Keynote Address
I seem to be the only Democrat in my immediate circle of Democratic activists who was less than overwhelmed by the Kerry acceptance speech. Frankly, I was puzzled by my own reaction, which was absent any urge to leap to my feet, shout "Right On!," and wave a banner.
I have to be honest and say I don’t think I can say what it is I wanted to hear, or tell you what I would have said had I been Kerry’s speechwriter; perhaps some idea of what dream for America we should be dreaming, rather than simply fixing the mistakes of the Bush administratation.
The speech was essentially defensive, saying "Hey, we’re a faith based party, too." Or, "Hey, we’ll go to war if necessary." Or, "Hey, we’re not about to rescind middle class tax cuts." Or, "Hey, we’re going to have a different Attorney General." (But leave unsaid any commitment to radical reform of the Patriot Act)
The Republican propaganda machine actually dictated much of the content of Kerry’s speech.
Not one word was spoken by anyone at the convention about that concrete and razor-wire abomination…the "free speech" stalag. At the very least someone should have said, "We may recognize that the threat of terrorism can require extra ‘precautions’ but Democrats want to guarantee the safety of Americans so we can quickly return to a condition of full and free protest rights.
Some Comments From Elsewhere
Naomi Smith, in an article that originally appeared in The Nation, and available at the Guardian web site, argues that progressives are distracted from the real issues by their scorn for Bush:
"…. there is something about George Bush's combination of ignorance, piety and swagger that triggers a condition in progressives I've come to think of as Bush Blindness. When it strikes, it causes us to lose sight of everything we know about politics, economics and history and to focus exclusively on the admittedly odd personalities of the people in the White House. Other side-effects include delighting in psychologists' diagnoses of Bush's warped relationship with his father and brisk sales of Bush "dum gum" - $1.25.
"This madness has to stop, and the fastest way of doing that is to elect John Kerry, not because he will be different but because in most key areas - Iraq, the "war on drugs", Israel/Palestine, free trade, corporate taxes - he will be just as bad. The main difference will be that as Kerry pursues these brutal policies, he will come off as intelligent, sane and blissfully dull. That's why I've joined the Anybody But Bush camp: only with a bore such as Kerry at the helm will we finally be able to put an end to the presidential pathologising and focus on the issues again."
"I have no illusions that the left will have "access" to a Kerry/Edwards White House. But it's worth remembering that it was under Bill Clinton that the progressive movements in the west began to turn our attention to systems again: corporate globalisation, even - gasp - capitalism and colonialism. We began to understand modern empire not as the purview of a single nation, no matter how powerful, but a global system of interlocking states, international institutions and corporations, an understanding that allowed us to build global networks in response, from the World Social Forum to Indymedia. Innocuous leaders who spout liberal platitudes while slashing welfare and privatising the planet push us to better identify those systems and to build movements agile and intelligent enough to confront them. With Mr Dum Gum out of the White House, progressives will have to get smart again, and that can only be good. "
Read the whole commentary. Link
If you haven’t read a transcript of Michael Moore’s Cambridge speech during the convention week you can read it, or watch it, at the Democracy Now site. Link
