By Lee Cullum, KERA 90.1 commentator
Dallas, TX – Does anybody else feel as disheartened as I do as we approach the Republican Convention in New York? To concerns about George W. Bush we now must add disappointment in John F. Kerry. We seem to be faced with one candidate who has trouble with his powers of analysis versus one who has problems with his faithfulness to the facts.
John Kerry's swift boat experiences are sounding a bit like Joe Biden, the Delaware senator, whose plagiarism forced him out of a race for president in the 1980s. At least he chose a fantastic speech to steal: a stemwinder by Neil Kinnock, then Labor leader in Britain, who asked rhetorically, "Why is it that I am the first in my family in a thousand generations to go to university?" The line was not quite as dramatic coming from Joe Biden, who, it must be added, has grown considerably since then to become a fine member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a possibility for Secretary of State.
Kerry also is reminiscent of the first JFK, who inflated his resume, claiming study at the London School of Economics when actually he was too ill to attend classes. He also lied about his speed reading, according to biographer Richard Reeves, and, of course, about his health. What emerges in John Kerry is a ferociously ambitious young man determined to write a war record, which, it still must be admitted, he did.
The real question before us is not Kerry's faulty recollections of Cambodia, though I wish he had kept his Christmas Eves a little clearer in his mind. The real question is not his anti-war activity, no matter how melodramatic he made it or how unfortunately it may have been used by the enemy. My conclusion is he believed what he was saying, though it may have been based on hearsay, not actual observation. Either way, it was a part of the fever of the time. He was not the only promising young man caught up in it any more than George W. Bush was the only well-born scion of an important family hiding out in the National Guard. Those were the painful ambiguities of long ago. The real question today is who can tame the storm that has been stirred up in Iraq.
George W. Bush is a Harvard MBA. Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld are former CEOs. They know that leaders must be judged by their performance. The president will bring to the convention a track record that's hard to defend. But he can go far down that road with a sober assessment of where we stand now. No defensiveness will do; nor will angry insistence that every decision has been the right decision. We know too well that this is not the case. But if the president will demonstrate a deep understanding of our true circumstances and speak thoughtfully to what staying the course really means at this point, he can carry a significant part of the country with him. How much worse would it be if we left Iraq? What can we expect to accomplish if we stay? These are the questions before him. If he will answer them as honestly as he can and point out, as Eleanor Roosevelt did at the Democratic Convention of 1940, that this is "no ordinary time," he will have a good chance at a second term.
As for John Kerry, he can no longer rely on the Vietnam war to wing him to the White House. He too must turn his full attention to the conflict at hand and outline a strategy for dealing with it. He must demonstrate that the driven young man of 35 years ago has matured into a leader who can think carefully, creatively, accurately and well, and whose actions are trained to follow the direction of his thought.
Tag: Lee Cullum is a contributor to the Dallas Morning News and KERA.
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