"Bullies attack and leaders inspire."

This quote from Teresa Hienz-Kerry is bound to cause some cranial implosion in Freeperville.

Heinz Kerry continued, "We need, above all, a president who is not fazed by complexity. A president who likes to read. A president who loves history. A president who is rightly proud of the sacrifice of our ancestors."

These quotes will inspire a pleathora af vicious attacks from the wingnut Pundit brigade. How they will manage to fire their braodsides without without appearing to be the bullies they are will doubtless be the subject of much observations in blogistan in the coming days. I personally hope that Billmon choosed to riff on this.
"bullies attack and leaders inspire" Wow. A perfectly distilled message, and one that will get continued airplay. Simple enough for an idiot to understand. I was trying to think of one inspiring message that has come out of the white house that would resonate with an ordinary person in this country and all I could come up with is.........nothing. When I say "ordinary person" I mean someone who is not particularly partisan, and someone who probably has not benifited from the economic "growth" that dear leader keeps talking about.

I remember (barely) watching Niel Armstrong decsending the stairs of the lunar landing module Eagle. Amazing and only made possible by someone who could inspire us to do "that which is hard" and asked of us "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country". A message of hope and inspiration, a message of inclusion and spirit. A message diametrically opposed to the one coming out of this whitehouse. While many found the message of Reagan inspirational, (I did not) it was a message that appealed in some ways to the worst in us. Pandering to our feers, and our need to feel superior about ourselves. It was a message of division which had wide appeal among members of the population not accustomed to having the jaws of greed nipping away at the heels of their economic stability. Thus began the worship of wealth as the highest form of patriotic activity. Accompaning this was the dramatic reduction in the quality of political discourse.

Now the present administration has nothing but attack as political strategy and it is unlikely to find an inspiring message, and the harder they try the more transparent they become. As the petty veneer of integritude dissolves slowly before our eyes, we will recognize in him something many of us feared on the playgrounds so many years ago. "ya know what-those guys remind me of the bastards who stole my lunch money every day" when we get to this point-game over.

Keep swinging away Teresa

xoxoxo