NY Times: An Un-American Way to Campaign

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
Date: September 27, 2004 2:27:26 PM EDT
To: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>, Dave Farber 
<dave () farber net>
Subject: NY Times: An Un-American Way to Campaign

An Un-American Way to Campaign
The New York Times | Editorial

Saturday 25 September 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/25/opinion/25sat1.html

President Bush and his surrogates are taking their re-election
campaign into dangerous territory. Mr. Bush is running as the man
best equipped to keep America safe from terrorists - that was to
be expected. We did not, however, anticipate that those on the
Bush team would dare to argue that a vote for John Kerry would be
a vote for Al Qaeda. Yet that is the message they are delivering -
with a repetition that makes it clear this is an organized effort
to paint the Democratic candidate as a friend to terrorists.

When Vice President Dick Cheney declared that electing Mr. Kerry
would create a danger "that we'll get hit again," his supporters
attributed that appalling language to a rhetorical slip. But
Mr. Cheney is still delivering that message. Meanwhile, as Dana
Milbank detailed so chillingly in The Washington Post yesterday,
the House speaker, Dennis Hastert, said recently on television
that Al Qaeda would do better under a Kerry presidency, and
Senator Orrin Hatch, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has
announced that the terrorists are going to do everything they can
between now and November "to try and elect Kerry."

This is despicable politics. It's not just polarizing - it also
undermines the efforts of the Justice Department and the Central
Intelligence Agency to combat terrorists in America. Every time a
member of the Bush administration suggests that Islamic extremists
want to stage an attack before the election to sway the results in
November, it causes patriotic Americans who do not intend to vote
for the president to wonder whether the entire antiterrorism
effort has been kidnapped and turned into part of the Bush
re-election campaign. The people running the government clearly
regard keeping Mr. Bush in office as more important than
maintaining a united front on the most important threat to the
nation.

Mr. Bush has not disassociated himself from any of this, and in
his own campaign speeches he makes an argument that is equally
divisive and undemocratic. The president has claimed, over and
over, that criticism of the way his administration has conducted
the war in Iraq and news stories that suggest the war is not going
well endanger American troops and give aid and comfort to the
enemy. This week, in his Rose Garden press conference with the
interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, Mr. Bush was asked about
Mr. Kerry's increasingly pointed remarks on Iraq. "You can
embolden an enemy by sending mixed messages," he said, going on to
suggest that Mr. Kerry's criticisms dispirit the Iraqi people and
American soldiers.

It is fair game for the president to claim that toppling Saddam
Hussein was a blow to terrorism, to accuse Mr. Kerry of
flip-flopping and to repeat continually that the war in Iraq is
going very well, despite all evidence to the contrary. It is
absolutely not all right for anyone on his team to suggest that
Mr. Kerry is the favored candidate of the terrorists. And at a
time when the United States is supposed to be preparing the Iraqi
people for a democratic election, it's appalling to hear the chief
executive say that loyal opposition gives aid and comfort to the
enemy abroad.

The general instinct of Americans is to play fair. That is why,
even though terrorists struck the United States during President
Bush's watch, the Democrats have not run a campaign that blames
him for allowing the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to be
attacked. And while the war in Iraq has opened up large swaths of
the country to terrorist groups for the first time, any effort by
Mr. Kerry to describe the president as the man whom Osama bin
Laden wants to keep in power would be instantly denounced by the
Republicans as unpatriotic.

We think that anyone who attempts to portray sincere critics as
dangerous to the safety of the nation is wrong. It reflects badly
on the president's character that in this instance, he's putting
his own ambition ahead of the national good.

--
Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: +1-408-490-2868
http://www.ibd.com


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