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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ann Corrigan who wrote (25605)	1/21/2004 8:22:19 PM
From: Ish	Respond to of 793759

Go Bush GO.

To: Ann Corrigan who wrote (25605)	1/21/2004 8:38:27 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793759

Hmm. I wonder if you realize you are speaking "Shrum talk." :>) Kerry: Hum-Shrum. Cookie-cutter populism comes to New Hampshire. By Mickey Kaus - SLATE Updated Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2004, at 1:22 PM PT John Kerry gave a "major policy speech" today at Daniel Webster College in Nashua, N.H., about half a mile from my motel, so I managed to make it in time to get a seat. I can't say I was disappointed--it would be hard for Kerry to disappoint me. But I was surprised by how much of a cookie-cutter Shrum populist Kerry has become. It seems as if all candidates advised by consultant Robert Shrum say "I'm on your side" and "I'll fight for you"--Shrum could get a brand trademark on those slogans at this point. And sure enough, the woman who introduced Kerry said "He'll fight for you," while the candidate himself told the audience they needed a president who is "really on your side." At one point Kerry pledged to take on the powerful interests that stand in your way. which is almost word-for-word the same thing Shrum got Al Gore to say in his 2000 Democratic convention acceptance speech: So often, powerful forces and powerful interests stand in your way, and the odds seem stacked against you. True, Gore's speech was a bit more bizarre, because he didn't specify exactly what or who these mysterious "powerful forces" were, giving his address a slightly occult feel. Kerry is more conventionally Shrumian, specifying (in this instance) greedy drug companies and HMOs as standing in the way of a "right" to affordable health care. But the same objection that applies to Gore applies to Kerry: Are the major problems facing Americans today mainly due to evil corporate interests that need to be defeated? Don't drugs cost money because researching and gaining approval for a drug costs money. And if drugs aren't expensive, don't we want them to be, in that we want drug companies to pursue expensive treatments that save lives as well as cheap treatments that save lives. Drug companies need to make a reasonable profit if they're going to make these investments, and somebody must pay the bill. (Reimporting drugs from Canada, one of the major policies Kerry endorsed in his speech, is a non-solution, since the Canadian price is probably not high enough to spur the necessary investments. If the drug companies had to charge the same price U.S. that they charge in Canada, they'd have to raise prices in Canada.) Similarly, the problem with Social Security isn't self-interested corporations. It's self-interested seniors who've voted themselves more in benefits than the nation's workers can afford to pay. The trouble is us, not them--Social Security offers up a problem that has to be solved rather than a villain that has to be slain. In what may be his most demagogic line, Kerry talks about 401-K's decimated by scandals of Enron and Worldcom as if the major force decimating retirement portfolios was the wrongdoing of a few greedy companies as opposed to a general bursting of the stock market bubble of the late 90s. I'm not saying reform doesn't sometimes require fighting corporate interests. If you want to reform health care by abandoning the current employer-based approach and switching to an expanded Medicare-style approach, for example, you're going to have to fight health insurance companies. But that's not because these companies are evil and greedy (though some surely are); they are just there, the way seniors are there, and farmers are there, and like seniors and farmers they understandably want to keep getting what they've been getting. Demonizing them promotes a misunderstanding of the situation--i.e. it promotes the illusion that we can have all the drugs and treatments we want without paying much for them if only we eliminate unconscionable profits, if only we abolish what Kerry subtly calls the "creed of greed." P.S.: The not unrelated problem with Shrum's "aggressive, pessimistic, and unsubtle strain of economic populism," Joe Klein argues, is that it doesn't win elections at the national level. Ask Shrum clients President Gephardt (1988), President Kerrey (1992) and President Gore (2000). P.P.S.: Kerry's delivery was slicker than I expected. There was no wooden reading of text, in part because this was just a modified stump speech. But neither did he rouse the crowd into any particular state of excitement. The applause at the end died out quickly. It's not so much that Kerry's "aloof"--when he talked to a supporter who'd had breast cancer and become a sort of poster woman for health care, he seemed genuinely human and compassionate. It's that he's pompous! And humorless. And narcissistically theatrical in his staged indignation. Bill Clinton was long-winded, but he passed the do-you-want-this-person-in-your-living-room test. I find it unimaginable that Americans could stand to listen to Kerry for 4 months, let alone 4 years. I'm hoping the voters of New Hampshire won't be able to take 4 days.