Swift Boat II: Another Horror Sequel

Who would have thought it, Bush? That you'd get another shot at swift-boating John Kerry? What a kick! And he isn't even running. Your people must have been hoping and praying for just this kind of chance, and maybe Jesus heard their prayers, Bush, and put just exactly the right words in John Kerry's mouth that could be interpreted to mean the opposite of what he said. Ah well. Now's the time for righteous outrage. He insulted the troops. It passed over your head that he was actually insulting you. Well, maybe it didn't pass over your head, but it served your people well to read the remark the other way.

But it's not about John Kerry, is it, really? It's about distraction. It's about seizing the opportunity to grab a couple of news cycles and direct the nation's attention away from the Iraq war, away from Afghanistan, away from Iran, away from North Korea at a moment when all these things threatened to come back and bite your Republicans in their deserving rear ends. It's about riling the "base" against John Kerry and his liberal Democratic pals at a time when the base might be upset about Mark Foley's leering emails to congressional pages and Denny Hastert's sleazy cover-up. When the good folks of that same "base" might be looking into their pocket books and realizing they had been seriously short-changed. When it might just be beginning to dawn on them that all your righteous promises were no more than politics, to get their votes.

And your people, Bush, must have been getting pretty desperate about getting those votes again. With your personal popularity plummeting along with that of your war, with people beginning to get wise about the disconnect between your scare tactics and the dangerous incompetence of your administration, your Rove must have been tearing his hair out looking for just something of this kind to get your voters mad enough to go back to the polls this coming Tuesday. What a gift, then, from John Kerry. No wonder the Democrats are mad at him--I suspect he has blotted his copybook permanently for the next presidential election--and your Republicans can at least feign outrage. I don't follow the talk shows, but I can imagine that they're buzzing with righteous indignation.

I was going to write about Halloween this morning, Bush. I read a great story in yesterday's New York Times about the Brits getting fed up with the whole thing. It's another import there, of course, from America--and not a welcome one these days. Back in my youth, we kids celebrated Guy Fawkes Day on November 5 with bonfires and fireworks. I was already out of my teens by the time I first went to a Halloween party, if you can believe. Anyway, no matter. The horror story is being played out on all the morning television shows: John Kerry insults the troops in Iraq. He's the bogeyman.