Tattica, ottimismo e critiche a Bush

Time's Klein writes on Kerry's "small embarrassment" last week where he "attacked" Pres. Bush's troop deployment changes after taken a "different position" just weeks earlier. Klein notes, "the stumble raises two basic questions about Kerry's campaign. First, is he a latter-day Ron Burgundy ... who would read anything that appeared on his TelePrompTer? Did Kerry not remember what he had said? ... No, it was, apparently, yet another Kerry nanonuance: he is in favor of redeployments, just not now. The second question is far more dire: Why is Kerry wasting breath on such periphera? Why isn't he hammering Bush on his conduct of the Iraq war and the larger war against Islamist radicalism, which is the most important issue in this election? The answer is politics. His political consultants don't want him to do it. Their focus groups tell them that the public wants an 'optimistic' candidate who offers a 'positive plan' rather than a 'negative' candidate who criticizes the President." But, as Dem strategist James Carville points out, "every focus group in the history of the world has wanted a candidate with a 'positive plan for the future.'" Focus-group members "are also human beings. In a roomful of strangers, they present their most noble selves. They hate political attacks -- but not really." More Klein, on Iraq: "I suspect the public needs to hear, in plain and forceful language, Kerry's opinion of what Bush has done and whether it has been good for America. Instead, Kerry has offered only vague criticisms and an increasingly implausible promise to lure our allies into the chaos. In a year of real crises -- the 'most important election of our lifetime,' he says -- Kerry's nostrums sound distressingly like market-tested pap" (8/30 issue).