Although Kerry had a hawkish stance as a candidate, his party would certainly have been both more likely and more able to cause him to take a more peaceful stance than has been the case with Juniorbush.
We would have been slightly better off had Kerry been elected, and MUCH more so had Gore been allowed to become president by dint of getting more votes from the people.
There are major hawks on both parties, but the GOP has been dominated by them since the Olebush administration. The noninterventionist sector of the GOP has vanished. Only a few members remain in the Party that are not major warmongers.
I saw a discussion last night on one of the pundit tracks that mentioned that Kerry and his campaign machine decided to maintain a completely anger-free profile during the campaign and during the debates.
This goes a long way in understanding why Americans did not trust him.
Sometimes the Democrats are guilty of over-think.
That his staff should choose to follow the precepts of political correctness rather than dependable, readable, usable, bonafide emotional componentry would explain a lot of the backfire.
Political correctness people often confuse anger with aggression, as do their constituency, codependent America.
Anger is a legitimate emotion. It has its place and its value. I find it impossible to think of Moses without the anger angle. Jehovah found man wanting and got pissed. Anger is only a psychological problem when it is inappropriate.
Anger is a major component of the emotional system, and when you seek to eliminate it, pretend to be "above" it, you will find yourself rearranging a lot of cerebral furniture. Soon you might find your inner self eating crow atop the commode, all the while pretending nothing is amiss.
It is a common psychological adage that you really can't trust somebody who exhibits no anger whatsoever. To wreck this diversionary manipulation a good therapist will poke and wheedle to evoke anger, thus establishing that the process can resume without the bullshit halo.
Political correctness people will claim that someone who displays any trace of anger cannot be trusted. But on a deeper level, people less buffed tend to look at their politicians and find that anger often inspires trust. (Consider the political 'victory' of Clinton when sandbagged by the very angry son on Fox.) Often they delight in it, like those who liked Huey Long and Harry Truman. Reagan made his base sing when he got angry. One of Reagan's key moves was to show appropriate anger with timeliness. He would have been a muppy straightman without it, and therefore less capable of winning, or being remembered.
Then, to compensate, Kerry decided to show his anger by being sarcastic, your ordinary everday passive-aggressive expression of anger. Because he over-thought it, because he calculated it for political correctness, hoping for political advantage by way of observing political correctness, when he decided he now, too late, needed to show anger homage . . . when he spoke sarcastic, he was off-key. The volume of the click of a misfire can be louder than a true round. It ruined him forever.
Hillary?
She will prevail in that arena because she has it and has no problem with sharing that particular feeling. She also does it with precise congruence. People will realize they trust it.
And I ask you . . . the proper response to having had been had by these neocons?
Even the conservatives in Washington feel it.
Fucking anger.
