Since the 2004 election largely turned on who would be the best protector, the Bush campaign sought to make Americans view criticism of the president as if it were a weapon of mass destruction. Zell Miller, a Democratic senator and the keynote speaker for the Republican National Convention, delivered the angriest prime-time speech at a modern political convention. Watched by a national television audience of millions, Miller revealed that political opposition is treason: “Now, at the same time young Americans are dying in the sands of Iraq and the mountains of Afghanistan, our nation is being torn apart and made weaker because of the Democrats’ manic obsession to bring down our commander in chief.”
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The Zell Miller “criticism-as-treason” theme permeated the campaign. New York City’s former police commissioner, Bernie Kerik, stumping around the nation for Bush, told audiences, “Political criticism is our enemy’s best friend.” The Washington Post noted on September 24, 2004, “President Bush and leading Republicans are increasingly charging that Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry and others in his party are giving comfort to terrorists and undermining the war in Iraq – a line of attack that tests the conventional bounds of political rhetoric.” When the United States’s handpicked leader of Iraq, Iyad Allawi, visited the White House, Bush declaimed that Kerry’s criticisms of his Iraq policy “can embolden an enemy.”
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Each time Kerry talked of Bush’s failures in Iraq, Bush claimed that Kerry was attacking U.S. troops, and many citizens believed him. Each Kerry criticism of a specific debacle became further proof of his lack of patriotism. Following media reports about the looting of an Iraqi ammo dump after its capture by American forces, Kerry criticized the Bush administration for neglecting to secure the explosives, some of which may have later been used to attack U.S. troops. Bush erupted: “Senator Kerry is again attacking the actions of our military in Iraq, with complete disregard for the facts. Senator Kerry will say anything to get elected.” Bush spokesmen condemned Kerry for criticizing before all the facts were out – at the same time the administration continued withholding facts. The Bush team wanted Americans to believe that anyone who criticized the Iraq war was opposed to defending America.
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The expanding concept of treason plugged the president’s growing credibility gap. It was as if the Democrats were not allowed to say anything critical about Iraq, and the Bush campaign was not obliged to say anything honest about it. Thus, Bush needed only to perpetuate his wars to perpetually silence his critics.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/bovard/bovard73.1.htmlReading this, I immediately think of Kerry's incredible 2006 dissent speech at Faneuil Hall. It really would have been the answer to this obnoxious criticism is treason theme, but I wonder if people were anywhere near ready to listen in 2004. It also would have pulled his protesting in 1971 right into the spotlight at a point where the country as a whole was still jingoistic and very aggressive. This does explain where the RW attacks came from.
What is does show is how wrong the people who think a cross between Michael Moore and Howard Dean would have won. They don't get that either would have been easier to portray as unpatriotic than Kerry and both regularly said things that really would have hurt.
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