The big hostage June 29th, 2004
John
F. Kerry likes to drone on about courage and leadership, recalling his
long-ago wartime bravery, topics which have the potential to electrify
audiences in the hands of a skilled orator. But his own candidacy,
indeed his very lifestyle, betrays a pattern of entering into voluntary
hostage status, unable to confront threats directly, instead allowing
those who might harm him to dictate the limits on his actions.
The latest
instance of a Kerry cave-in came yesterday in Boston. The city’s police
union has been leveraging municipal desires for a smooth Democratic
National Convention into bargaining clout,
demanding a four year contract with pay raises substantially above the
rate of inflation. Mayor Thomas Menino, who would have to live with the
pay raises while facing re-election, has been willing to endure
picketing of the Fleet Center, thereby delaying construction of
facilities for the press.
Yesterday, the
police pickets were deployed in front of the meeting of the U.S.
Conference of Mayors, who were also meeting in Boston. Rather than
cross their picket line, Kerry chose to find pressing business in
Baltimore. The police union is so pleased with Senator Kerry’s support
that they have promised not to picket the Democrats next month.
The assembled mayors were less impressed, perhaps aware that they
too face union bargaining demands from time-to-time, and would
appreciate support from federal officials.
So labor leaders
all across America now understand that they face a prospective
president who is a willing hostage to picket lines. Kerry has not just
extended a helping hand to the labor barons, he has allowed them to
take custody of another portion of his anatomy. He will sell out a
natural ally, the Democrat mayor of the town where he ostensibly
resides, and where he expects to receive the nomination. Just because
he was mildly threatened.
Ronald Reagan was unafraid to
confront labor leaders who overstepped their bounds. When air traffic
controllers launched an illegal strike, he fired them all. Soviet
leaders saw this courageous behavior as a predictor of how he would
deal with them in a crisis, and accordingly chose to give up their Cold
War struggle of decades standing, rather than play a game of chicken
with Reagan. Kerry's opposite pattrern of behavior also sends a message
to our global opponents, and it is not one which would discourage their
effots to defeat us.
Kerry is also
visibly being held hostage by the left wing crazies of his party. The
latest exemplar is Michael Moore, whose box office success has now
officially made him a “war profiteer.” Farenheit 911’s premier drew admiring comments from
Terry McAuliffe, chairman of Kerry’s political party, giving credence
to Moore’s charge that the Afghan war was fought to ensure pipeline
construction profits for Unocal.
Kerry must
realize that the crazy conspiracy theories propounded on the record by
the leader of his party can only harm him with swing voters. But he has
been completely unwilling so far to denounce those theories. The same
goes for Al Gore, Howard Dean, and other prominent Democrats
whose philosophy has degenerated into inchoate anger.
The lunatic left
has another prominent candidate to support, Ralph Nader. If Kerry were
to speak up against extremists of the left, he might actually suffer
some erosion of his support on the far left. So Kerry has made
himself hostage to Moore, a man who has publicly stated about Americans
that
“They are
possibly the dumbest people on the planet... in thrall to conniving,
thieving, smug pricks. We Americans suffer from an enforced ignorance.
We don't know about anything that's happening outside our country. Our
stupidity is embarrassing. And 92 per cent of us don't own a passport."
The greater the box office success of Farenheit 911,
the more Americans will become interested in the actual message
propunded by Moore. When swing voters discover the contempt in which
they are held, they are unlikely to flock to join the ranks of those
who find them so stupid. The Bush-Cheney campaign has begun to exploit this vulnerability of Kerry to his left wing captors.
Meanwhile, candidate Kerry
today addresses Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH, an organization which
has perfected the process of using threats of embarassment to obtain benefits for itself and its supporters.
A willingness
to allow oneself to be held hostage is completely in character for a
serial gigolo. John F. Kerry's two wives have both been drawn from the
infinitessimal percentage of the population comprised of women with
nine or ten-figure fortunes. Statistically speaking, there is no case
to be made that he "just happened " to fall in love with two women who
"turned out" to be fabulously wealthy heiresses.
A man who
marries the person who signs the checks supporting his taste for luxury
is a man who is accustomed to practicing deference to powerful others.
The question
facing Americans is whether these habits are appropriate for a wartime
president. Thanks to the global reach of the electronic media, our foes
in the Islamicist terror movement are quite aware of Kerry’s pattern of
behavior. They can only draw the conclusion that further outrages will
produce a compliant President Kerry, anxious to avoid further
trouble with them. Just the sort of man Osama bin Laden can work
with.
Leaders by
definition take risks, and are unafraid to identify obstacles and
address them boldly. Kerry’s approach to problems is just the opposite:
palliation of those who hold threats over his head, caving-in rather
than confronting, learning to accommodate the limits they impose.
For a nation at
war with terrorists who dream of carrying-out horrific threats, such a
leader would be an absolute catastrophe. The Islamists recognize
compromise and accommodation as signs of weakness, and speak only of
temporary truces in a longer run plan to establish a global Caliphate.
And we all know what they do to hostages.
Thomas Lifson
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