Woe to the Unfocused Campaign

Wayne Barrett, in yesterday's Village Voice, joins the other 62 million instant experts on what John Kerry's campaign SHOULD be doing, but Barrett's fantasy makes for pretty interesting reading:

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The ad starts with Bush and his September 14, 2001, bullhorn. This time, though, it's a Kerry commercial that reminds swing-state Americans of Bush's blood vow -- precisely three years ago -- that "the people who knocked down these buildings" would "hear all of us soon." The cowboy soundbites that we would "smoke 'em out" track across the screen with any network's footage of the "wanted dead or alive" culprits: Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar.

Then the camera moves on to anchors reporting that bin Laden was cornered at Tora Bora, picked up on cell-phone intercepts commanding the surrounded 2,000 Al Qaeda troops, but that U.S. commanders were allowing mercenary Pashtuns to lead the fighting and Pakistanis to seal the backside border. Next, news headlines blare that Special Forces and key CIA operatives were prematurely pulled out of Afghanistan to prepare for the war on Iraq. The last visual is of Bush momentarily forced at a March 2002 press conference to discuss bin Laden: "I just don't spend that much time on him, to be honest with ya."

The voice-over is Monica Gabrielle's, a 9-11 widow and leader. "My husband died in tower two and the people who killed him have not heard from us three years later. The president will not even talk about these murderers. Sometimes he claims his administration has captured two-thirds of Al Qaeda's lesser leaders; sometimes, three-quarters. The 9-11 Commission says one-quarter. Terrorists killed more people -- 625 -- in 2003 than in any year other than 2001. They wounded more than ever -- 3,646 people. Even the president concedes that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with the attack that changed my life forever. Why have we expended hundreds of times the resources and troops in Iraq than we have in pursuit of the mass murderers who vow to hit us again? Anybody could accept a good-faith effort that failed. But we cannot accept a so-called war on terror that has never aggressively targeted the number one terrorists."

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Barrett makes this point too: "What ... makes no sense is that bin Laden's never been featured in a Kerry commercial and, if he is mentioned at all in Kerry speeches, he is an afterthought, with Iraq or the economy dominant." Barrett also points out that while the "war on terror" and Iraq got mentioned many, many times in speeches at the Republican convention, bin Laden was mentioned precisely once. He wasn't mentioned at all at the Democrats' convention. Go figure!

The Bush administration's most demonstrable failure goes completely unremarked.