John Kerry speculating about what he would have done differently during those first seven minutes seems like a special kind of revisionism; a comparable example would have President Bush suggesting what he would have done differently than Senator Kerry had he been captaining his Swift boat.
Don Imus (of all people!) says he has a foolproof method for getting his man John Kerry elected. All he, Kerry, needs to do is keep his mouth shut between now and election day and let President Bush do the rest. It’s an interesting bit of strategy, when you think about it … Senator Kerry seems to get in and out of planes, trains and buses okay, but stumbles every second or third day when forced to speak and, subsequently, explain himself.
The latest commotion involves Kerry’s insistence that, had he been president and sitting in a Sarasota elementary school that fateful morning three Septembers ago, he wouldn’t have waited seven minutes, upon being told of the attacks on the World Trade Center, to spring into action. “I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the President of the United States had something that he needed to attend to,” he said. A strident piece of guesswork made remarkable because it comes three years after the fact and during a presidential campaign, when it’s most advantageous to say the president dragged his feet as the world was ending.
Republicans are concerned; this seems to too closely resemble a chapter-and-verse recitation of Michael the Hut’s docu-fantasy, the idea being that Democrats should be wary about supporting anyone who takes even small parts of Moore’s argument and recycles it for a whistle stop audience. If not disingenuous, it’s at least intellectually lazy. Sure, if we were living in a political environment where Kerry’s base fundamentally disavowed things like Fahrenheit 9/11, an argument could be more forcefully made for the separation of fact from fiction (or even fiction from vitriol) when it comes to stump speeches. The nutcase Left, a large part of Kerry’s base, swallows that stuff whole; there’s no point in hoping they will attain logic and prudence between now and November second, but responsible men shouldn’t egg them on.
Alas, I digress. Consider the point: Andy Card leaned into the president’s ear and told him about New York City; seven minutes passed before he made his move for the door, and that’s much too long. Based upon what standard? Twenty-nine minutes passed between the time United Airlines 175, the second plane, slammed into the south tower (at 9.02am) and the time President Bush announced there had been an “apparent terrorist attack.” Seems like an awfully long time. Twenty-six more minutes passed before he departed Florida on Air Force One; why not twenty, or fifteen?
Apart from the president, sixty-five minutes passed between the time American Airlines 77 flew into the Pentagon (9.45am) and the forced evacuation of Washington DC’s federal buildings took place; one hour and fifty-one minutes between the strike at the second tower and the postponement of New York’s primary elections. (The polls could have been targets, after all; why wasn’t it done sooner, President-elect Giuliani?) Why are those acceptable lengths of time between incident and reaction but the president’s seven minutes are wholly unreasonable?
Every partisan has an answer, which only complicates things for anyone hoping to hear something dispassionate. Some Democrats will tell you the seven minutes represent ineptitude, that President Bush sat still for so long because he could think of no better way to react. As someone who had to pull over to the side of the road that morning until the feeling returned to my hands and feet, it seems like a non-starter, but: Fine. If that’s the charge, Kerry should question the president’s ability to act decisively under pressure and get it over with. Speculating about what he would have done differently seems like a special kind of revisionism, though; a comparable example would have President Bush suggesting what he would have done differently than Senator Kerry had he been captaining his Swift boat.
John Kerry doesn’t really care about those seven minutes. He, like the president, cares about the thing that will get him traction with a roomful of people, and hopefully the next, and the next. Themes, like bad ideas, carry over. This one didn’t, and in fact bred a little resistance, because most non-partisans cannot be fooled into thinking the argument is relevant. Nothing George W. Bush could have done in those seven minutes would have kept ordinary people from choosing a one hundred and ten story suicide leap over the Hell at their backs. Senator Kerry would do very well to remember he gains no ground in unnecessarily opening old wounds his party never helped close.
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