BY DAN
KENNEDY
Serving the reality-based community since 2002.
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Tuesday, April 20, 2004
KERRY'S RE-ELECTION
CAMPAIGN. Boston Globe Washington-bureau chief Peter
Canellos has come up with a new way of framing the Bush-Kerry race.
In his Tuesday "National Perspective" column, Canellos
writes
that Kerry is running as the incumbent and Bush as the challenger.
The idea is that with Bush under fire for his handling of such
life-and-death matters as Iraq and 9/11, it is Kerry who represents
continuity and Bush who personifies radical change - change for the
worse:
Kerry, for his part, seems
to have realized that his best hope is to run as the Default
President, the place to which voters can connect when the regular
president goes on the fritz.
This makes Kerry's position
unusual, to say the least, for a presidential challenger. Instead
of painting castles in the sky and urging voters to share his
dreams, Kerry has been grounding himself in the policies of the
past. He will try to become the incumbent in the race,
representing 50 years of postwar consensus against four years of
Bush.
Canellos is definitely on to
something, but is Kerry being smart? For the moment, yes, because
Bush is melting down. But surely the Kerry campaign can't expect that
to last through Election Day. Once Bush regains his groove, Kerry's
current above-the-fray stance is going to start looking an awful lot
like the diffidence that got him into so much trouble last year, when
his campaign nearly died before it could reach the starting
line.
Slate's Kerry-loathing
blogger, Mickey Kaus, argues
(scroll down to April 12) that the senator's best shot is to stay out
of sight: "John Kerry does best when he's exposed to the voters
least! His optimal approach is to let Bush stew in the Iraq mess
while he remains offstage, an attractive unknown. Any other strategy
is a triumph of vanity over recent experience."
But that's not right. In fact, it's
when Kerry gets over-confident and slides into autopilot that he gets
into trouble. In nearly every one of his political campaigns, he's
looked surprisingly vulnerable until crunch time, when he goes into
crisis mode and blows his opponent away, whether it be Bill Weld in
Massachusetts eight years ago or Howard Dean in Iowa three months
ago. Somehow I doubt that's going to work against Karl
Rove.
It's crisis time right now, and
it's going to stay that way until November.
SPEED READING. Unless you're
actually planning to read all 432 pages of John F. Kerry: The
Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him
Best (and you know you're not; I might, but then I get paid to do
such things), you will want to check out Chris Suellentrop's amusing
guide
to the highlights.
posted at 9:11 AM |
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MEDIA LOG ARCHIVES
Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
