VDH
"Kerry must win, you see, so we can be friends again." You hear things like this these days in Europe. George Bush's campaign staffers may tease about John Kerry's French connections, his Europhile mannerisms, and his unguarded boasts that the Continent is pulling for him, but such caricatures are closer to the truth than even the Republican operatives suspect.
Europeans casually talk of the Kerry rapprochement to come, as if in their magnanimity they have given us one last chance to return to sobriety. They exude a bold confidence, even to strangers, that the brightened prospects of the Democratic challenger are proof that America has seen the European light and therefore, of course, Mr. Kerry must win. Never has Europe been so emotionally involved in an American election--and never to their peril have they read us so wrong.
Michael Moore is offered up as proof of grassroots American unhappiness with the president. Was he not perched in an exalted seat at the Democratic convention? Completely lost on Europeans is that Mr. Moore, for all his notoriety, is still a cult figure. An icon among the Moveon.org crowd, and when used gingerly a good weapon of the Democratic Party, he is still otherwise a polarizing figure disliked by the majority of America that votes. As the list of cinematic distortions in his recent film grows, "Fahrenheit 9/11" increasingly will be relegated to the genre of crass propaganda once mastered by the far more gifted Leni Riefenstahl in her similarly slanted "political documentary," "Triumph of Will." |