December 20, 2003
Still Not Getting It
Holy Joe 'The Ticket Balancer' Lieberman is quoted by CNN saying the following:
..."Gov. Dean has made a series of dubious judgments and irresponsible statements in this campaign," Lieberman said in a recent speech, "that together signal he would take us back to the days when we Democrats were not trusted to defend our security." ...
Joe, you twit, these are still 'those days.' If these weren't still those days, then Al Gore with all his experience would never have been compared unfavorably to an untested Gov. Bush. Bush, who at one point in the 2000 campaign didn't even know who Pervez Musharraf was, was just assumed to be good on defense. If these weren't still those days, senior Bush staff might have thought to pay attention to warnings from the Clinton administration that Al Qaida really was a problem.
Why? He was a Republican, and he didn't have the wimp factor working against him. Didn't matter that he was a coke-sniffing (very likely) deserter (definitely). He was just assumed to be fine, Gore had to spend all his time reassuring people. And further, had to struggle to not be seen as a whiner, because someone was always waiting to pounce with that label.
We're at a point in our history where Saxby Chambliss (arch-chickenhawk) could get away with smearing Max Cleland (decorated war hero) as weak on defense. A sanctimonious whiner who perpetually carries himself as though he's smelled something unpleasant doesn't stand a chance.
Posted by natasha at December 20, 2003 12:19 PM | TrackBack