The Buck Better Stop Here

The reaction of the rest of the campaign, the Democratic pundits, and the left-wing activists was, at best, mixed.

Let’s say it sucked.

This tape could have, should have been played as a godsend for Kerry: four days before the election and three years after 9/11, Public Enemy Number One is still at large, sleek as a kitten, taunting us, invading our homes and psyches, and interfering with our election.

All because Dumbass George took his eye off the Tora Bora to run off in pursuit of military and political oblivion in Iraq.

It’s effective because it’s true.

Even if it wasn’t true, it would have been the only line to push in the critical last days of the election.

The media wasn’t going to do the job for us. They weren’t going to examine the body of the tape with its damning description of Bush as the Clown Prince in the War on Terror, because they aren’t up to reporting Osama’s words in order to embarrass Bush.

Bush’s 9/11 mojo may have diminished for the populace at large, but the media is still too spooked to criticize or even examine the president in his role as commander in chief in the war against al Qaeda.

In other words, the media wasn’t going to report on the dead red elephant stinking up America’s living room.

So we got a day of media dead air as the media tiptoed around the edges of the story and downplayed the explosives and Halliburton stories that were gutting the Bush campaign.

And the GOP seized the initiative, at much greater risk and with much weaker justification, instinctively and aggressively filling the empty space with its inimitable up-is-down crap, namely that the nation welcomes a reminder that Bush didn’t capture Osama and will therefore happily reward Bush with four more years.

It was gut check time for the Democrats to suck it up, howl the Why is Osama Still Out There line in unison, and drown out the idiotic Osama Endorses Kerry meme.

Instead, in some sectors there was an orgy of Dukakisan pants-pissing, revealing that confronting national security issues — addressing them and exploiting them — is something a lot of Democrats don’t feel comfortable about.

I didn’t hear it, but I heard Randi Rhodes lost it and was reduced to gibbering recriminations about “How could they release it now?”.

On Daily Kos, DemfromCT had to play the Margaret Thatcher role and insert some backbone into Chicken Littling posters.

And when Adam Nagourney canvassed Joe Trippi’s views on the Osama-tape boondoggle, does Joe gallop on the record to the New York Times three days before the election to head the bad guys off at the pass?

‘Fraid not.

May I emphasize that these are not the words of some undecided voter with his face in a sixpack.

This is Joe FUCKING Trippi, Democratic Party strategist and insider.

Who should be transcribing the Democratic Party line on Osama and shoving it down Adam Nagourney’s throat.

And today we get John Sasso.

It doesn’t occur to him to make principled political hay out of a juicy piece of Fox News overreach — some halfwitted pundit asserting that Osama was wearing a figurative Kerry button — with something like:

Instead Sasso threatens to throw the Fox producer off the plane! (see Patrick Healy Angry Over On-Air Remark, Adviser Threatens a Ban Boston Globe, Oct. 31, 1004). And this producer (in a revealing insight as to the estrangement between Kerry and the media) is one of the few press people Big John knows by name!

Then Sasso backs down! Beautiful!

What happened to the war room mantra: analyze, regroup, unite, and counterattack within a single news cycle?

How about cosset, co-opt, and neutralize the press?

Didn’t they get the memo?

Was the memo written?

Did the Kerry campaign geniuses have a response plan ready to retake the initiative and rally their disoriented followers if some really major shit hit the fan?

Major shit like an attack? Like Osama getting captured? Or Osama showing up on national TV to remind America that before there was Iraq, there was 9/11?

Are some Democrats not ready for prime time on national security issues?

Do they sit around DLC-style hoping they can avoid hard choices, firm positions, and open confrontation so we can coast to victory on the back of ABB sentiment and GOTV advantage?

And then go ostrich — or even worse, go haywire — when an unexpected but not entirely unforeseeable event shifts the political debate and media focus back to 9/11 ground zero?

Maybe we can win an election like this. But we can’t run the country like this.

Here’s the nub.

I expect that in two days John Kerry will be president-elect and soon he will be running this country.

John Kerry isn’t going to win this election just because he’s John Kerry.

He’s going to win because tens of millions of Americans decided that he could be a voice for their aspirations and interests, and reorganized their lives and activities around his campaign.

John Kerry isn’t going to succeed as president just because he’s John Kerry.

He’s going to succeed because tens of millions of Americans are working together to make his presidency succeed.

To run this country, Kerry’s going to need us to get his message out; watch his back and provide political cover; promote his policies; and help him deal with the attacks and crises the Republicans and our fucked up world are going to throw his way.

When Our Guy controls the White House, we share a responsibility to Get It Right.

We can’t just panic, complain, or condemn when things don’t go the way we want to.

We’ve got to work the problems and solve them. Even better, anticipate the problems and be ready to deal with them when they appear.

We’ve got to keep at it full time, and not just when presidential policy suits our political agendas and personal convenience, or only on issues inside our political comfort zones.

We’ll be dealing with a difficult disengagement from Iraq; an immense deficit; a nasty covert war on terror; and walking the fine line between accommodation and appeasement in dealing with the 20 million or so Americans who are violently opposed to John Kerry and his agenda.

And in the next four years, we might be dealing with something a thousand times worse than Osama bin Laden showing up on TV — another catastrophic terrorist attack.

The buck will stop with us — the people who said George W. Bush had to go and John Kerry should take his place.

And if the White House, the Democratic apparatus, or liberal activists, through a lack of political foresight or courage, endanger this presidency or this country, we have to call them on it.

We can’t follow anymore.

We have to lead.

Because we’ve fought too hard to get Kerry into office.

And because these times demand nothing less from the people of our nation.

Copyright 2004 Peter Lee

Peter Lee is the creator of the anti-war satire and commentary website Halcyon Days. He can be reached at peter@halcyondays.info.