- Fear.
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- If the Bush campaign has its way, the 2004 presidential
election will be decided by fear.
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- Strategically speaking, the approach is brilliant. Fear
blinds people. It can cause intelligent, thoughtful individuals to turn
off their brains and revert to instinct, and that instinct tells them to
seek a strong leader who can protect them. When no such leader exists,
sufficiently frightened people will even invent one, projecting an imaginary
strength onto figures who are in reality mediocre.
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- And unfortunately, this administration is all too adept
at provoking fear. Two years ago, by warning that mushroom clouds might
soon rise over American cities and that Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicles
might spread smallpox over our neighborhoods, they frightened this nation
into a misbegotten and mismanaged invasion of Iraq that has so far cost
the lives of more than 1,000 of our finest men and women, and in the process
has made us significantly less secure.
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- Now they're at it again. As Vice President Dick Cheney
put it Tuesday, "it's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today,
on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice
then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that
will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."
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- Vote for us or die.
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- The claim is particularly charming given the testimony
by ex-CIA Director George Tenet that in the late summer and early fall
of 2001, "the system was blinking red" with intelligence signs
warning of an impending terror attack by Osama bin Laden. Yet the administration
that now sells itself as our only salvation against the bloodthirsty hordes
did nothing. President Bush didn't even interrupt his vacation.
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- That doesn't mean that the attacks of Sept. 11 were the
fault of the Bush administration. But it ought to be cause for a little
humility.
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- Fear is useful for another reason: It makes people more
docile and less tolerant of others who dare to question authority. If you're
the one in authority, that makes fear a valuable commodity. In his keynote
address to the Republican National Convention -- a speech in which the
key note was fear -- Zell Miller played upon that human foible, bitterly
charging that "the Democrats' manic obsession to bring down our commander
in chief" was weakening the nation. The Democrats' crime? In an election
year, they actually criticize the president.
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- Maybe it has slipped the senator's mind, but this is
still the United States of America. Even in the darkest moments of our
republic, when it was rent by civil war and when it was fighting for survival
against both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, we still held elections,
and loyal Americans still debated and argued about who was best-suited
to lead them.
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- Of course, Miller has never been much for tolerating
the opinions of others. A few months ago, he got so angry at a column I
had written that I got word back that he wanted to shoot me. At the time
I took it as a playful joke, part of the behind-the-scenes banter that
sometimes humanizes this business. But after watching an angry Miller all
but challenge talk-show host Chris Matthews to a duel, telling Matthews
that he yearned to "get a little closer up into your face," I
realize he meant it more seriously..
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- (Despite the senator's professed affection for getting
in people's faces, I should note that he did not deliver his angry message
to me in person, or even by telephone or letter. He had his press secretary
do it for him.)
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- The truth is, there's little reason to be terrified.
The threat that faces us is certainly real, and it must be met with conviction,
strength and wisdom. We need to hunt down terrorists and kill them as quickly
as possible, while ensuring that we don't create even more terrorists in
the process. But in the scale of threats this nation has faced in the past,
this one is well within our capacity to handle.
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- It's the goal of terrorists to make us terrified; we
don't need leaders eager to help that process along. If somebody has to
frighten you out of your wits to get your vote, it ought to tell you something.
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- ----------
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- Jay Bookman is the deputy editorial page editor. His
column appears Thursdays and Mondays.
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- http://www.ajc.com/opinion/content/opinion/bookman/2004/090904.html
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