As you here in this room know, combat is never neat and pretty. It is actually quite messy. Nothing is ever black and white, but is often an ugly shade of grey. I trust the officers who commanded the Senator and recommended him for his awards. I, too, have had to face scurrilous accusations about my time in the service. It is not something I would wish on another. By attacking Senator Kerry's honorable service, they actually attack mine, and by attacking Senator Kerry's courage, honor, and sacrifice, they attack mine as well.
I know that many of you have seen these ads, and I am sure that you have been confused by these claims. The group that created these ads believes that what they are doing will help me in my election bid. I have requested that they stop the ads, but they have not seen fit to do so. I apologize to Senator Kerry for whatever pain this has caused him and his family, and I repudiate the ads and the group that created them. I can understand why some people feel that an attack like this makes good political sense, but it is not right.
Let me make it clear, Senator Kerry and I have serious disagreements on where we feel the country should be heading, and how we plan to lead the country in the next four years. Regardless of these differences, I firmly believe that Senator Kerry is an honorable man who has America's interests at heart. Some of you will be voting for me, and some of you will be voting for the Senator. Make sure that your vote is influenced only by the truth, and not by malicious lies created by my supposed allies. Finally, I would like to thank you for your time, and to thank Senator Kerry for allowing me to speak here today."
With that I stepped back from the podium, as the room roared into a standing ovation. I shook the Senator's hand, and then waved to the audience and moved off the stage. Marilyn hugged me backstage and Ari, Josh, and I left the Spectrum.
"Well, you certainly stole the show, I'll give you that much.", commented Josh. "John Kerry could do a pole dance out there on that stage right now, and he would still only get second billing on the evening news."
"Of course, you probably lost the votes of the Swift Boaters out there.", added Ari.
I snorted out a laugh at that, and added in my best John Wayne accent (not a great one, but passable), "A man's got to do what a man's got to do!"
Marilyn simply groaned. "Enough out of you. Let's go back to Washington. I want to watch the news tonight."
The fallout was interesting. The Swift Boat Vets put out a statement saying that while they totally disagreed with my characterization of their group, they would acquiesce to my misguided judgment and stop running ads. The networks all dug up my history in Nicaragua again, and ran that mess for a few days, and some fact checking outfits began reviewing the Swift Boaters' claims. Meanwhile I was being lauded for my political courage and statesmanlike behavior. I commented to John McCain and a few others that if you actually did the right thing every once in a while, you could get some positive coverage, since nobody expected it anyway! Within a week, well before the convention, it was old news.
The Republican Convention was at the end of August in New York. I wasn't spending all that much time on it, but I was keeping an eye on things. Our overall plan was to run a very professional convention. Neither the RNC nor the reelection committee wanted any surprises! The neocons weren't even being invited, not even at the 4:00 AM sessions. I might not be as conservative as some of my brethren wanted, but the economy was generally in good shape and we weren't at war with anybody. The image we were presenting was that we were the professionals, the grown-ups, a couple of guys who had been around the block and taken a few knocks and knew what we were doing. Why mess with a good thing?
Our convention was held in the Big Apple, and was so slick and smooth as to be a snoozer. Mike Bloomberg had his share of crazies in the town, but they were under a severe security regime. Madison Square Garden was quiet. Most of the speeches pointed to the legislation we had passed, the solid economic performance of the nation, and the international respect we had maintained. 'Four more years!' was our mantra, and we repeated it with the devotion of a chanting mystic.
After the conventions were over, we examined the results. In most years, a party enjoys a surge in popularity after a convention of several points in the polls. This year was no different. The Democrats picked up 4%, and then settled back down, and we picked up 3% after ours. The next step would be the debates, to be held in late September and early October. John Kerry and I would meet Tuesday, September 28, in Houston, and John McCain would take on John Edwards a week later on October 5, in Spokane.
I managed to get into trouble shortly after the convention. Jimmy Carter, the ex-President, had become a Democratic gadfly over the years. He could be a real sanctimonious asshole at times, telling people how the Republican Party was a bunch of heartless bastards. He also thought he was a brilliant international negotiator. At the start of September, a bunch of Chechen terrorists took over 1,100 Russian adults and children hostage in Beslan, North Ossetia. By the time the Russians took control, hundreds of hostages were dead, along with the Chechens. Jimmy Carter managed to say, on camera, that the Russians had mishandled the entire situation, and that they should have negotiated and handled everything calmly and peacefully.
Needless to say, the Russians were not amused. Vladimir Putin called me and complained about the ex-President's remarks. Putin wasn't all that happy with America. Things might not be as warm as when he and I had our karate summit but we were still talking. The biggest problem was simply that Russia thought they were more important than they really were. They now were earning enough money through oil and gas exports to begin to rebuild their army and air force. It was still an incredibly inefficient system, but they had some money now and wanted more influence. Unfortunately for the Russians, they were still a second or third world economy at heart. Their only exports were oil, gas, and cheap but crappy weapons.
I sympathized with Vladimir without actually promising to do anything. I took his call while on a campaign swing in Tennessee, and afterwards, mentioned it to Josh Bolten. Unfortunately, I was overheard by a local reporter with a parabolic mike, as I said, "Somebody needs to tell Mister Peanut to shut his damn mouth and go build a house! It's the only damn thing he's ever been good at, anyway!" That made it to the news that evening, and I had to have Ari issue an apology the next morning. Mister Peanut was quoted the next day stating that the President of the United States should act and talk like the President of the United States, and not like the president of a drunken fraternity. At that point some of the networks dug up the fact that I had actually been the president of a drunken fraternity.
Like I said, a real sanctimonious prick.
The biggest worry we had in the campaign were the debates. At one point in American political life, political debates were considered high theater and a chance to actually argue your points of view with a contender in front of the populace. They would be written and published in newspapers, and discussed across the nation. Nowadays, they were nothing more than a chance to issue dueling sound bites and one-liners. Just like with everything else, we now had debate consultants to teach us what we were allowed to debate and say. Actual intelligence on the part of the debater was not considered important, and might be detrimental. If they were smart, they might try to actually answer the question rather than spout the canned response the campaign consultants wanted to deliver. Worse would be if they were stupid and tried to answer the question! As Abe Lincoln once said, "Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt."
Did debates matter? The jury was out on that. It was considered universal political wisdom that they helped kill Richard Nixon in 1960. He was a jowly man, with a heavy five o'clock shadow of a beard, and was coming off a bout of the flu. On the black and white televisions of the period he looked pale and coarse compared to the young and healthy looking Kennedy. People who heard the debate on the radio, or read it in the papers, thought Nixon won, but on television Kennedy slaughtered him. Likewise, Ronald Reagan, a fine leader but decidedly no intellectual, learned his lines like the true professional actor he had been for many years, and blew away both Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale.