Kerry’s Speech

I didn’t watch all or even most of it, just catching most of the major speeches. From where I sit, this was a success–tight, organized, on message, and the speakers were very good.

The response to Kerry’s speech around the blogs is interesting. Over-the-top enthusiasm from Digby, Pandagon and Kos, shulder-shrugging from Kevin Drum, and denunciations from Matthew Yglesias.Digby (again) does a good job with Matt’s objections, but I want to discuss another one a bit more. Matt is unhappy with the lack of a concrete proposal for what to do in Iraq. I humbly submit that had he tried to do so honestly and in specific terms, it would have been a terrible idea.

Let me explain: Iraq is in a world of shit right now. Recall a bomb just blew up several dozen people, and it was an attack on police recruits. Any honest and frank discussion of Iraq would quite possibly poorly on Kerry right now. There is no silver bullet strategy change to make the situation much better. The best Kerry has to offer is less arrogance and more competence (and an easier road to internationalization), but probably no substantive sea-change in overall policy direction. A few more troops in the right places, a few less obvious corporate giveaways, etc. This would do nothing but fire up the overlapping constituencies who suspect the differences between Kerry and Bush are small (they’re not, of course, but they might sound that way on Iraq policy) and those who think we should pull out now. These groups shouldn’t be catered to, exactly, but they also shouldn’t be needlessly antagonized. It would also clash with the convention theme, as Kerry would be unable to make claims that appear consistent with his strength message. Furthermore, as Kerry has said before, his Iraq strategy will be very dependent on what facts on the ground look like in January. Will the election go off as planned? Who will be winning? Will the insurgency be any less strong? Who will they be targeting? How are the Kurds getting along with everyone? These are all very much unanswered questions, and the answers matter a great deal for Iraq policy. Of course, when he says this, the media treats it as a dodge, an avoidence, flip-flopping, etc. Hell, R.W. Apple says when Bush takes Kerry’s advice on Iraq, that makes Kerry the flip-flopper.

To sum up, the costs of getting into this seem quite likely to be greateer than the benefits. This is not true on foreign policy and terrorism generally; there are things Kerry can and should be saying about how different his approach to Al Qaeda will be, and he should make those points early and often. Here, he can plausibly say he will do a lot better than Bush, very different style from Bush, etc. with accuracy, clarity and ease. I’d like to have seen more of that in the speech, and hope for more of it in the coming months.

A final kvetch: I was watching the convention early yesterday evening at the gym, so it was on CNN instead of my preferred C-Span. I don’t know why I expect anything but nonsense from CNN, but I didn’t expect them to almost entirely ignore Wes Clark’s speech in favor of GOP Judy and Wolfie blathering on about nothing. They interrupted their innanities to cut to Clark’s speech a couple of times, for about 30 seconds. Can this programming decision be defended on any level? Do they really think that viewers need that extra 10 minutes of moronic talking heads making shit up? Isn’t 14 hours a day enough? Wes Clark is at this point a major national figure, one of the four serious candidates for the Democratic nomination, for God’s sake. The snippets CNN deigned to show us looked good. I’ll have to dig up the speech and take a look. I supported Clark during primary season, and I still think he should have a prominent place in this administration and Democratic party politics.

And the theme of the CNN blowhards was all about how Kerry really, really had to tell people all about his detailed policy proposals on various matters because voters are woefully uninformed about his actual plans. Hey, assholes: Kerry’s got detailed plans on numerous issues. They’re available online, and he talks about many of them regularly. You’re too lazy to report them. That’s not his fault.