Frankenkerry

Unlike Nomad, I was actually fairly impressed with the speech itself. He was clear, forceful, and spoke with more energy than I've ever seen from him. He made good points and sounded mostly the right notes. This had to be his "defining moment" and I think he did a pretty good job with it. He spoke strongly about taking the fight to the terrorists and he committed to Iraq. He didn't convince me but he made me at least a little more willing to listen to him. That's the good.



Now the bad. In the Democrats effort to convince the voters that they are "strong on defense" we had to endure yet another trotting out of Vietnam veterans and hear more about how brave Frankenkerry was. It's amazing that the Democrats are now so in love with the same veterans that they were busy spitting on calling baby killers thirty years ago. To trot out a few veterans and say "look, we're brave too!" isn't really relevant. We KNOW that Frankenkerry went to fight. We honor that. But it doesn't change the fact that he came home and called those same men murderers and worked against their efforts to win the war.



Universal healthcare also came up. Yuck. If Frankenkerry is elected, this debate will be replayed out like it was in '92. It's anyone's guess as to who would win this time. It will depend on how ends up in control of the Congress.



I also still found myself seriously doubtful about his commitment to the WOT. He said lots of the right words, but it is hard to look past his recent record and believe him. He claimed in one breath that he won't be a patsy for the French but in the next argued that we should never go it alone. To me, that translates to "I'll try to be tough but if the French don't agree, then I guess we won't be doing much." That's an attitude that we simply can't afford to take.



It gets to the real issue in this election. What decade do you think we're in? The Democrats, like the Europeans, seem to believe that nothing changed after 9/11. We're still sailing along in the post 90's afterglow to these people. On the other hand, President Bush realizes that the world changed suddenly on that day and our response needed to change as well. As much as I dislike some of Bush's plans and politics, I still feel that he is the candidate who is actually living in our reality.