John Kerry In The ATL
Among Friends, He 'Energizes The Base'

Anti-Bush sentiment prevailed in Atlanta on Sunday, Feb. 22 at the town hall meeting hosted by presidential hopeful, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. The Georgia for Kerry office told me that in order to "get past the [Secret] Service" I would need a press I.D. and possibly another I.D.. Yet, the ease with which Megan Hesse and I slipped through the press door was scary.
After waiting outside for an hour for a photo op that didn't happen, Megan and I got inside the media nexus – a barricaded area of bustling laptops, reporters and video cameras -

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with nary an I.D. check, bag search or questioning by the Service. And don't let Tom Brokaw fool you: journalism is not glamorous. It mostly involves sitting around, as evidenced by our new friends, the other journalists, who spent the majority of the time snacking on the free barbecue and checking their email while waiting for the loosely organized event to start.
We met a lot of nice people in the media nexus, including a woman from ABC who asked to see a copy of Flagpole, which she politely flipped through, and a man named Rahul from a talk radio network who passed us informative notes during the slow parts.
"Welcome to politics aerobics," one note said, referring to the rapport of the candidate with the appreciative crowd. "Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down."

Enter Stage Left
A good politician has the trace aspects of a rock star. John Kerry didn't start his town hall meeting with "Hey Ya!" by Atlanta-bred artists OutKast probably because someone on his staff told him the song was getting too much play recently. Instead, he opted for the almost as ubiquitous "Clocks" by British band Coldplay – that opens with one of the most emotional piano riffs ever recorded.
Kerry entered stage-left with former Georgia Senator Max Cleland, who has not been shy about his endorsement, preceded by Georgia Congressman John Lewis, a major player in the Civil Rights movement during the 1960s. The crowd jumped to its feet in a single motion while the music blasted out of the speakers. Everyone was clapping and shouting "We Want Kerry," sort of like they would at a rock concert when the lights dim right before the show.
"We have a full house for John Kerry," Lewis shouted into the microphone. "We must win, we must win and we will win!"
Cleland made what would be one of many references to Kerry's military record, saying that he and Kerry "bled and almost died on the same battlefield." Cleland called Kerry the "greatest American hero" – thankfully, they didn't play that song either - and handed the microphone over to the Senator while the AV guys played "Right Now" by Van Halen and the crowd went wild all over again.
John Kerry is 60 and looks late 40s. He wore a very non-threatening light blue shirt and light blue tie, no jacket. He is as hound dog-faced in person as he is in his pictures.
"We're here to mark the beginning of the end of the Bush Administration," he told the frenzied crowd.

Asking Questions
Eighteen people had the opportunity to ask John Kerry a question, including one that come from a supporter who was listening on speakers set up outside. Kerry selected them all himself, and the first person he picked was a representative of the Transgendered American Veteran Association who wanted to know about civil rights.
We also heard from a very smart eighth grade boy named Jamie who wanted to know how John Kerry would handle foreign relations as well as the problems at home. Vets, college kids, and older moms all gave Kerry the opportunity to talk about his favorite topics: the war in Iraq, jobs, the economy, health care, veterans' assistance and education.
Most impressive was a plan to create a two-year work program that keeps high school graduates in their communities, after which they get a full ride to an in-state college.
Kerry kept on saying that all of his plans for fixing our economy are dependent on rearranging Bush's tax cuts that benefit the rich.
"I have worked on a budget with the same people who worked on the Clinton Administration budget," he said.
Leslie Hendrix, a senior from Atlanta, wanted to know what the economy would be like when she got out of college, if she would have a job.
Kerry retorted, "If you liked the eight years of president Clinton, you're going to like the first four years of John Kerry." And the crowd roared.
Kerry also talked at some length about a program that he started in inner cities called YouthBuild, a program where unemployed kids aged 16–24 build affordable housing for homeless and low-income families in their own communities, while earning a GED or high school diploma.
Kerry continued throughout the Q&A to get his point across - with one hand motioning to the crowd and the other holding tight to the microphone - that he cares about the middle class that Bush has forgotten.

Wrapping It Up
John Kerry wrapped up the town hall meeting by bringing the crowd's attention back to what he calls an illegitimate war in Iraq.
"The United States can't just cut and leave," he said, pacing the stage and sweeping his eyes over the crowd. "The consequence of that would be disastrous to Iraq, the Middle East and the war on terrorism... We must go back to the United Nations in a legitimate way."
And the closing music? "I'll Take You There" by the Staple Singers and "Steppin' Stone" by The Monkees.
"Let's take America forward," was the last thing Kerry said to the crowd. And they cheered.

Sarah Warfield

Sarah Warfield is a local freelance writer.

Defending Radicalism
Moderation Too Mild

Senator John Kerry is perceived as the most electable Democrat because he seems more moderate than his rivals. That worries Republicans. "Bush's strategists," reports USA Today, "want to negate Kerry's self-portrait of a moderate." Democrat or Republican, rich or poor, black or white, Americans tend to think of themselves as culturally and politically centrist. In a survey conducted every year since the end of Vietnam, the Harris Poll consistently finds that more Americans call themselves "moderate" than liberal or conservative. And both liberals and conservatives consider themselves less extreme than those on the other side of the ideological fence. E pluribus moderatus nihil.
The 2004 campaign is shaping up as a clash of the more-moderate-than-thous. Machiavellian consultant Dick Morris is urging GOP honchos to invest some of their $200 million campaign war chest in Willie Horton-style attack ads depicting Kerry as "an ultra liberal extremist." Kerry, hoping that his weaseling on Iraq and gay marriage will cause voters to perceive him as a moderate, accuses Bush of running "an extreme radical administration." Look for more of the same in the weeks and months to come.
In American politics, style frequently trumps substance in the pursuit of a moderate image. "On paper [Kerry is] even more liberal than Dean," a top GOP strategist complained to the pro-Bush New York Post. A few days earlier, however, the paper contributed to the opposite perception, running side-by-side photos that declared Kerry's suits and shoes more "presidential," i.e., moderate - than the cheapy threads favored by the Vermont doctor.
Americans love the crassest forms of mass entertainment the human mind can conjure up: wrestling, football, midget-dating reality shows. Their spectator sports are extreme, yet they elect men who, though they acknowledge that those in power have messed everything up, pledge to change just about nothing. We believe that our presidents should be calm, reserved and, yeah, "moderate." Happy-go-lucky dudes like Dennis Kucinich and angry hell-raisers like Dean are fun for bar-hopping, fronting punk bands and flirting with during primary season, but we worry about what such wild cards might do in the Oval Office. That the president should be our national dad is a radically stupid premise.
At any given time we face a wide variety of problems and challenges. Certainly, many of these matters call for a calm, reasoned approach - you don't triple interest rates at the first sign of inflation or ban imports because free trade is causing corporations to move jobs overseas. Other issues - the long-term, seemingly intractable afflictions that seem to go on forever - may require radical solutions.
More than 100 million people are un- or underinsured. An overwhelming majority of Americans, including many conservatives, would happily pay higher taxes to solve the healthcare crisis. But John Kerry's proposal would cover a mere 27 million citizens, a small fraction of the uninsured. And Bush's plan is even more modest, covering only the 10 million workers who are unemployed. Nothing short of a radical healthcare plan, one that provides every American with free or affordable access to medical attention, will solve the problem.
Like Bill Clinton before him, Kerry approaches contentious issues with self-contradiction rather than bona fide moderation. Voting for the invasion of Iraq while standing against the funding of the occupation, for example, couples a radical right-wing stance - preemptive warfare - with an equally radical, liberal opposition to neoimperialism. These conflicting votes exacerbate two equally problematic positions without solving either.
Democrats assert that the current administration is the most radical in U.S. history. They're right, and their argument may persuade some swing voters come November. But the mere fact that Bush's approach to foreign and domestic policy appears extreme doesn't intrinsically make him dangerous. A more moderate response to the 9/11 attacks - firing a few cruise missiles à la Clinton or freezing some bank accounts - would have fallen woefully short of what was called for. The problem with the Bush Administration is that its focuses were completely wrongheaded: going after Afghanistan instead of Pakistan, Iraq instead of Saudi Arabia, hunting Al Qaeda instead of the Islamic Jihad leaders who carried out the attacks, spying on Americans instead of improving airline security, blaming cave-dwelling "evildoers" rather than reexamining long-standing U.S. relationships with hated puppet regimes. Their actions created new problems while those related to 9/11 remain unaddressed.
That's the intrinsic problem with radicalism: When you're wrong, you're really wrong. That's why you have to be careful.
Should Kerry prevail in the general election, radical solutions will be required to fix Bush's radical mistakes. To stem the bleeding of men and treasure in Iraq and Afghanistan, he'll need to withdraw our forces as quickly as possible. To get the federal budget back on track, he'll have to eliminate Bush's tax cuts. To restore our international reputation, he'll be forced to release the Guantánamo and other detainees, and apologize to the world for our post-9/11 excesses. Anything less - anything moderate - would be too radical to contemplate.

Ted Rall

Ted Rall is the editor of the new anthology of alternative cartoons Attitude 2: The New Subversive Social Commentary Cartoonists.