US and the World

The prickly president

Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall'

once again, Josh Marshall is right on with his analysis of the debate and what it means to Kerry. I especially like this:

There was an air of prickliness and entitlement about the president that Kerry's surrogates should play up too. If you notice, one of the president's major attacks on Kerry through the debate was his claim that Kerry's criticism of the president's own war policy made him unfit to be president.

That's extraordinary -- certainly a set of rules that would put Kerry in something of a bind if he followed them, no?

And that's the best he could come up with: say I've made a mistake in Iraq and you're letting down the troops.

Notice the structure of the president's thinking: The point isn't whether he's made mistakes or screwed things up. But saying he has is bad.

Again, denial. Refusal to see what's happening. Lost. Adrift.

This is a definite pattern. These guys never tackle an issue headon. They always divert attention away from the issue by creating a secondary, apparently related issue. It's a tactic that needs to be exposed and denoucned - often.