"Bush campaign ads using team"

[Occhidiangela]

EDIT: Oops, I forgot to answer your other question. "The need to know bad news." Ever make an omlette? You break some eggs, you add some milk, baking powder, and then you beat the bejesus out of it with a fork or an egg beater. In that state it is a bit of a mess. You then put it on a warm griddle or pan, and add a few things that will improve its flavor and appeal. Hmmm, avocados, finely chopped onions, minced tomatoes, cheese, a bit of crumbled bacon . . . yummy. It still looks sorta funny. You then spend some time and effort and eventually, you roll it over, lightly brown it, and then slide it onto a plate. The "Iraq omlette" seems to me to be somewhere just past beat the dickens out of the eggs and the add some yummies stages, though the griddle in Iraq is plenty hot for the cooking.

Now, if my son were to walk into the kitchen of such an omlette, he'd not be ready to eat that. Of course, if I had promised him breakfast by 0800, and he wandered down a 0805 and saw the omlette still in that state . . . I'd have to accept the critique of "that doesn't look like much to eat!" :lol: Some of the criticisms are based on inflated expectations, which the pre war rhetoric certainly must take the blame for, some on a morbid fascination with imperfection and error.

But on to the ads:

When President Clinton was first elected, a steady stream of people who did not care for him made it their business to criticize him, his character, and pretty much everything about him for the next 8 years. Rush Limbaugh comes to mind, but the list is long.

When President Bush, the current, was elected, a steady stream of people, with some vigor, spent day and night finding reasons to criticize him and to call into question just about everything about him.

We have a pattern here, eh?

Senator Kerry and Senator Edwards have certainly filled a great deal of their rhetoric with a similar theme, attacks on the incumbent that complain but offer only fuzzy "I can do better" solutions. However, that sort of stuff is the coin of the realm in a presidential campaign.

For Senator Edwards to insist the the opposition stop with attack ads is ludicrous: free speech. If the attacks are vile enough, they will backfire on the attackers. If they are based on truth -- and whose version of "the truth" is more believable -- then the Kerry and Edwards campaign has some months to craft a solid counter message, one that takes the attack, rolls it up, and pokes it in the eye of the Bush-Cheney campaign. Senator Edwards would impress us all and score MUCHO POINTS for his team if he expended the energy to craft a smart, incisive and even witty counter. He's a trial lawyer, eh? I'd guess he is sharp enough. (Hmmm, see Belosi on the alleged sharpness of many lawyers. Outrage) "He can't say that" is a weak counter to a verbal sally in a society based on free speech. How about a counter from a slightly higher angle, Senator? We know you have it in you.

Having people question you and your family's worth comes with the badge when running for president. The badgering that Senator Kerry is undergoing is the same sort of bullsh-- storm that Ross Perot was unwilling to weather. Perot dropped out for a few months in 1992, showing a lack of resolve that killed the chance of his grass roots campaign getting the big mo. I had moments where I really was ready for a third party man. He ended up a spoiler.

The attacks on Senator Kerry's military service strike me as wasted energy. I am biased, I swore the same oath of office about 10 years after he did, in the same service. The only logic that I can find in giving him grief about the details is that some folks have used his military service as part of the picture of his strength of character. Why not? He went where the hot lead was flying, some of it hit him. Next question? Bill Clinton wandered off to do the Rhodes Scholar thing, and he got elected. He claimed he did not inhale pot (even AL Gore admitted that he had tried it) and he still got elected.

That anyone working on the Bush campaign, or the President himself if the assertions that he is behind them are true, would waste their time on that angle (glass houses and throwing stones???) when the opportunity to use whatever public record material is available on the Senatorial record, and a dozen of other far more recent things that may or may not shed favorable light on Senator Kerry 's suitability to be President, strikes me as a missed chance to take the moral high ground.

Pres Bush's detractors have been shrill and insulting from the get go. To get into the mud and wrestle with pigs is no way to establish a "this guy is a better man than the other man" message. Nope, Nope, Nope. Maybe entropy is to blame.

Neither party is doing anything to impress me in the public discussion. The matter of dealing with facts, plans, visions, details and issues seems to be as foreign to both campaigns as shopping lists written in Sanskrit. It's a finger pointing match, at present. *barf*

It's a warm summer, it's gonna be a warmer fall, thanks to all the hot air.

Occhi