This is the kind of thing a candidate says when he or she is desperate to scare the public: Vote for me or you may die. It is, quite literally, demagoguery at its worst.
Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday that the nation faces the threat of another terrorist attack if voters make the “wrong choice” on Election Day, suggesting that Sen. John Kerry would follow a pre-Sept. 11 policy of reacting defensively.
The Kerry-Edwards campaign immediately rejected those comments as “scare tactics” that crossed the line.
“It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States,” Cheney told about 350 supporters at a town-hall meeting in this Iowa city.
The politics of fear dominated the Republican convention and this is the natural outgrowth of their approach. When your policies fail, and your agenda divides, you have little choice but to scare just enough people to win an election. Indeed, it’s the surest path to victory — empowerment is hard, panic is easy.
There are so many offensive and miserable flaws to Cheney’s latest attack, it’s hard to know where to start. Sure, the Bush campaign is trying to drive political discourse to unseen depths. And sure, Cheney’s attack is more appropriate for a right-wing blog than someone who purports to be a national leader. And sure, Cheney is hardly in a position to raise the specter of terrorism under a President Kerry — since Cheney and his boss took office, we’ve suffered the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history and terrorism around the globe has reached the highest levels in a generation. A vote for Kerry is a vote for terrorism? Guess what, Dick; we’ve already got terrorism, and your efforts at making us safer are generally a fraud.
But the part that really confuses me is the notion of underlying support for Cheney’s claim in the first place.
Kevin Drum raised a question a few months ago (I can’t seem to find the link right now) that’s just as poignant now as it was then: What, exactly, do the Republicans think Kerry will do as president that’s so radically dangerous?
Kerry has endorsed the notion of pre-emptive strikes against enemies that represent imminent threats. He wants to boost Homeland Security, international alliances, and the size of the military. Kerry has experience where it counts — not only in wearing a uniform and fighting valiantly for his country, but also in undermining terrorist networks through his work in the Senate.
In all sincerity, I wonder what Cheney thinks Kerry would do about terrorism that makes the specter of his presidency so scary. Does anyone, even someone as callous and misguided as Cheney, seriously believe Kerry would ignore word of a pending attack (the way Bush did in August 2001 when he learned “bin Laden determined to strike inside the U.S.)? Does anyone seriously believe Kerry would ignore warnings from the intelligence community? Can anyone argue that Kerry would divert resources away from the nation’s anti-terrorist activities?
These aren’t rhetorical questions; I actually wonder if conservatives think such nonsense. If so, their Kerry hatred has pushed them comfortably into the realm of delusion. If not, their ridiculous attacks are transparent lies. It’s one or the other.
I don’t really expect intellectual consistency or honesty from the right anymore, but Cheney’s scare tactics may be his lowest, most vile, point yet. Considering the source, that’s saying something.