What Kerry Must Do

The best thing about the Edwards speech is that it set up the platform for Kerry quite nicely. And now it's Kerry's chance to win this thing. I hope his handlers haven't instructed him to try to be folksy; but the Kerry campaign has been diligent so far in avoiding Al Gore's mistakes, so there's no added reason to worry on that count. The real problem is Kerry's tendency to pander and condescend to people ("Who among us doesn't like NASCAR?"). His model for this speech shouldn't be the Kennedys; it should be the Roosevelts. FDR never tried to disguise the fact that he came from New York aristocracy, and instead rested his political success on an ability to raise people to his own level of discourse without seeming overly intellectual. Kerry must do the same. He's alternately been described as looking French and looking like Lincoln. Kerry has the ability to look and sound like a man who should be president. Middle America won't resent him for that; FDR was their paladin once, too.

On substance as well as form, Roosevelt is the paradigm. I hope Kerry's been digging through FDR's wartime speeches, because they are the rhetorical key to stealing the national security issue from the Republicans. The three most successful politicians this century, Roosevelt, Reagan, and Clinton, were able to convince voters not only that they were the men to lead America through difficult times, but that better days lay ahead. Kerry couldn't hope to come off like a Reagan or a Clinton. But FDR is within his patrician reach. And given the Democrats' advantages on domestic issues, if Kerry can sell himself as a champion who will unite the country to defeat al-Qaeda and jihadism, then Bush will be toast.

UPDATE: Go here to read FDR's 1942 State of the Union speech. If Kerry can emulate this, he will be on his way to a deserved victory.