Dennis Donohoe writes…
What really struck me was Kerry continually talking about his "plan" for everything. I think any rational person would wonder why he hasn't done anything in the last 20 years toward items in his plan and now he will. But then I'm a conservative (and not a reflexive Bush backer by any means). Did this strike you as overkill or just run-of-the-mill political speak?
It struck me as indicative of how little a person can say in 90-120 seconds. I can't imagine anyone having a worthwhile program for turning around the economy or fixing what's wrong in Iraq that could be summarized in under two minutes. Under that silly limitation of time, about all anyone could do was to announce that they have a solution, even if the restrictions don't allow them to discuss it in any depth.
That said, yeah, I was annoyed at that repetition. I think I even said during the Veep Debate how tired I was about hearing "John Kerry and I have a plan…" I didn't like Bush saying a lot of the same things over and over and over, either.
As I read over Kerry's record in the Senate, I don't find it as lacking as you seem to. I think "any rational person" would understand that there's a big difference between what you can accomplish as President of the United States and what you might have been able to do as Junior Senator from one state. A member of the Senate can only function on a few committees, and Kerry was confined to things like "affordable housing" and a lot of veterans' issues. A number of Kerry-Edwards "plans" are for things like the war in Iraq which have only recently become problems that needed fixing.
By the same token, one might ask why Bush is now talking about so many things he wants to do in the next four years that he could have done, in some cases with very little effort, in the last four years. How long would it have taken to tell a cabinet meeting, "Let's go ahead and let people buy prescription drugs from Canada"? I've always thought that all the excuses on that one were flat-out lies. You can buy wine from other countries, cheese from other countries, even fish from other countries and the health safeguards are deemed adequate. But if you need Celebrex in order to survive, you have to pay $360 for a hundred tablets in this country, instead of ordering from a Canadian retailer and paying $130 for the exact same medicine made in the exact same lab. There's no reason for this other than that Pfizer, which makes Celebrex and hundreds of other drugs, is the fourth-biggest donor to the Republican party.
I am not, as you may have noticed here, a huge fan of Mr. Kerry. For the umpteenth consecutive election, I find myself voting for someone primarily because he's the guy who can defeat the one I really don't want to see win. Worse, I don't even expect him to accomplish very much. If he wins, he'll probably spend a couple months fighting Republican challenges to the vote, then the G.O.P. leadership will convene and begin planning how to subvert every single thing he wants to accomplish and to launch investigations that could lead to impeachment. But even if Kerry has done nothing and can do nothing, I still think that's preferable to letting Bush do anything else. Too many Americans have already wound up in poverty in this country or dead in Iraq.