Meanness on Monday

This weekend was a good one at the Redstater household. We put another triathlon under our belt (Olympic Distance...for more information see www.musiccitytri.com ) and replaced our Bush Cheney yard sign twice. The third anniversary of the 9-11 attacks passed fairly quietly...no doubt the President's folks were reluctant to say too much lest they be accused of "using 9-11 for political gain." So how do these three items fit together?



1. The Political Triathlon: First, a triathlon is a challenging endurance event that requires nominal talent in three skills: swimming, biking and running. Mostly, it requires discipline - about anyone can do one of these things and eventually finish...and finishing alone is a fine accomplishment. But, as the great Steve Prefontaine said: "To do anything less than your best is to sacrifice the Gift." Discipline to adhere to a regimen of preparation is essential to success; discipline to stick with your plan and endure the pain of the event is too. In some ways the electoral process is a triathlon for both candidates.



The "swim" portion for Msr. Kerry is performing the verbal gymnastics to get through the highly liberal primary process; the "bike" leg is analogous to that portion of the campaign where memory loss is encouraged to anyone who paid attention to the first leg. And the "run" leg is the post convention struggle to get to November and garner enough electoral votes to unseat the President.



W's version is a bit more difficult. The "swim" portion is to continue to be the Commander in Chief while our nation is at war. The "bike" leg is having the patience to endure the relentless mean personal attacks. The "run" is to get to November with the authority to continue his present job.



2. Yard Signs: Friday night our sign disappeared. I replaced it on Saturday and stowed a couple extras in the garage. Saturday night all the Bush Cheney signs on our street disappeared. The count was 5-2 Bush over Kerry...it now appears as if Kerry is kerrying the neighborhood. (It must have been a big night for yard sign theft...my drive to work count had Kerry up 12-3...down from 14 to 12. But here's the disturbing pattern:

Kerry's people want to silence the opposition instead of debate them. Note the difference in the way Mr. K went after the Swift Boat Vets versus the silence from W's camp after a year of bashing from the MoveOn.org crowd. Kerry seems to have a glass jaw - one punch from the Swiftvets and he's crying "foul," and threatening to sue TV stations. Aaaand there's "trouble in the wind" for Mr. Kerry...a new group called Vietnam Veterans for Truth held their first rally yesterday. C-Span carried a good chunk of it live and it was powerful stuff! These are the people who served out their tours, didn't leave their buddies behind and came home disgraced thanks in large part to the characterizations that Mr. K fabricated in his now famous Senate testimony. (Navy note: why the heck was Msr. K wearing Army fatigues to the Senate hearing? He was still a commissioned officer and BOY was he out of regs with that haircut!) Mr. K has better be braced for an onslaught from this group - from what I heard yesterday, they will not be going away. See www.kerrylied.com .



While we are on yard signs, a quick note about bumper stickers...have you noticed the nastiness of the Dem's stickers? In the bumper sticker battle at the triathlon, Bush won 8-4. The Bush signs were the W04 and Bush Cheney 04 signs you see everywhere. The Dem signs were, well mean: "There's dirt under every Bush," "Coward in Chief," and, the staple "Bush lied people died." The Vietnam Vet's sign: "Kerry lied while good men died" has far more truth to it than this overworked line.



3. 9-11: I would love to hear some perspective from others on why 9-11 cannot be mentioned by the President without a howl coming up from the Left. My theory is that they recognize it to be such a galvanizing force and it is the kryptonite of this election. Mr. K was busy missing Senate Intelligence Committee meetings while W was taking the fight to the enemy.



Well, physically I am going into "recovery" mode after the triathlon - I expect we'll all have to do some of that after the election!