Posted July 30, 2004.
*Guest columnist Greg Wasserstrom is a sophomore in the School of Public Affairs. He is the president of the AU College Democrats this year.*
For those of you who might have been watching bikini clad models eating roaches on Fear Factor or busily flicking channels for a Mary Kate update, let me catch you up: this week, thousands of Democrats descended on the FleetCenter in Boston to nominate Senator John F. Kerry as their candidate for the presidency of the United States. After four days of heavy hitting Democratic speakers - mayors, congress people, governors, senators, past presidents, some rising stars and some fallen ones - John Kerry accepted his party's call to duty.
Kerry's message of returning to the values upon which this country was founded so that we may strive to be our best was repeatedly imparted to the crowd of thousands of energized spectators as they waved signs and cheered, eventually catching on to the rhythm of his speech and chanting its refrain, "help is on the way."
And such help is surely in order. Kerry's 47-minute acceptance speech was a positive examination of how America can be a better place for all its inhabitants and how it can occupy a position of responsible leadership in the world, underscored by the serious problems with the mismanagement style of our current leadership.
"I will be a commander and chief who will never mislead us into war," Kerry assured the audience just minutes before accepting the nomination, "I will have a vice president who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a secretary of defense who will listen to the advice of the military leaders, and I will have an attorney general who will uphold the Constitution of the United States."
If Al Gore had spoken these words at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, the response from the crowd would have been something along the lines of, "Well, duuuuh." But on this night in Boston, thousands of people got up out of their seats. They nodded their heads; they clapped their hands, shouting his name at the top of their lungs.
For four years, George W. Bush and his cronies have presided over this nation in much the same fashion a fox would preside over a hen house. They've looted the treasury for the benefit of the wealthiest elite; they've taken advantage of a national tragedy to enact a radical agenda that benefits that same privileged few while attempting to block the families of those lost from attaining justice (or an explanation). They refused to make us safe from terror beyond a few cosmetic surface changes, while keeping the public just afraid enough not to question their authority. Worst of all, they've sent hundreds of young men and women to die in an illegal and illegitimate war based on misstatements, falsification, and lies to take attention away from real issues and further enrich an elite class and create new investment opportunities for a an economy that's been stripped of its luster and depth. The Weapons of Mass Destruction turned out to simply be the Politics of Mass Distraction and greed.
Things are really, really, serious. Lie upon lie, deceit after deceit, the grocery list of horrors perpetrated against the American people goes on and on, extending well beyond our borders, touching every single person on this planet. Taken out of context, this list of accomplishments would sound more like the to-do list of a third world despot like Saddam Hussein, not the proud accomplishments of an American president. But help is on the way. Republicans tell Bush's critics not to underestimate him. I'd like to tell the Republicans not to underestimate the American people. We'd have to be pretty stupid to go for four more years of this catastrophe.
Doubt the Democrats will go all the way this November? O contraire, ye of little faith. I'll be the first to admit that John Kerry has the charisma of a less-than-average fence post. I'll also concede that his campaign has proved to be in some ways as bumbling as the Gore and Dukakis camps. However, just as he silently wont the Democratic primary, he withstood a multi-million dollar effort to be tainted by Bush's negative adds at the beginning of the summer, and he maintained a lead in the polls for almost two months that has now expanded beyond the margin of error. Now an official nominee with John Edwards at his side, you can expect that lead to continue to grow. A leaked memo from a top Bush campaign advisor told his boss to expect to be down 15 points by the end of August. And Now that we've cleared the Convention hurdle, expect Kerry and Edwards to spend their unprecedented sums of money at record speeds, leaving Bush to bumble a weak defense of his Stone Age policies to the third of the voting population still listening.
For the fist time in too long, the future of the Democratic Party is astonishingly bright. The often fractious left-of-center coalition, historically lacking in leadership, has a brilliant cast waiting in the wings to lead what has been referred to by pundits as the emerging Democratic majority. For John Edwards, running for the nation's second highest office is only the second step of a political career that began only several short years ago. No one can say what the future holds.
The unstoppable Hillary Clinton, whose polarizing nature has begun to subside as the two-dimensional scandals of the Clinton years grow more distant in memory, will surely take on roles of greater and greater importance in the years to come. Bill Richardson, New Mexico's centrist governor has depth and judgment reassuring to mainstream voters while his background and experience mobilizes and inspires an elusive demographic. And no one, Democrat or Republican, can ignore newcomer Barak Obama, a state legislator from Illinois blazing his way into the United States Senate this year; his charisma, his energy, his presence on stage as Tuesday's keynote speaker was simply electric. If you don't know Obama, just wait. You will.
While these reflections please me more than I can express in words or on paper, I know that the outcome for the immediate future of country is not so certain. The Republican noise machine is horrifyingly efficient at bedazzling voters into casting votes against their own interests, and the Democrats ability to counter this has yet to be demonstrated, though it was previewed in Boston this week. There is a bitter, ferocious fight ahead, and John Kerry and John Edwards have a united, energized Democratic party behind them; And ahead of them, too.
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