Tomorrow is not yesterday. There will be no deadlock in the Electoral College, no divergence between the winner of the popular vote and the Electoral College, no Kerry v. Bush before the Supreme Court, no repeat of 2000. Senator John Kerry will win decisively because Americans need a President with a mandate. If there is an election from the past that provides an analogy, then it isn’t 2000. Tomorrow’s election is more likely to resemble the 1980 contest, when all the pre-election polls predicted a tight race, but the challenger beat the incumbent with a landslide. Only this time, the Democrat will prevail.
Doubtless the media-crowned pundits will scratch their heads, trying to make sense of a decisive Kerry victory. They’ll pin the election result on the war in Iraq, the economy, the Bush Administration’s failure to admit mistakes and trouble with the truth. They’ll pin it on Osama, George Soros, the young people, the old people, the Hispanics, the Blacks, the smart people, the lawyers, the rich, the poor, the Christian Coalition that stayed home, GOTV, cellular phones, and the “Internets.” They’ll pin it on everything, of course, except the point: John Kerry, the man.
John Kerry will win this election simply because he is a better man than Bush.
From the moment Kerry prevailed in the Democratic primaries, the Bush campaign set out to destroy him. Mercenaries for the President - “527” organizations – came out of the woodwork and attacked Kerry’s record and persona. These mendacious rogues took on new names, such as “Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth,” but they’re the usual suspects who brought down Governor Ann Richards, Senator John McCain, and Vice President Al Gore. After the surrogates took their pot shots at Kerry, Bush et al gleefully joined in the orgy of character assassination.
Their relentless attacks painted a surreal image of a man. Kerry was a fop. He was an elitist effete, a “metrosexual” who sips Chablis in a smoking jacket while receiving a pedicure. Kerry was a flip-flopper, indecisive, a political opportunist. Kerry was a tax-and-spend liberal, Ted Kennedy without the charisma, a gold digger, a whipped husband, a wimp. Kerry was a hippie war protester and Hanoi Jane Fonda was his paramour. Kerry was French. Kerry was weak.
In the end, the GOP unabashedly made Kerry a caricature. They prepared Americans, most of whom knew nothing about Kerry, for the lowest of expectations. But in doing so, they committed political suicide. Because in the end, Kerry proved to America that he was none of the things the GOP accused him of being. And Kerry appeared all the more stronger.
In the first debate, Kerry shattered the image that Bush had created. By the third debate, Kerry had created a new image: that of a superior Commander in Chief. While Bush stumbled out of the gates in the first debate, turned shrill in the second, and grinned like a drugged mental patient in the third, Kerry remained poised, confident, strong, and communicated clearly. Moreover, Kerry saved his best performance for last. In the third debate, Kerry took full advantage of the camera for the first time. When he finally looked Americans directly into the eye and spoke plainly about where he would lead us, he convinced any of those who had doubts about him that he was presidential.
I was not surprised by Kerry’s performance. But many of my friends grew impatient with him in the months leading up to the debates. “Why isn’t he answering Bush’s attacks?” they would ask, ever frustrated. “Is he ever going to say something? Why did he go windsurfing?” The conservative media had a field day. Even liberals like ice queen Maureen Dowd criticized Kerry to no end.
I, however, remained confident. I knew Kerry was saving it up for the stretch run. He didn’t want to run out of money like Gore did. He understood the importance of momentum leading into Election Day. He also took advantage of the bad news for Bush, from sluggish job reports to Richard Clarke, from the Abu Ghraib scandal to the mess in Mesopotamia. But most of all, I remained confident because I knew Kerry was a fighter.
Kerry’s selection of John Edwards as his running mate wasn't just about geography, charisma, energy, and looks. Kerry picked Edwards as his comrade-in-arms because Edwards shared Kerry’s fighting spirit. And it is this spirit that the GOP, in Bushspeak, “misunderestimated.” Before their careers in public service, Kerry and Edwards were both trial lawyers. Much has been documented about Edwards’ success in the courtroom, but Kerry was a great trial lawyer in his own right. After serving three years as a prosecutor in Boston, Kerry went into private practice for four more years, and he ran a very successful firm. Kerry gained a reputation of being a skilled, prepared, diligent, smart, credible, ethical, and above all, tough attorney.
It was this experience as a trial lawyer that prepared Kerry for his toughest contest. Trial lawyers are pugilists at heart. Those who have experienced life in the pits of our nation’s courtrooms are no sissies. When you’ve stood on your feet before a temperamental judge, gone toe-to-toe with a sharp, zealous opponent, pleaded with a jury for redress, forgiveness, and justice, felt the fear of failure, when you’ve done this for several years as Kerry and Edwards did, no one can push you around. Bush and Cheney, who are wont to blame lawyers for all of society’s ills, failed to understand this. And in doing so, they failed to understand Kerry the man. When the time was right, Kerry struck. Bush could not counter Kerry’s assault. And Americans sat as judges, giving point after point to Kerry.
It is sweet and fitting that Bush would be destroyed by the dark side of “imagengineering.” After all, Bush ascended to the Presidency because of a carefully tailored image that Karl Rove and others sold to the American public. Whether it was his impersonation of a Top Gun pilot or Texas rancher, Bush the image was molded after Marshal Kane, Gary Cooper’s hero of High Noon: Bush was a man of few words, but a man of action. He had the virtues and mores that a preacher would envy. Above all, he was a man of courage, gutsy enough to “go it alone” if necessary. But after four years of incompetence, lies, and cover ups, Bush no longer resembled Marshal Kane, but Barney Fife. However, Bush refused to admit his faults, because doing so would shatter his image – not only for his supporters, but for himself. Bush was guilty of believing his own hype. And he transferred this misguided faith in himself to an even more erroneous belief that Kerry was in fact the pathetic image he and his legions had created.
But Kerry the man proved to be better than Bush the image.
When Senator John Kerry is sworn in as our 44th President, he will lead our country with the same fighting spirit that carried him through this grueling campaign. He will also lead us with the sound judgment, virtue, integrity, wisdom, and humbleness he has displayed down the stretch. President Kerry will not be a manufactured image carefully created by a media-savvy sycophant, but a true life in being created by the man himself over 60 years of a distinguished life. We are all the winners for it.