Tuesday, July 13, 2004

A creative commentary on the presidential contest

John Scalzi of the AOL-J mothership blog By the Way also has another blog called Whatever.

In an entry there for today, he holds forth on the presidential contest.  Although not overly impressed with Kerry, he gives one of the most memorable description of our legitimate president Bush I've ever seen.  One particularly notable excerpt: 

Wholly-owned subsidiary of people who believe Jesus lovingly hands every dead homosexual a charcoal briquette before pulling the trap-door lever that sends them to Hell.

He's not thrilled with Kerry's at-least-I'm-not-Bush approach to the campaign.  My partisan instincts couldn't help bristling a bit at his description of the Democratic standard-bearer.

But that has been Kerry's approach.  It's part of the danger of current campaign styles and polling techniques that allow potential swing voters to be identied with a great deal of market-niche definition.  The candidate concentrates on them, which he believes (not without reason) he has to do in order to get elected.  But then he gets in office, and he hasn't built a majority coaltion for any significant changes.  Like recognizing the Iraq War is a disaster no matter how you look at it, and making a decision to cut our losses and get out.  For example.

And Scalzi's description of Ralph Nader is dead-on.  I'm glad to see that there has been quite a bit of reporting about how openly rightwing groups and Republicans are promoting the Nader candidacy.

I wish I had come up with that line about the charcoal briquette and the trap-door.  Inspired political polemics are sometimes a thing of real beauty.

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