Frank Rich (NYT): Decision 2004: Fear Fatigue vs. Sheer Fatigue

[Dudley_DUright]

JOHN KERRY is a flip-flopper. He's "French." Whether he's asserting his non-girlie-boy bona fides by riding a Harley onto Jay Leno's set, "reporting for duty" at the Democratic convention or hunting geese in Ohio, he comes off like a second-rung James Brolin auditioning for a Levitra ad. And let's not forget the words - all those words. When Mr. Kerry starts a sentence, you know you're embarking on a long journey with no interesting scenery along the way and little likelihood that you'll get wherever you're going on time. "Vote for Him Before You Vote Against Him" is one of the more winning slogans at the hilarious Web site Kerry-Haters for Kerry.

If the cliché of 2000 remains true, that entertainment-addicted Americans will never let a tedious president into their living rooms for four long years, then Mr. Kerry, like Al Gore, is toast. But now that Mr. Kerry enters the final stretch of 2004 with a serious chance of unseating an incumbent in wartime, a competing theory also rises: it's possible for America to overdose on entertainment. No president has worked harder than George W. Bush to tell his story as a spectacle, much of it fictional, to rivet his constituents while casting himself in an unfailingly heroic light. Yet this particular movie may have gone on too long and have too many plot holes. It may have been too clever by half. It may have given Mr. Kerry just the opening he needs to win.

As George Will has pointed out, our war in Iraq has now lasted longer than America's involvement in World War I. The span from 9/11 to Election Day 2004 is only three months shy of the 41 months separating the attack on Pearl Harbor from V-E day. And still the storyline doesn't compute. Mr. Bush, having not brought back his original bad guy dead or alive, is now fond of saying that "three-quarters of Al Qaeda leaders have been brought to justice." Even if true, is he telling us the war on terror is three-quarters over? Al Qaeda is, by our government's own account, in 60 countries. Last time I looked we're only at war in two.

The administration tries to finesse such narrative disconnects by creating a noir mood of "perpetual fear" - to borrow Philip Roth's totemic phrase from "The Plot Against America" - in line with what it sees as a perpetual war. But is perpetual war any more coherent a plot line? Mr. Bush calls himself "a war president" any chance he gets, yet he must be the first war president in history to respond to every setback with a call for new tax cuts. There isn't a person in the world, including our enemies, who doesn't know that we have fewer troops than we need, now or in perpetuity, and that we're too broke to spring for more.

more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/31/arts/31rich.html?pagewanted=print&position=

[TimeToGo]

1. Some good, some bad

More good than bad, but I hate those left-handed endorsements.

And you know what, I am really tired of this idea that Bush is the one you would like to have a beer with. I promise you, I do NOT want to have a beer with him -- or sit at my kitchen table with him!

[RoyGBiv]

2. Tangent ...

What I find interesting about this "French" thing is how closely it mirrors some of the political rhetoric that went back and forth between supporters of Jefferson and Adams in the late 18th/early 19th century.

I wonder if our currently candidates realize this. Well, no, I know one of them doesn't.

[Dudley_DUright]

4. Let me guess, the one with the Yale history major, right?

[Steven_S]

3. Only an intellectual giant...

could be exiled to the arts section in the Times and come up with the articles that he does - repeatedly.

Another masterpiece by Mr. Rich.

[teryang]

5. I find this analysis somewhat jaded

as it pertains to Kerry. In a country as corrupt as ours, maybe this is all you could hope for from the NY Times.