The Bush camp is planning on using John Kerry’s own words against him, as well they should.
President Bush’s campaign announced Sunday its plans to use as the basis of a new commercial a quote from an 8,000-word New York Times Magazine article about Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.
The parsing prompted the Kerry camp to retort that the soon-to-be-released Bush ad was another example of the president’s campaign taking words out of context to create a misleading impression.
Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! The Kerryites are concerned about a quote being taken out of context. Where is their concern as Kerry and his attack-puppy sidekick repeatedly take Vice-President Cheney’s words about the danger of another attack so out of context that they intentionally, completely change his meaning? After all, the Veep never said a Kerry election would increase the danger of a terrorist attack; rather, he argued it would increase the danger of such an attack being responded to in a pre-9/11 manner, a valid consideration.
Are the Dems right in whining about context?
The article, a largely analytical cover story in the magazine, says the interviewer asked Kerry “what it would take for Americans to feel safe again.”
”We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance,” the article states as the Massachusetts senator’s reply.
”As a former law enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.”
Whatever part of Kerry’s statement you parse or take in it’s entirety, it is hard not to see an actual substantiation of Cheney’s point. Without victory over Islamist terrorism, those terrorists will never be just a nuisance. With an attitude of law enforcement and diplomacy as our primary weapons, that victory cannot be attained. Nor can it be attained if we insist that the focus of the war is Osama bin Laden instead of the greater whole of the radical Islamist movement.
A Kerry spokesman defended his candidate against the substance of the charges.
Reuters reported that the new Bush commercial’s script asks “How can Kerry protect us when he doesn’t understand the threat?”
Kerry campaign spokesman Phil Singer called the Republican charges “absolutely ridiculous.”
“This is yet another example of the Bush campaign taking John Kerry’s words out of context, and then blowing it up into something that is nothing,” he said.
“The whole article is about how John Kerry recognizes that the war on terror requires a multipronged approach. It’s not just the military aspect, but you need diplomacy to be able to enlist your allies. The Bush people have never understood that. John Kerry has always said that terrorism is the No. 1 threat to the U.S.”
Unfortunately, Kerry has not always said that terrorism is our top threat. From the first Bush-Kerry debate:
LEHRER: New question, two minutes, Senator Kerry.
If you are elected president, what will you take to that office thinking is the single most serious threat to the national security to the United States?
KERRY: Nuclear proliferation. Nuclear proliferation.
Now, I’ll be fair. Kerry tied this into terrorism, though not exclusively. He also tied it to the North Korea’s nuclear ambitions when he made the following statement in his continuing answer:
And part of that leadership is sending the right message to places like North Korea.
Right now the president is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to research bunker-busting nuclear weapons. The United States is pursuing a new set of nuclear weapons. It doesn’t make sense.
You talk about mixed messages. We’re telling other people, “You can’t have nuclear weapons,” but we’re pursuing a new nuclear weapon that we might even contemplate using.
Not this president. I’m going to shut that program down, and we’re going to make it clear to the world we’re serious about containing nuclear proliferation.
In Kerry’s mind, the greatest danger the U.S. faces is nuclear proliferation, not Islamist terrorism. There may be some validity to this, but two points should be considered. First, it is contrary to the statement of the Kerry spokesman. Second, it is curious that Kerry’s answer to our alleged greatest danger is the policing up of known nuclear materials while cancelling our efforts to build a potential deterrent to future nuke sources.
This point puts Kerry perfectly into context. It supports the Bush campaign’s questioning of Kerry’s view of the threat of terrorism based on his own quotes in the Times Magazine. It jibes with his inability to take a lasting stance (outside of hindsight) in favor of any offensive U.S. action, beginning at least with Viet Nam and continuing through today. Finally, it dovetails nicely with his support of a unilateral freeze in the ’80s in the face of another threat. Simply put, John Kerry does not understand our enemies, nor is he resolute in facing them in any manner other than to rely upon others and reduce our own efforts.