Truespeak

On Sunday, Howard Dean appeared on CNN with Wolf Blitzer and said what a lot of us have been thinking for a while.

I want to immediately get your reaction to both of these developing stories. First, the decision by the federal government, the Department of Homeland Security, to increase the threat level here in Washington, D.C., from yellow to orange, from elevated to high. What do you make of this?

HOWARD DEAN, FORMER GOVERNOR OF VERMONT: It's hard to know what to make. None of us outside the administration have access to the intelligence, which led to this determination.

I am concerned that every time something happens that's not good for President Bush he plays this trump card, which is terrorism. His whole campaign is based on the notion that "I can keep you safe, therefore at times of difficulty for America stick with me," and then out comes Tom Ridge.

It's just impossible to know how much of this is real and how much of this is politics, and I suspect there's some of both in it...

BLITZER: Well, when you say that, that's a very serious allegation, that the federal government, Tom Ridge, the president of the United States, may be playing politics with the whole issue of fear and terror threat levels. And I want you to explain specifically, so there's no confusion, what you mean by that.

DEAN: What I mean by that is the president himself has played politics with it. The president is basing his political campaign for re-election on the notion that he ought to be re-elected because terrorism is a danger, and his case to the American people is, "I'm the only person who can get us through this." So of course this is politics.

The question is, do I believe this is being fabricated? No, of course I don't believe that. But I do think that there is politics in this, and the question is, how much is politics and how much is a real threat?

I have no doubt there's a real threat here, but I also -- this is a long history of orange to yellow, yellow to orange, orange to yellow without a lot of explanation.

I find that the warnings -- watch out for somebody walking into buildings, watch out for somebody driving cars, watch out for somebody driving a truck -- that's not very helpful in New York City. It would be very helpful if the federal government would be much more specific about exactly what they'd like to us watch out for as they're raising all these levels.

For those of you that have been reading this blog regularly, this is something I have been saying for a while now. I even made reference to it yesterday. It seems as if the Republicans are using terror threats to bring the general public back to the right. After any major Democratic event, speech, or appearance that may have built support for Kerry, there is a new terror threat to remind everybody that George is protecting us. To me, this smacks of desperation. The Republicans are afraid that if people listen to Kerry long enough, he might start making sense and they might see Bush's incompetence.

I think the best example of this comes in this article from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Most of the al Qaeda surveillance of five financial institutions that led to a new terror alert Sunday was conducted prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and authorities are not sure whether the casing of the buildings has continued since then, numerous intelligence and law enforcement officials said Monday.

More than a half-dozen government officials interviewed Monday, who declined to be identified because classified information is involved, said that most, if not all, of the information about the buildings seized by authorities in a raid in Pakistan last week was about three years old, and possibly older.

"There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. "Why did we go to this level? ... I still don't know that."

This latest threat isn't even based on recent intelligence! They are using old intelligence because they have nothing else! Bush can't run on his record, because he's accomplished nothing worthwhile. He can't run on Iraq, most people now think it was a mistake. He can't run on the economy, not with the new questions about the strength of the "recovery." He can't run on jobs, we're still over 1,000,000 in the hole and the jobs we have recovered aren't paying as well as the ones we've lost. So what's he going to run on? Tax cuts for the wealthy? Over 40,000,000 Americans without health care?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, all he has left to run on is FEAR. The only way he can get votes is if the public is afraid. This is the same thing he accused Al Gore of doing in the 2000 election.

"[Gore's] trying to frighten people in the voting booth. That's just not the way I think, and I that's just not my intentions. That's not my plan."

Then Governor Bush made this comment in reference to Medicare, but I think it's applicable in this situation. President Bush and the Republicans are trying to scare you into voting for them. It's sad when the Presidency has been reduced to scare tactics to win re-election.