And the winner is
And the winner is
Updated 00:05am (Mla time) Oct 04, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the October 4, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
THE TEXT joke I got was: You can't envy the American voter. If he votes Democrat, he'll be caught between two johns. If he votes Republican, he'll be caught between a dick and a bush.
Well, if the debate last Friday showed anything, the John is better than the Bush. That was the consensus of most American survey-makers. John Kerry did so much better than George W. Bush. Good for Kerry who had been trailing Bush for some time now. Bush's charge that Kerry is a flip-flopper who can't make up his mind on Iraq and therefore is not fit to lead had proven effective. Thanks in no small way to media outlets, such as the rabid right-wing network, Fox, drumbeating the line. But almost overnight, last Friday, Kerry turned it around. For the first time, he had Bush on the run-or shriveling in the vine, to use a more appropriate metaphor.
I caught portions of the debate last Friday and felt an acute sense of deja vu. I saw a similar debate a couple of years ago. I can only hope the results would be the same. That was the debate in Germany between the two candidates for prime minister, Gerhardt Schroeder and Edmund Stoiber. Before that debate, Schroeder, the incumbent, was trailing
Stoiber, the challenger, by a mile. Schroeder had promised to end Germany's high unemployment rate when he won the first time but failed to deliver; joblessness worsened during his term. Of course, he had scored points some months before the elections by beating Stoiber to the flood-stricken areas in the east, wading in knee-deep mud to give relief to residents. But it wasn't enough to overtake Stoiber's lead.
Then came the debate. Schroeder did one simple thing. That was to promise voters Germany would not join the United States if it declared war on Iraq. It struck a deep sympathetic chord among the voters, the majority of whom had grown up in a post-Hitler culture that hammered the virtue of peace in their minds. It also struck a deep antipathetic chord in Washington and Capitol Hill, many American officials calling it a betrayal of postwar US-German relations. It was at least one promise Schroeder would live up to. Overnight, he erased Stoiber's lead and beat him in the elections.
More accurately, he beat him to a draw: It was his coalition with the Greens that won the day for him. But that is another-more complicated-story.
It would be poetic justice if the American presidential election went the same way. I half suspect it will be equally close, no small thanks to Bush's predilection-like his little brown sister Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's-for dagdag-bawas. Quite frankly, I don't know why Kerry has allowed himself to take on a defensive tack. He has no lack of things to accuse George W. Bush of to dispel the charge of being an obstacle to the war against terror. Bush's connections to the Bin Laden family, which Michael Moore highlighted in "Fahrenheit 9/11," easily come to mind. I don't know why it is Bush who has been on the attack, resorting to tirade and insult when he is the one most vulnerable to them.
Happily, Kerry has bounced back, and if he goes on to win the election next month, Bush will see this debate as the second biggest mistake he made in his life. The first, of course, was the Iraq War, which Kerry pounced on last Friday. The best part of it was when he answered Bush's charge of flip-flopping by saying in very even tones: "I've had one position, one consistent position, that Saddam Hussein was a threat. There was a right way to disarm him and a wrong way. And the president chose the wrong way."
I would tell friends last Friday night I thought that was Kerry's shining moment. As it turned out, most American viewers felt the same way. They gave Kerry the debate largely as a result of it.
Kerry was the clear winner in Friday's debate, and if he wins, I suspect the world will win, too. I did say when Mary Ann Wright visited here last month (she is the much decorated diplomat who resigned her post in disagreement over Bush's policies on Iraq; she is currently campaigning for Kerry) that I did not expect US policy to change dramatically under Kerry, Bill Clinton himself having continued the US policy of imposing an embargo on Iraq which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi children. But any shift from Bush's 21st-century version of "manifest destiny," which is what his policy toward the world amounts to, should be a welcome one.
What suggests it would make the world a winner-indeed, what affirms Kerry's position that there is a right way and wrong way to deal with dictators-was the Arab reaction to the debate last Friday. The only ones who were not happy with Kerry's performance, worrying it might in fact carry him on to the White House, were the extremists and the heads of the autocratic regimes. The extremists want Bush to win because he is their biggest recruiter, in the same way that Marcos was the biggest recruiter for the New People's Army. And the heads of the autocratic regimes, like Saudi Arabia, want Bush to win because they do not like reformers who put pressure on them to recognize such democratic niceties as the citizens' rights.
True enough, there is a right way and a wrong way to deal with tyrants, who are to be found not just in Iraq. Bush's way isn't stopping tyranny, it is propping it up.
But you never know, life tends to be perverse. The truly strange thing is that Bush should be leading Kerry at all after a disastrous first term-one where he succeeded in pissing off just about everybody in the world, not least those who deeply sympathized with America after 9/11. But a friend of mine may have found the perfect explanation for it. The dumbest voters, he said, are not to be found in the Philippines.
They are to be found in America.
Updated 00:05am (Mla time) Oct 04, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the October 4, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
THE TEXT joke I got was: You can't envy the American voter. If he votes Democrat, he'll be caught between two johns. If he votes Republican, he'll be caught between a dick and a bush.
Well, if the debate last Friday showed anything, the John is better than the Bush. That was the consensus of most American survey-makers. John Kerry did so much better than George W. Bush. Good for Kerry who had been trailing Bush for some time now. Bush's charge that Kerry is a flip-flopper who can't make up his mind on Iraq and therefore is not fit to lead had proven effective. Thanks in no small way to media outlets, such as the rabid right-wing network, Fox, drumbeating the line. But almost overnight, last Friday, Kerry turned it around. For the first time, he had Bush on the run-or shriveling in the vine, to use a more appropriate metaphor.
I caught portions of the debate last Friday and felt an acute sense of deja vu. I saw a similar debate a couple of years ago. I can only hope the results would be the same. That was the debate in Germany between the two candidates for prime minister, Gerhardt Schroeder and Edmund Stoiber. Before that debate, Schroeder, the incumbent, was trailing
Stoiber, the challenger, by a mile. Schroeder had promised to end Germany's high unemployment rate when he won the first time but failed to deliver; joblessness worsened during his term. Of course, he had scored points some months before the elections by beating Stoiber to the flood-stricken areas in the east, wading in knee-deep mud to give relief to residents. But it wasn't enough to overtake Stoiber's lead.
Then came the debate. Schroeder did one simple thing. That was to promise voters Germany would not join the United States if it declared war on Iraq. It struck a deep sympathetic chord among the voters, the majority of whom had grown up in a post-Hitler culture that hammered the virtue of peace in their minds. It also struck a deep antipathetic chord in Washington and Capitol Hill, many American officials calling it a betrayal of postwar US-German relations. It was at least one promise Schroeder would live up to. Overnight, he erased Stoiber's lead and beat him in the elections.
More accurately, he beat him to a draw: It was his coalition with the Greens that won the day for him. But that is another-more complicated-story.
It would be poetic justice if the American presidential election went the same way. I half suspect it will be equally close, no small thanks to Bush's predilection-like his little brown sister Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's-for dagdag-bawas. Quite frankly, I don't know why Kerry has allowed himself to take on a defensive tack. He has no lack of things to accuse George W. Bush of to dispel the charge of being an obstacle to the war against terror. Bush's connections to the Bin Laden family, which Michael Moore highlighted in "Fahrenheit 9/11," easily come to mind. I don't know why it is Bush who has been on the attack, resorting to tirade and insult when he is the one most vulnerable to them.
Happily, Kerry has bounced back, and if he goes on to win the election next month, Bush will see this debate as the second biggest mistake he made in his life. The first, of course, was the Iraq War, which Kerry pounced on last Friday. The best part of it was when he answered Bush's charge of flip-flopping by saying in very even tones: "I've had one position, one consistent position, that Saddam Hussein was a threat. There was a right way to disarm him and a wrong way. And the president chose the wrong way."
I would tell friends last Friday night I thought that was Kerry's shining moment. As it turned out, most American viewers felt the same way. They gave Kerry the debate largely as a result of it.
Kerry was the clear winner in Friday's debate, and if he wins, I suspect the world will win, too. I did say when Mary Ann Wright visited here last month (she is the much decorated diplomat who resigned her post in disagreement over Bush's policies on Iraq; she is currently campaigning for Kerry) that I did not expect US policy to change dramatically under Kerry, Bill Clinton himself having continued the US policy of imposing an embargo on Iraq which led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi children. But any shift from Bush's 21st-century version of "manifest destiny," which is what his policy toward the world amounts to, should be a welcome one.
What suggests it would make the world a winner-indeed, what affirms Kerry's position that there is a right way and wrong way to deal with dictators-was the Arab reaction to the debate last Friday. The only ones who were not happy with Kerry's performance, worrying it might in fact carry him on to the White House, were the extremists and the heads of the autocratic regimes. The extremists want Bush to win because he is their biggest recruiter, in the same way that Marcos was the biggest recruiter for the New People's Army. And the heads of the autocratic regimes, like Saudi Arabia, want Bush to win because they do not like reformers who put pressure on them to recognize such democratic niceties as the citizens' rights.
True enough, there is a right way and a wrong way to deal with tyrants, who are to be found not just in Iraq. Bush's way isn't stopping tyranny, it is propping it up.
But you never know, life tends to be perverse. The truly strange thing is that Bush should be leading Kerry at all after a disastrous first term-one where he succeeded in pissing off just about everybody in the world, not least those who deeply sympathized with America after 9/11. But a friend of mine may have found the perfect explanation for it. The dumbest voters, he said, are not to be found in the Philippines.
They are to be found in America.
posted by Dante at 12:00 AM
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