Word: swiftness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...election of 2004, events were once again in the saddle. Given how Bush's term started, the election should never have been close. After 9/11 and America's swift crushing of the Taliban, President Bush had the political world at his feet. Over the next few years, he could easily have coasted to victory, crowning his achievement with the equally astonishing establishment of a democratic and pro-American government in Afghanistan just weeks before his own re-election. He would have won in a landslide...
...spent four days talking not about Iraq but about Vietnam. This glaring non sequitur gave Kerry the distinction of having a convention with no bounce. Even worse, by gratuitously bringing up Vietnam, a still bleeding psychic wound, Kerry opened himself to weeks of politically damaging attack from embittered fellow swift-boat veterans...
...capable of this kind of shift in national mood? I have no idea. It has seemed at times as if we have been living in parallel universes this past year. The polarization, aided and abetted by Michael Moore, Mel Gibson, MoveOn.org and the Swift Boat Vets, among many others, has deepened into a variety of embitterments. But elections are--or should be--the antacids to this kind of dyspepsia. They are ways to clear the air, to settle the rancor for a while, to concede that the country as a whole has now decided one way or the other, however...
...August blitz without money of its own to fight back, the strategists had failed to see the sniper that was waiting in the weeds. Just a week after a Democratic Convention that had been a four-day-long infomercial about Kerry's Vietnam record, a group styling itself Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was suddenly dominating the cable airwaves with accusations that Kerry had faked his injuries and lied about his heroism in Vietnam to collect a chestful of medals that he didn't deserve. Kerry's initial strategy was to do ... nothing...
...agreed at the last minute to stump there the weekend before the election. At times, McCain's television appearances were scary duck-and-cover drills for the Bush message team, as McCain was perfectly capable of breaking ranks with the President on issues ranging from Iraq reconstruction to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. On the eve of the first debate, campaign communications director Nicolle Devenish drew the line: McCain was forbidden to go into the postdebate spin sessions and give praise to both sides. That would be a loss for Bush. "People see you as the referee," she said...