The official word out of the 2004 Democratic convention was that things were going to be positive, upbeat, and optimistic, putting a new face on a party that's become known for negativity and "Bush hatred."
In reality, the convention was less positive than simply defensive. The endless repetitions of "strong" in its various permutations were designed to rebut a lingering public perception (fostered by decades of spurious Republican attacks: the much-maligned George McGovern, after all, was right about the Vietnam War, as Nixon's subsequent decision to surrender shows) of the party as weak. Flags were everywhere, as were chants of "U! S! A!" and elaborate efforts to demonstrate that, yes, Democrats are Americans, too.
There were even hints that, since the Northeast was settled first and led the fight for independence while the erstwhile "heartland" was still the preserve of Native Americans, maybe -- just maybe -- a progressive from Massachusetts could be a patriot as well. Like, you know, John Adams or Paul Revere. And who knows what's next? If Kerry wins without carrying a single Southern state, as seems possible, perhaps we'll start hearing that the region best known for revolting against the American constitution might not be the ultimate exemplar of American values. At least I can dream.
The trouble with playing defense, though, is that no matter how inoculated one becomes, the Republicans are hardly going to admit defeat. If Kerry's strong, Bush will think of something new.
"My opponent has good intentions, but intentions do not always lead to results" is a line I might have suggested to Kerry's speechwriters.
After all, an Iraqi democracy would be a lovely thing indeed. What we've got, though, is a civil war between a Baathist assassin aligned with Iranian-backed Shiite fundamentalists and a group of murderously anti-western Sunni jihadists. The road to Fallujah is paved with good intentions and it doesn't end in a very scenic locale.
But it was Bush who had to come up with a fresh line this weekend, so it was Bush who said it. "After 19 years in the United States Senate, my opponent has had thousands of votes, but very few signature achievements." This is, in fact, a major step forward for the president, who seems to be taking honesty lessons. Unlike your average Bushian allegation, the contention that Kerry has few signature achievements is not transparently false. It's not even one of those deeply misleading claims whose accuracy can be vindicated only through a hyper-close parsing of the words.
Indeed Bush has said something that is (dare I say it?) true: After 19 years in the United States Senate John Kerry has very few signature achievements. There is no Kerry Act. Even John Edwards has done a bit better on this score. The patients' bill of rights never actually became law, but it was widely debated. It wasn't actually important, but the media acted as if it was. Edwards didn't really have much to do with writing it, but Ted Kennedy did get Edwards' name slapped on the thing in order to bolster his presidential prospects. So it's not much, but it's something.
Which is not to say that Kerry's been doing nothing all this time. Many of those thousands of votes were important. And Kerry's made some tough -- and correct -- calls on controversial issues like the Graham-Rudman deficit reduction bill, the 1993 budget deal, and the 1996 welfare reform act, all of which were controversial within his party and often unpopular in his home state.
Kerry was one of a very small number of senators with the guts to vote against the appalling Defense of Marriage Act; did some solid work on investigative committees in the 1980s; expanded the writ of the previously piddling Fisheries Subcommittee he briefly chaired in 2001-02; and really was a key player in normalizing relations with Vietnam, something that doesn't take up a lot of mind space here at home but has contributed immensely to improved living standards in Southeast Asia. Last but by no means least, one can leap to Kerry's defense by noting that major accomplishments are rather rare (that's what makes them major) so having "very few" of them isn't all that surprising. John Kennedy, at any rate, doesn't seem to have accomplished anything at all when he was a Senator, and while I don't think he was a particularly wonderful president people seem to like him
There are basically three ways to get your name on a bill in the contemporary era: You can chair an important committee; you can be John McCain acting as a high-profile Republican cosponsor of a Democratic bill; or you can have your name tossed on by a real legislative dynamo as an act of charity, as Ted Kennedy did for Edwards on the aforementioned patients' bill of rights.
At the end of the day, though, positive thinking will only get you so far. Some things simply cry out for a harsh, negative response. A tu quoque, as the lawyers say, or to put it more conventionally, a “look who's talking?”
Kerry "has no record of reforming America's intelligence-gathering capacity?" Maybe, but at least he hasn't spent years leaning on the intelligence community to overstate Iraq's WMD capacity, then misstating the community's findings, then trying to blame the problem on the CIA, then getting duped by his Secretary of Defense into actively obstructing intelligence reform. But to call attention to the president's record of letting his intellectual failings and the fanaticism and corruption of his advisors endanger the lives of people all across the world is to be a bit too kind. This is, let us recall, George W. Bush accusing someone else of lacking accomplishments.
While John Kerry was serving as an officer in the United States Navy, leading men in a shooting war and winning an armful of medals in the process, Bush was a male cheerleader and fraternity president at Yale. He later went on to use family connections to land a spot in the Air National Guard, duty from which he took ample time off to run losing political campaigns. Kerry became a leader in an influential movement, a candidate for office, a successful prosecutor, the Lieutenant Governor of a medium-sized state, and then a U.S. senator during a period when Bush was letting alcoholism nearly wreck his marriage, doing something with drugs he refuses to answer questions about, and running a variety of businesses into the ground, losing his dad's friends a bundle of money in the process.
Kerry didn't do much as a senator besides read bills other people wrote and decide how to vote on them. The president, meanwhile, doesn't read the newspaper. Or his daily intelligence briefings. Or the reports of government commissions. Not even the executive summaries!
No doubt this is a game you can play at home, but make sure you keep it between friends. In public, remember, you're positive and optimistic.
Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer. His column on politics and the media appears every Tuesday.
