[Mb-civic] NYTimes.com Article: Can He Float Your Boat?

Sun Aug 1 09:49:44 PDT 2004

The article below from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by michael at intrafi.com.

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Can He Float Your Boat?

August 1, 2004
 By MAUREEN DOWD 

BOSTON - So here's the race: the Skipper takes on the
Sheriff. 

(And, of course, the undercard in the fight: Bambi meets
Godzilla.) 

Talk about drowning in metaphor. 

At least Teresa Heinz Kerry kept her subliminal message
simple: She wore a ketchup-red suit to introduce the second
senator in her life. 

Her husband, as usual, went overboard. The Democratic
convention, which was focus-group-dial-a- metered to death,
needed a dose of dramamine. It was awash in allusions about
Commander Kerry steering the ship of state - from the
curved design of the metal and wood-paneled lectern, meant
to evoke a ship's bridge; to the Massachusetts senator's
arrival in Boston Harbor on the prow of a ferry, making
like Washington crossing the Delaware; to the dramatic
Vietnam Swift boat scenes in the biographical film; to Jim
Rassman's iconic story of being saved when Lieutenant Kerry
reached down and pulled him from the water over the bow, to
the nominee's hokey salute and "reporting for duty." 

Like the picture of Bill Clinton pumping J.F.K.'s hand at
Boys Nation, there is a star-struck teenage Galahad picture
of John Kerry with his idol on a Coast Guard yawl in
Newport. 

The convention center halls were adorned with more than 30
blown-up pictures of John Kerry in uniform. This signaled
that the Navy lieutenant, who had requested a transfer to a
Swift boat because he was inspired by J.F.K. and PT-109, is
gunning for the flextime Texas National Guardsman. 

"I learned a lot about these values on that gunboat
patrolling the Mekong Delta with young Americans," Senator
Kerry told the Democratic delegates in his acceptance
speech, adding: "We were literally all in the same boat.
That is the kind of America I will lead as president - an
America where we are all in the same boat." 

Ensign Kerry, Max Cleland exhorted the crowd, is "the next
captain of our ship of state." 

Bill Clinton got on board: "Since we're all in the same
boat, we should choose a captain of our ship who is a
brave, good man, who knows how to steer a vessel through
troubled waters to the calm seas and the clear skies of our
more perfect union." 

John Edwards was a synchronized swimmer in the Kerry ocean
of love: "In the heat of battle, they saw him decide in an
instant to turn his boat around, drive it straight through
an enemy position, and chase down the enemy to save his
crew. Decisive. Strong. Aren't these the traits you want in
a commander in chief?" 

Even Alexandra Kerry echoed the aquatic heroic theme,
telling of how her dad saved the family's pet hamster,
Licorice, who was bubbling "down to a watery doom," after
falling off a dock. He "hunched over the soggy hamster and
began to administer C.P.R.," she said, denying rumors of
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. 

The Kerry campaign even tried to spin Teresa Kerry's "shove
it" in a more nautical vein, claiming that the chatelaine
of the Nantucket manse had meant to say, "shove off." 

Mr. Kerry had to go the skipper route since W. had already
laid claim to the West, making the cocky cowboy sheriff his
motif, the dusty gorge at his Crawford ranch his milieu,
and the Louis L'Amour "smoke 'em out" language his argot. 

It doesn't seem to matter to his fans that he often doesn't
come through on his gunslinging taunts; they feel reassured
simply by the "High Noon" patois. 

Mr. Bush's prized possession is Saddam's old pistol. He
keeps it in the study off the Oval Office as a trophy of
their desert duel in the sun. 

At the White House press briefing on Friday, a reporter
asked Scott McClellan: "But does the president have to
present himself as not quite the, you know, kind of,
trigger happy, tough, shoot him from the hip cowboy, and
sort of fill out that image a little more?" 

Mr. McClellan replied that the president was leading in a -
yup, you guessed it - "strong and decisive" way. 

Given that the Kerry convention featured a skipper brave
and sure, a first mate who makes others comfortable, a
millionaire called "Lovey" by her spouse, two pretty young
Kerry castaways and a movie star (the ubiquitously annoying
Ben Affleck), I suppose we should be grateful that Camp
Kerry didn't introduce the nominee with the "Gilligan's
Island" theme song. 

Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a
fateful trip 

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/01/opinion/01dowd.html?ex=1092378984&ei=1&en=a74c83d245ac3806

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