I was one of the undecided voters that Kerry was trying capture with his speech. Considering the multiple themes running through this thread I’m going to have to zig-zag a bit to get to my conclusion. Sorry ’bout that.

Since Kerry dargged us back to Vietnam, I’ll start there. I’ve long thought that Conservatives mantra of the media and the politicians selling out the military in Vietnam is a gross rationalization. Two events did in that war effort. The first was the military command blowing sunshine up our posteriors over “the light at the end of the tunnel”. They badly undersold the Vietcong to support their policies. Tet was a disaster for the VC, but the scale of their attacks were far beyond what the military had led the public to believe they were capable off. It was a military victory, but the military’s packaging of the situation leading up to Tet turned it into a defeat. That wobbled public suppport, but it was a political mistake of the first order that kicked out the crutch of any support — the secret bombings. The public already believed they had been misled with Tet, and the effort to keep the bombing campaign secret from the US public was an absolute disaster. In short, two events in which the government was viewed as being dishonest derailed any chance in Vietnam.

This won’t play well with a lot of posters in here, but I consider Bush to be an extremely pedestrian President. In fact, calling him pedestrian may be giving him too much credit in my opinion. My main problem with Bush stem from how he is packaging the war effort. Now, I don’t believe he is being dishonest, but I do believe he is doing a poor job of articulating what his aims and broad strategy is in this war. As an example, in public debate the War on Terror is seperate from the War in Iraq. I think they’re one in the same, but Bush’s inability to take the rhetoric beyond his favorite phrase “they’re thugs and I’m gonna get ‘em” has allowed the other side to set the terms in the debate.

I think of Churchill’s “End of the beginning speech” at El-Alamein and compare it to Bush dropping his “long, hard war” rhetoric to the happy nonsense about “we’re safer today”. No, we’re in a difficult war — don’t repeat the “light at the end of the tunnel” sunshine. we can’t lose this war, but we sure can blunder it and make it bloodier.

As a result, the entire War on Terror has lost focus in the public’s mind, and I think that is a dangerous situation. Considering all that, I was an easy sell to any Democrat that came along. Kerry absolutely blew it with me. I didn’t care about his Swiftboat adventures or his homo-erotic relationship with his running mates hairdo. I wanted serious talk about how he would address the war. Instead, my jaw hung open as he promised to defend the US if it were attacked. My head spun around in circles when he took the Reserves off the table since they weren’t a backdoor draft (what does he think we’re paying them for?). Eh, 50,000 more troops he won’t deploy?

Bleh, I’m just sick to my stomache over this whole mess.