Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: JDN who wrote (564885)	4/15/2004 11:01:56 AM
From: Thomas A Watson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

the difference between speechifying and leadership. Or as I would say, "There is a moral coward in the country." OP-ED COLUMNIST Kerry's Good Intentions By DAVID BROOKS Published: January 24, 2004 In 1998, John Kerry took on the teachers' unions. In twin speeches in Washington and Massachusetts, he described school systems that are "imploding upon themselves," beset with "bloated bureaucracy" and "stagnant administration." He said we had to "end tenure as we know it" so incompetent teachers could be fired more easily. "Those going into teaching have the lowest SAT and ACT scores of any profession in the United States," he observed. The teacher certification process, he concluded, is "an absurd anomaly" that creates a "convoluted monopolistic structure." He suggested that every school should be turned into a charter school so parents would have more choice. In 1992, John Kerry took on civil rights groups. In speeches at Yale and in Washington, he said affirmative action had achieved many positive results. But he said it was time to acknowledge the costs. Once, he said, the civil rights movement was a "mighty battle between good and evil," but now the "civil rights arena is controlled by lawyers, [with] the winners and losers determined by rules most Americans neither understand nor are sympathetic with." Affirmative action, he argued, "has kept America thinking in racial terms." It has helped foster a "culture of dependency." Further, he said, "there exists a reality of reverse discrimination that actually engenders racism." Thinking more broadly, he described crime-ridden neighborhoods "ruled not simply by poverty but by savagery." The crime rate, he continued, is "the most deadly poison there is to improved relations between black and white Americans." He asked how was it that the percentage of black children living with both parents through the age of 17 had gone to 6 percent from 50 percent? Sounding like William Bennett, he declared, "We have to ask ourselves in 1992 whether this social disintegration is merely a symptom of deteriorating values that has swept all of this country to some degree. We must ask whether it is the result of a massive shift in the psychology of our nation that some argue grew out of the excesses of the 1960's, a shift from self-reliance to indulgence and dependence, from caring to self-indulgence, from public accountability to public abdication and chaos." These are not the only times John Kerry has uttered what are, for a liberal Democrat, heterodox ideas. Kerry has argued that the Social Security system is unsustainable. He has called for unpopular reforms, including raising the retirement age and means-testing the benefits. He has argued that the U.S. should declare war on international crime cartels, and consider shooting down airplanes suspected of drug-running. He has argued that the gasoline tax should be raised by 50 cents a gallon. If you look back over the span of John Kerry's career, you find that every few months or years he takes a hard look at some thorny public issue. Then, after some period of reflection, he unleashes his inner Moynihan and comes out with an interesting and politically dangerous speech. The problem is that he almost never follows up. When he makes these speeches he habitually asserts that he will mount a long public crusade. But then he takes his controversial ideas, jams them into a jar and buries them in the backyard. If you watch him campaign today, you will have no clue that he has ever had interesting thoughts on education, civil rights, poverty and so on. On these and other issues, he campaigns as an orthodox Democrat, comfortably in tune with Ted Kennedy and the party's major interest groups. Far from continuing in the reformist vein when it comes to education, he has a core platform plank that is pure pander: "Stop Blaming and Start Supporting Public School Educators." Were these speeches just cynical efforts to inoculate himself from the charge that he's a conventional Massachusetts liberal? Both John McCain and John Kerry nearly died in Vietnam. Both say that these experiences have made every day that has followed feel like an gift from God, and that they are going to take this extra time to do what is right. The difference is that once McCain latches onto an issue, like campaign finance reform, he sticks with it year after year. John Kerry doesn't. He will momentarily embrace daring ideas, but if they threaten core constituencies, he often abandons them, returning meekly to the Democratic choir. That is the difference between speechifying and leadership. E-mail: dabrooks@nytimes.com

To: JDN who wrote (564885)	4/15/2004 11:51:40 AM
From: E	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 769667

Anyone who's elected is going to see it through. No one believes we should depart. The question is, see it through how? For example, who is more likely to be able to repair alliances and get some contributions to the effort from our former allies, this administration or a new one? Now write all you want about that, but what I want is a recognition of the mortifying implications of calling reading somebody else's words a president's "finest moments." Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope as he rode on a train to the dedication of a cemetery for those killed in a battle. Bush has neither written anything nor gone to a military funeral. the speech writer attempts to get into the person's mind and write what that person is thinking If you truly think that Bush's speeches are written with the intent of 'getting into his mind' and revealing to the voters its meager contents, you should consider getting real. How much 'changing' of the words put in his hands do you think a president is going to do who thinks the Caucasus area is the caucus area and doesn't read the newspapers and spends 40% of his presidency at his vacation retreat and is waiting to be told by a Mr. Brahimi to whom to turn over Iraqi sovereignty? How much rewriting is a president doing who, when he isn't repeating over and over again like a parrot the talking points someone has drilled into him, is confused, rambling, incoherent and, in short, pitiful? We have an empty suit at the helm and you admit it, when you call his reading aloud two speeches his "finest moments." I don't believe a single citizen admires GWB. I think his haplessness arouses a certain sympathy, his simplicity gives heart to those who feel disadvantaged in life by their own similar limitations. If the agenda of his puppeteers matches yours, you have a right to vote for him. But don't pretend he's not a puppet whose inadequacy is an international humiliation. "Finest moments" indeed.