GOOD SENSE OR NAIVETE?

Having grown up during the Viet Nam War era (remember when the Johnson and Nixon administrations persisted in calling it a "conflict"?), I have been tortured for two years now with the foreboding and, in fact, the conviction that the USA would bitterly regret invading and occupying Iraq. I'm sick and tired of hearing, "Everybody got it wrong...everybody thought Saddam had stockpiles of WMD...everybody believed he was a threat..." It's simply not true. Millions of people worldwide marched in protest -- hordes of military experts, clergy, academics, foreign service personnel, ex-weapons inspectors, enlightened politicians, and even ordinary think-for-themselves Americans came to the conclusion that, as Colin Powell said pre-9/11, Saddam had been successfully contained, and if there was some speculation that, contrary to his government's denials, he might again be reconstituting weapons programs, well, the weapons inspectors were once again in-country (despite GWB's weird post-invasion assertions to the contrary) and should be given the chance to finish their work.

Now here we are and what a disaster it is. I cannot see how any rational person over the age of seven could believe that the same crowd that got us into this rapidly disintegrating situation can be trusted to get us out, but that appears to be an article of faith with about half of our electorate and a huge slice of the media at this point in time. John Kerry, they say, must come up with a better plan to "win the war" to have any credibility.

I say, poppycock. Even if Kerry devised a plan that seemed reasonable TODAY, the realities on the ground could change at any time and make it completely inoperable. Nixon may have had a plan to end the VN War when he opposed Humphrey for the presidency in 1968, but he sure didn't share it with the American public. But he won anyway. Nixon was smart enough to realize that any "plan" he revealed would be picked to death during the election process if it wasn't rendered useless by the realities on the ground, which the opposition alone could affect. So Nixon took the White House with a "secret" plan. Americans just didn't trust Lyndon Johnson's VP to reverse a disastrous course to which their administration showed total commitment.

I see much the same situation today and I wonder if it might not be a more effective political strategy for Kerry just to assert that he is developing a plan with the assistance of a top-notch, credible task force (preferably with some nod to bipartisanship) that he will not reveal prior to the election in order not to prejudice any ongoing military/diplomatic efforts. His primary message should be, "You can't trust the wrecking crew to rebuild the house" or some such. He should keep hammering on all the pre-invasion expectations and promises of the Bushies.

He should have his surrogates pick out and repeat not-quite-ad nauseum three or four of the most egregious examples of Bush's total sellout to crony capitalism -- ones that have an obvious impact upon not just Joe Six-Pack but the more moderate and informed independents -- such as the USA being forbidden by that $87 billion piece of legislation to do anything about fraud on the part of our contractors and the Medicare Prescription Benefit bill FORBIDDING states to negotiate for better drug pricing; and mercury in the water: "soccer moms" as well as NASCAR dads would care if they got ever HEARD about the issue -- nobody wants children and babies to be brain-damaged just to save Bush's donors a few bucks.

I disagree with the pundits insisting that Kerry needs all sorts of "plans." GWB has never had a plan beyond tax cuts for the super-rich and all war all the time. Plans can be picked at until the electorate has no idea what the plan was about. JFK II needs to develop his own talking points (points, I said, not speeches) and drive, drive, drive them home. Americans, for the most part, are already suffering from information overload, it is said. Fine then, the solution is to develop "the big truth" and see if endless repetition is as effective with it as with the big lie.