perfidy

One thing that did briefly flicker in the corner of my awareness recently was the fact that John Kerry received none of the expected bounce in the polls following the recent convention. It is a normal for a candidate to jump a buit in the polls after several days of the intensive and generally favorable coverage attending the nominating convention. Kerry didn't get this, and received the lowest post convention bounce of any candidate since McGovern back in '72. Why is this, I wondered? When I've talked to my liberal friends, they are unifrormly lacking in enthusiasm for Kerry. While they are unified in their dislike for Bush, they have no passion for putting Kerry in the oval office.

Kerry on display for the nation apparently aroused no passion in the electorate, either. I saw very little of the convention, but all three times that I glimpsed it, I saw Kerry talking about his service in Vietnam. While military service is certainly not a bad thing, it is far from the only thing. The recent "This Land is My Land" parody from Jib Jab highlighted this perfectly, and could have stood for the entirety of the democratic convention - "I won three purple hearts, and Bush is a jingoistic moron."

Charles Krauthammer cuts right to the chase, dismissing the stylistic and "the people have already made up their minds" defenses out of hand:

Hardly. The explanation that respects the intelligence of the American people is that Kerry had nothing to say. Well, one thing: Vietnam. His entire speech, the entire convention, was a celebration of his military service. The salute. The band of brothers. The Swift boat metaphors. The attribution of everything -- from religious values to foreign policy wisdom -- to Kerry's five-month stint in Vietnam 35 years ago.

This jibes well with what I've observed. Later, Krauthammer observes,

The convention gave no bounce because it consisted of but two elements: Vietnam, plus attacks on the president. The press swallowed the claim that the convention, following a directive from on high, was not negative. In fact, that meant simply that Al Gore was not to repeat his charges that the Bush administration is allied with "digital brownshirts" and running a "gulag." And that Bush was not to be attacked by name.

But the themes were transparently negative: We are not the party that misleads you into war. We are not the party that trashes the Constitution. We are not the party that acts unilaterally. And my favorite, because of its Escher-like yogiism: We are not the party that divides the country -- as opposed to those lying, Constitution-trashing, unilateralist Republican cowboys.

For the last half decade at least, and really since about '92, the Democrats have not really stood for anything at all. They are the party of negation, the party of denial. What those nasty Republicans want, well, we're agin it! Social Security is collapsing - but no suggestions from the left for how to fix it, just rote opposition to any Republican plan. The war on terror - against the patriot act, the war in Iraq, and most other measures the administration has taken. Not that these choices are beyond debate, to be sure, but the Democratic party has nothing to say except that the choices were ill-considered, in poor judgment, damaging to America and its interests, likely unconstitutional if not outright immoral and by the way, Bush is a liar. But no alternatives except for vague platitudes about involving the international community and more funding for local fire departments.

Given the hatred for Bush in a significant part of the left, distaste for Bush in the remainder, and doubts in the middle; and the deeply troubling events in Iraq - Kerry should be riding high. Even Dukakis, who eventually went down to a humiliating defeat, was leading in the polls early on. Kerry has never had a lead significantly beyond the statistical margin of error in most of the polls over the last six months. The Bush administration has been facing some of the most difficult domestic and foreign policy challenges of the last fifty years, with moderate success. I think the polls show that Bush has already taken about as much political damage from the recent unpleasantness in Iraq as he's ever going to - and Kerry doesn't have much room to move except down.