”Oh sure. I follow and I’m interested,” says John Kerry. ”I’m fascinated by rap and by hip-hop. I think there’s a lot of poetry in it. There’s a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you’d better listen to it pretty carefully, ’cause it’s important . . . I’m still listening because I know that it’s a reflection of the street and it’s a reflection of life.”
Really? You’re ”fascinated” by rap and ”listening” to hip-hop? You’re America’s first flip-flopper hip-hopper?…
…If only that MTV guy had said to Kerry, ”Yeah, right. Name a song.” Think Kerry could’ve? Reckon if you bust into his pad and riffled through his and Teresa’s CD collection you’d find a single rap album? Of course, you wouldn’t find any in George and Laura’s CD collection either. The difference is that President Bush doesn’t feel the need to pretend…
… This isn’t entirely a matter of trivialities. The fads and fashions of the world aren’t confined to the Billboard Hot 100. All over the planet, men in late middle age are pretending to like stuff just ’cause it’s what the likes of Maureen Dowd tell them people want to hear. John Kerry pretends to like gangsta rap. Russia pretends it supports the Kyoto Accord. The European Union pretends Yasser Arafat is committed to peace with Israel. The Security Council pretends its resolutions mean something. Kofi Annan pretends the Oil-for-Fraud program is a humanitarian aid effort for the Iraqi people. The International Atomic Energy Authority pretends the mullahs in Tehran are good-faith negotiators on the matter of Iranian nukes.
It’s easy to pander to fashion — whether on pop music, the environment, the Middle East ”peace process” or sentimental transnationalism. But on MTV, Kerry wasn’t done yet. After coming out for hip-hop, he managed to blame the Bush administration’s ”behavior” for making terrorists become terrorists. I guess that terrorism’s just a ”reflection of the street,” too. Doubtless there’s ”a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it.” The MTV crowd loved the line, and no doubt Jacques Chirac and the Arab League will as well. Welcome to John Kerry’s hip-hop foreign policy: Ask the multilateral gang what’s hip, and hop to it.
Some folks at Free Republic are starting a betting pool on how long “Hot” Air America (as Ralph Nader called it so memorably yesterday) lasts. Based on the reviews I’ve read, from both sides of the spectrum, it may indeed soon be “Dead Air America.”
Having served both the 42nd and 43rd Presidents, Clarke was supposed to be the most authoritative proponent to advance the Democrats’ agreed timeline of the last decade – to whit, from January 1993 to January 2001, Bill Clinton focused like a laser on crafting a brilliant plan to destroy al-Qa’eda, but, alas, just as he had dotted every “i”, crossed every “t” and sent the intern to the photocopier, his eight years was up, so Bill gave it to the new guy as he was showing him the Oval Office – “That carpet under the desk could use replacing. Oh, and here’s my brilliant plan to destroy al-Qa’eda, which you guys really need to implement right away.”
The details of the brilliant plan need not concern us, which is just as well, as there aren’t any. But the broader point, as The New York Times noted, is that “there was at least no question about the Clinton administration’s commitment to combat terrorism”.
Yessir, for eight years the Clinton administration was relentless in its commitment: no sooner did al-Qa’eda bomb the World Trade Center first time round, or blow up an American embassy, or a barracks, or a warship, or turn an entire nation into a terrorist training camp, than the Clinton team would redouble their determination to sit down and talk through the options for a couple more years. Then Bush took over and suddenly the superbly successful fight against terror all went to hell.
Richard Clarke was supposed to be the expert who could make this argument with a straight face.