Boortz this morning brings up a parallel to my thoughts about the Reagan funeral [1], last week:
” Last week we honored a president, a Republican, who earned and deserves the credit for ending the Cold War. Ronald Reagan also reinvigorated capitalism in America, creating a growing economy that still affects us all. So … this question. Since JFK, what have Democrats had to offer that could match the performance of Ronald Reagan? Carter? Clinton? Go ahead, tell me what they accomplished. And don’t give me this nonsense about the economy under Clinton. The economy was improving when Clinton took office, and was on its way down when he left. I’m waiting.”
And that’s it, then, isn’t it… it’s as I said;
When people remember the greatness of Ronald Reagan, will they also remember what John Kerry was doing during Reagan’s eight years in the White House… That is, doggedly opposing Mr. Reagan every step of the way… Opposing actions Kerry now disingenuously praises Reagan for?
Now that we’ve had a week or so of remembering what real leadership is, and we’ve had some time to reflect who is closer to those ideals of leadership, the Democrats are going to be spending a great deal of time trying to tear down Mr. Reagan’s legacy, so as to deny the use of that legacy to Mr. Bush. As I’ve already said in this space, and mark this well; Mr. Reagan’s legacy will loom large in the coming election run-up.
Which means that Kerry and company will have to go negative, bigtime, not only on Mr. Bush, but on Mr. Reagan as well. Granted, this is crass, perhaps, but the Reagan legacy is the elephant in the room we now deal with, like it or not. Matter of fact, I suggest Kerry can only win now, if he manages to separate Mr. Bush from Mr. Reagan’s legacy, either by a direct separation, or be the discrediting of Reagan. I suspect the next several weeks will see Kerry and his people attempting both paths, with limited success. The image is far too deep in the minds of the voters, now.
If Kerry tries to separate Mr. Bush from Mr. Reagan’s legacy by means of saying Mr. Bush falls short of Mr Reagan, he’s in effect lauding Reagan’s policies…. policies he’s on record all through the Reagan years of working against. On the other hand given the obvious feeling about Mr. Reagan, it will not do to try and denigrate Mr. Reagan’s legacy in his attempt to deny Mr. Bush’s identification of himself as being the heir of it.
The question becomes, in either event, how much of that negativity the American people are going to stand for after a week of being reminded what it’s like with a read leader at the helm. The answer, obviously, is “not much, if any”.
And that, I think is the defining question of this campaign at the moment, and going forward, too, unless Kerry and his people can find some other issue to latch onto. What else, after all, do they have to go on? Without any changes in the lay of the land, Kerry is trapped, having far more in the way of problems to get through to get elected than does Mr. Bush.
Certainly the economy is off the table given the booming economic numbers… The task of course is getting those numbers past the liberal press who is seemingly reluctant to post those massive economic gains. I suspect that the republicans will gain the upper hand on that sub-plot by election day.
Afghanistan is pretty much dealt with, and is certainly on the right track.. and our relations with them are quite good; Mr Bush is meeting tomorrow, for example with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Kerry will not be able to use Afghanistan as a wedge issue. It’s off the table.
We’re in for a spot of nastiness in Iraq over the next two weeks as we move up to Iraqi sovereignty, as the Islamofacists try to tip the scales in their favor. But I don’t know of anyone who didn’t expect them to try something… and once that settles down, Mr. Bush looks very good indeed going into the election…. so Iraq is off the table as well as an election issue.
All Kerry will have left to run on is negativity and hate. And even he’s not stupid enough to think that’s going to gain him the election.