In Any Language, Two Candidates Are a World Apart -NYT, Bumiller

[Rose Siding]

It felt as if there was a confident White House-in-exile aboard Senator John Kerry's campaign plane late Friday night as it winged east from Denver to Boston.

The candidate had his stocking feet up on the table in his staff cabin as he joked with his new traveling companion, John Sasso, the Massachusetts political operative brought in to punch up the candidate. Michael D. McCurry, the latest Clinton-era addition to a Clinton-larded campaign, was cheerfully schmoozing the press. Joe Lockhart, another old Clinton hand, had done that earlier in the day in a conference call from Washington, in which he declared himself pleased with "the best team on the field.''

If there was any sense of panic about polls showing Mr. Kerry trailing by eight points or more, the candidate was not letting on. Mr. Kerry's tone was mellow as he talked about the president he had spent the day attacking as not telling the truth about Iraq.
...............
Mr. Kerry and Mr. Bush do share some traits, of course, not least an intensive involvement in their own campaigns. Mr. Bush's aides say he likes strategy, while Mr. Kerry's aides say he likes policy.

Naturally, they're both alpha wolves. When Mr. Kerry was asked as his plane descended who was in charge of his morning campaign meetings, he replied, "I am always in charge.''

http://nytimes.com/2004/09/20/politics/campaign/20letter.html

[PartyPooper]

1. I hope John Kerry spends time at DU in the 'GD Campaign 2004' forum!

It seems I recognize his discourse.

:evilgrin:

<edited for spelling>

[kskiska]

2. Kerry's vs *'s Spanish

(snip)

Third, while Mr. Bush has for years tossed a few sentences of Spanish with a West Texas accent into his speeches - the Spanish wire service Agencia EFE has noted that the president speaks the language poorly "but with great confidence'' - last week Mr. Kerry spoke an entire and very careful paragraph of Spanish, much practiced beforehand, in the neutral accent of Spanish-language television anchors.

"Como he dicho antes, esta es la elección mas importante de nuestras vidas,'' Mr. Kerry began. (Or, "As I said before, this is the most important election of our lifetime.")

Mr. Kerry's audience at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's annual gala in Washington listened in startled silence, then broke out into cheers and applause when he made his way through.

Mr. Bush, it should be noted, gets a similar reaction to his Spanish. Thousands of Cuban-Americans once broke out into cheers in Miami when the president told them that "no quiero destruir un idioma que bonita, y por eso voy a hablar en inglés'' - "I don't want to destroy a beautiful language, so I'm going to speak in English.''

[Chomskyite]

3. Note the carefully-inserted slights on Kerry

Clinton-larded campaign?
polls showing Mr. Kerry trailing by eight points or more?
richly financed campaign?

This is typical Elizabeth Bumiller. She and Candy Crowley both rode on the Bush plane and were forever under his spell from that point on. They both might as well get an RNC paycheck for this kind of crap.

And that little barbed paragraph with Kerry walking away from the woman who asked a question and answering it from the podium? Maybe that's where the microphone was.

[grasswire]

4. Bumiller's husband...

...is a Yalie classmate of W's.

[wildflower]

5. And "White house-in-exile"? n/t