“I voted for the 87 Billion before I voted against it” is about to be officially retired. John Kerry has handed the Bush campaign something better. His “nuance” has morphed into “nuisance”.
From New York Times magazine:
“We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they’re a nuisance,”
And if the choice of the word “nuisance” wasn’t bad enough –
“As a former law-enforcement person, I know we’re never going to end prostitution. We’re never going to end illegal gambling. But we’re going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn’t on the rise. It isn’t threatening people’s lives every day, and fundamentally, it’s something that you continue to fight, but it’s not threatening the fabric of your life.”
That’s right – finding out that your children are being held hostage in a school rigged with explosives is right up there with opening your telephone book and finding suggestive escort agency ads.
Volokh examines this bizarre analogy more thoroughly.
Wretchard sums it up.
Bai’s article reminds me of one of those products which are described on the packaging as being a new space age, high-technology, portable illumination aid which on closer inspection turns out to be a flashlight. When the newfangled description of terrorism as a “blended threat” is subtracted, the entire program consists of the policies of the late 1990s. Bilateral talks with North Korea. Oslo. G-8. The United Nations. Warrants of arrest. Extradition requests. Not a single new element in the entire package, except the fancy rationale. There is nothing wrong with that, any more than there is anything objectionable about a flashlight, but a more candid characterization of Kerry’s proposals is not a voyage into uncharted waters so much as return to the world of September 10; in Kerry’s words “back to the place we were”. It has the virtue of producing known results, and suffers only from the defect that those results do not include being able to prevent massive attacks on the American mainland.
Exactly. He’s going back to Clinton’s policies, which were a total failure.