PM
From: FastC6	Respond to of 769667

story.news.yahoo.com

To: American Spirit who wrote (514092)	12/26/2003 11:03:58 AM
From: PROLIFE	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Kerry's Quagmire By Ruben Navarrette Friday, December 26, 2003; DALLAS -- Every presidential aspirant knows there could come a moment when he must accept the fact that the game is over. For Sen. John Kerry, the man the Democratic establishment considered a shoo-in for the 2004 nomination, that moment might have arrived this week with the release of a poll that finds him trailing the Rev. Al Sharpton. In a Newsweek survey of registered Democrats and other voters leaning Democratic, Kerry got 6 percent. Sharpton got 7 percent. Not that it matters. Former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont leads the field with 26 percent. Let us speak plainly: The last time John Kerry was engaged in this hopeless a mission, he was dressed in fatigues and running around Southeast Asia. The futility of this venture hasn't made Kerry any less willing to put his wife's money where his ego is. The Massachusetts Democrat announced last week that he was lending his campaign $850,000 and mortgaging his Beacon Hill home. One could say that Kerry had the misfortune of being the Democratic establishment's choice at a time when more and more Democrats are choosing not to side with the establishment. But let's not forget the generational angle either. John Kerry entered the presidential race as the baby boomers' dream candidate. Here was someone brave enough to have answered the call to fight in Vietnam but also principled enough to have later become a very vocal opponent of the war. Democratic strategists called him a war hero. That was supposed to be his main selling point, and it was thought by some Democrats to provide a nice contrast to the current occupant of the White House, who spent the late 1960s logging time in the Texas Air National Guard. As someone who spent those years in diapers, there are a lot of things I don't get about baby boomers and their various hang-ups over Vietnam. But I gather from eavesdropping on my elders that, when it comes time to dole out respect, there is thought to be a big difference between those who went into active duty and those who served as weekend warriors. And so, in a match-up between Bush and Kerry, the senator's strategists thought he held the upper hand. Two things went wrong with this thesis. One was the candidacy of retired Gen. Wesley Clark, who outranked Kerry and is also a war hero. The second was continued underestimating of the guy from the Texas Air National Guard who, since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has proved he knows more about leadership and achieving military objectives than many Democrats assumed. By liberating the Iraqi people and then capturing Saddam Hussein, President Bush has shown himself to be quite capable when it comes to national security. More important, his administration, with its response to terrorists and rogue nations, may finally have put an end to the country's Vietnam syndrome. In 1973, the average 25-year-old was likely to think of the United States as an imperialistic bully that traveled the world trying to impose its will on sovereign nations, sustaining heavy casualties in the process. Feelings of guilt and shame were common. Thirty years later, the average 25-year-old is part of a generation that has become accustomed to winning battles rather than losing them. The generation's collective memory goes back only as far as the Persian Gulf War. Toss in the ousting of a genocidal maniac such as Hussein, the defeat of the Taliban in Afghanistan or the U.S. action to protect Kosovo Albanians from Slobodan Milosevic, and Americans have cause to once again feel good about their country's military might and what it can accomplish. Even a setback in Somalia couldn't override that feeling. The Newsweek poll shows that Bush is most popular with voters between the ages of 30 and 49, 53 percent of whom say they want him to remain in office. For those Americans still queasy about the United States using military force to right wrongs and save lives, the choice seems to be Dean. For those who understand that this is precisely what history asks of the world's leading nations, there is Bush. So where does that leave Kerry, who voted for the war, then opposed it, then got turned into a rhetorical pretzel by Hussein's capture? I'll tell you where: bringing up the rear to a flamboyant preacher who, like Kerry, doesn't have a prayer. washingtonpost.com