The Book That Sunk John Kerry
Adam Sparks, Special to SF Gate
Monday, April 5, 2004
sfgate.com
"I find it outrageous that the president is running for reelection on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months ... I think he's done a terrible job on the war against terrorism."
-- Former U.S. counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke
Despite a nearly incessant number of television interviews and gabfest appearances by Richard Clarke, a disgruntled political operative who worked in U.S. counterintelligence, American support for President Bush has soared. Clarke's public outcries against the president have been compromised, in part, because of accusations that he's a partisan who gives generous political contributions only to Democrats.
Clarke had a much-watched and much-ballyhooed appearance denouncing President Bush as incompetent in front of the 9/11 Commission. Americans were unmoved. If anything, the Demos' attack-dog strategy is backfiring.
Most Americans simply don't believe Clarke. In fact, according to a Rasmussen Poll, only 39 percent think he's being altruistic.
The survey found, in addition, that "half of America's voters (50 percent) believe that Richard Clarke is making his accusations about the President either to sell his book or to help John Kerry's campaign. Just 39 percent believe Clarke is merely a concerned citizen telling the truth about what he saw."
Clarke has brazenly admitted he didn't even vote for his boss, George W. Bush. (He chose Gore.) So, apparently, he didn't like his boss even before he began working for him. That just goes to show you the thanks Bush got when, trying to be bipartisan, he kept on many of the holdovers from the Clinton administration.
What's more amazing is how Clarke insulted U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice by suggesting that her facial gestures and body language indicated she didn't know what al Qaeda was. If a Republican had been caught suggesting, never mind actually making, such an obviously racial and misogynist remark to any high-level black, female White House official, you could be sure he or she would be branded a racist and run out of town. Women's groups and civil rights groups would all be protesting in unison until the Republican perpetrator was tarred and feathered. But Democratic operatives viciously criticizing a black, Republican woman can get a pass. In fact, they can get all the TV face time they need or could ever want. They get feted and celebrated and have toasts in their honor in the salons of the Upper East Side.
Unfortunately for Clarke and Kerry, Americans weren't buying the whole road show. Typical of the reaction by most Americans is a comment by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who said, "Mr. Clarke will make a lot of money, a lot of money, for exactly what he has done. I personally find this to be an appalling act of profiteering, of trading on insider access to highly classified information and capitalizing upon the tragedy that befell this nation on Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Clarke must renounce, I think, any plan to personally profit from this book."
The problem is not just that Clarke was a political appointee and a Clinton holdover with all the infidelity, but none of the charm, of his former boss. The problem is that the focus on 9/11 and Iraq in the media throughout March, courtesy of the controversy over Clarke's kiss-and-tell, has focused the presidential campaign on foreign policy. And, unfortunately for Kerry, this is where the president shines. According to the Rasmussen Poll cited above, Americans trust Bush to be more aggressive in prosecuting the war on terror. A whopping 55 percent think Bush would be more aggressive on the war on terror, while only 28 percent believe the haughty John Kerry would pursue it more fervently.
Of course, merely being aggressive may not be the solution for defending ourselves from terrorism. However, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, Bush also holds the lead on which presidential contender "would do a better job of defending the country from terrorist attacks by 53 percent for Bush to 29 percent for Kerry." That's a major gap that will be hard for Kerry to overcome in November.
This is why Kerry might be better off not spending so much time telling Americans how a fabulously wealthy and extremely liberal senator from Massachusetts is really just really another beer-swilling, average-Joe man of the people. He should tell us what he would really do differently in international affairs. Would he consult France following the next terrorist attack? Perhaps he would check in with the socialists in Spain's ruling party before daring to act in our national self-interest.
So far, we haven't heard what Kerry really would do that's so great and compelling. We have heard that he likes the United Nations. And we all know how successful that body has been in fighting the scourge of worldwide terrorism. And, with the exception of the tired leftist harangue about not acting "unilaterally" in foreign affairs, what or who, besides his ketchup-billionaire-heiress wife, does he stand for?
However -- and, more important -- with the vestiges of Saddam's forces fighting an escalated guerrilla war in Iraq, the new terror in Spain and the Kerry machine unleashing its Richard Clarke campaign; Bush now pulls ahead. According to a Gallup Poll, "Bush has picked up four points compared to early March, putting him slightly ahead of Kerry among registered voters: 49 percent to 46 percent. Earlier this month, Bush had trailed Kerry by five points, 45 percent to 50 percent."
What's particularly interesting is the Ralph Nader effect: In a two-way contest, Bush trumps Kerry, 51 percent to 47 percent, a seven-point gain for Bush and a five-point drop for Kerry in a single month, according to a USA Today/CNN poll. However, when presidential contender and former Greenie Ralph Nader is included, Bush wins with a margin of 49 percent to 45 percent, with Nader getting 4 percent. In other words, contrary to the common wisdom that Nader draws votes from Dems only, Nader actually gets an equal share of 2 points from both of the major candidates.
The battleground for this presidential election will not be fought in states such as Wisconsin and Missouri, as the pundits claim; it's being fought right now in towns like Fallujah, in Iraq, the scene of some of the worst violence perpetrated by the radical, antidemocratic terrorists since the liberation of that hapless nation. Fallujah, in the notorious Sunni Triangle area of Iraq, is where four contract workers were killed last week; their bodies were dragged around by cars and hung from bridges, ridiculed by rampaging mobs.
Clarke should have his whiny book renamed "If They Had Only Listened to Me, Waaaah!" Heck, if they'd only listened to him, he wouldn't be making a million bucks hustling a third-rate kiss-and-tell. So shaddup and count your blessings, Clarke.
President Bush should also write a confessional book titled "It Was for Oil, and It Was Worth It." In it, he should explain that he didn't go into Iraq because he believes that country, under Saddam Hussein, had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), contrary to what the Left convinced the media was the reason -- doing so in one of the world's most astonishing and quickest rewritings of history. There was little evidence Saddam had WMDs before American forces liberated Iraq. The president went into Iraq because Saddam was repeatedly violating U.N. resolutions related to inspections of WMDs, including continually throwing out the organization's inspectors.
We Went in for Oil
The president should confess Saddam wasn't forthcoming as to when and how he destroyed the WMDs he had already publicly admitted he possessed. Saddam was also an unrepentant and ruthless murderer of his own people, and the United Nations, the same body Kerry would love to yield his foreign policy to, stood by silently during both the mass murders and the multitude of Iraqi transgressions of its own edicts.
And, yes, Mr. President, fess up: We went in for oil. Don't be embarrassed. Oil is the lifeblood of this nation. We all know that. If you admit it, we'll love you more. If we're not going to be drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (a vast, frozen tundra -- some say wasteland -- that's in darkness for half the year), we have to somehow assure ourselves of a steady supply. However, we didn't go in to steal the oil, as the Left often alleges. We simply went in to assure the world's stability and our own security. Oil is directly related to both. That's a noble goal, Mr. President.
Although, with our Iraqi reconstruction costs mounting, and with the Oil Producing and Exporting Countries (OPEC) raising its oil prices last week, maybe using Iraqi oil money to both reimburse us for our military and reconstruction costs and insulate us from OPEC's outrageous, cartel-imposed price increases is not a bad idea. It would be fair and equitable, particularly given the circumstances.
Oh, and, by the way, Kerry should also write a book. His should focus on domestic policy -- at least that's something he knows a little about. His book can promise to lead this country back to economic prosperity. He can give his wealth secrets to all Americans. His book should be called "Marry Rich Women: It Worked for Me -- Twice."
Adam Sparks is a San Francisco writer. He can be reached at adamstyle@aol.com. |
