Hat tip to Scared but Hopeful:
The disadvantage for the leader of a nation is that there are a lot of things he cannot say.
The base fact of the matter is a leader of any large organization cannot be hands on. Outside of major strategies and directions such as "preemption", a president's success and failure rests sorely on the team he depends on. This is why a failure by any member of his team ultimately gets amplified rests on his shoulder and becomes an even bigger failure on his part --- ie: he hired the guy, so he has to face the consequences. This is a basic truth, appointing the wrong person can have very drastic consequences, and is a failure of the leader.
I think Bush did say these are his failures. But to go in front of the nation and go through how he failed in appointing the wrong people would pull in 3rd parties into the debate, something tawdry and cheap that Bush was not able to do, unlike Kerry.
There are other things Bush cannot say in public. To not antagonize France, neither the president nor the vp can point out that a top french political figure has been implicated in the iraq oil for food corruption scandal.
To avoid further antagonizing the UN, they also cannot point out that Kofi Anand's son is also implicated in the same oil for food corruption scandal. However, Anand clearly supports Kerry and has made veiled statements against the Bush administration, I think Anand realizes what could happen to his son if Bush wins on Nov 2nd.
A candidate like Kerry on the other hand, can do outrageous things without consequences.
He can attempt to influence the australian federal election by having his sister warn australians to not support the current leadership in their October federal election.
He can insult leaders of Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Turkey, United Kingdom and Uzbekistan by calling them corrupt or coerced. (Now you know how Howard Dean feels like).
He can have his surrogate insult as a puppet : a key iraqi leader supported by the UN, whose support the US needs to succeed in Iraq.
He can do all these without consequences.
Or can he?
In his first foreign policy failure, his sister failed to achieve the desired regime change in Australia. John Howard's party won by a landslide.
In a public rebuke, Poland's President voiced his displeasure at Kerry's characterization of his nation as corrupt or coerced.
We've seen JK's attempt at masterful diplomacy, and frankly, his foreign policy results are not only unimpressive, they are foolish for attempting to destroy those leaders who are willing to take the political risk to ally themselves with the US.
There's no words for this beyond --- go out and vote on Nov2nd or live with the consequences.
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