If John Kerry wants to win this election — and there’s some evidence that he really, really does — then he really, really needs to get his speechwriters to read this analysis by Matt Yglesias of why George W. Bush has been such a terrible war President.
Kerry’s trying: his speech to the Firefighters, which the White House managed to step on with its silly demand that Kerry unmask the foreign leaders who have told him privately they’d like to see him win, was largely about Bush’s failures in the War on Terror. Or at least so the press coverage would suggest; the Kerry website doesn’t seem to have the full text of his remarks.
I’m hoping the lines “big on bluster and short on action” and “I do not fault George Bush for doing too much in the war on terror, I believe he’s done too little” get to be part of the Kerry stump speech, and that one of the early Kerry ads will go hard at Bush on this issue. Now that Bush has an add suggesting that Kerry’s vote against giving the President an $87 billion blank check to implement his non-plan in Iraq was a vote not to support the troops there, it’s past time for the gloves to come off.
It takes more than decisiveness
Mark A. R. Kleiman says: But some of us dislike George W. Bush largely because he has proven to be such an inept war President. I wouldn't say that I dislike George Bush — in fact as I have said