A bunch of articles I’ve been trying to think of something original to comment on have piled up, so here’s a bunch of randomly assorted quotes from stuff you’ll all probably enjoy.

First up is this bit from Bill Maher’s show that I saw over at Eschaton :

And finally, New Rule: You can’t run on a mistake. Franklin Roosevelt didn’t run for re-election claiming Pearl Harbor was his finest hour. Abe Lincoln was a great president, but the high point of his second term wasn’t theater security. 9/11 wasn’t a triumph of the human spirit. It was a fuck-up by a guy on vacation.

Now, don’t get me wrong, Mr. President. I’m not blaming you for 9/11. We have blue-ribbon commissions to do that. And I’m not saying there was anything improper about your immediate response to the attacks. Someone had to stay in that classroom and protect those kids from Chechen rebels.

But by the looks of your convention, you’d think that the worst thing that ever happened to us was the best thing that ever happened to you. You just can’t keep celebrating the deadliest attack ever as if it’s your personal rendezvous with greatness.

Also via Atrios is this brilliant take on Cheney’s “If you vote for Kerry, you’re going to die” quote (I’m paraphrasing here) from Maureen Dowd :

Mr. Cheney implies that John Kerry couldn’t protect us from an attack like 9/11, blithely ignoring the fact that he and President Bush didn’t protect us from the real 9/11. Think of what brass-knuckled Republicans could have made of a 9/11 tape of an uncertain senate president giving a shaky statement that looked like a hostage tape and flying randomly from air base to air base, as the veep ordered that planes be shot down.

Mr. Cheney warns against falling back “into the pre-9/11 mind-set,” when, in fact, the Bush team’s pre-9/11 mind-set was all about being stuck in the cold war and reviving “Star Wars” – which doesn’t work and is useless against terrorist tactics. The Bush crowd played down terrorism because Bill Clinton and Sandy Berger had told their successors that Osama was a priority, and the Bushies scorned all things Clinton. The president shrugged off intelligence briefings with such headlines as “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States” because there was brush to be cleared and unaffordable tax-cutting to be done.

After the blue-ribbon graybeards declared the Bush administration’s pumped-up W.M.D. claims and Saddam-9/11 links bogus, the White House went into a defensive crouch – especially the man in the undisclosed bunker, who had veered wildly between overly pessimistic predictions of Saddam’s nukes and overly optimistic predictions of grateful Iraqis with flowers and chocolates.

While the Bushies still sorta have John Kerry on the ropes, the New Republic bring up an interesting historical analogy :

From June to September, measured by Gallup’s polls of registered voters, the pattern in the race between Carter and Reagan is very similar to that between Bush and John Kerry. In mid-June 1980, Reagan pulled ahead of Carter in the polls by three points. He retained that lead until after the Republican Convention when he moved ahead by 16 points. But by August 15, on the eve of the senate Convention, Carter had wiped out Reagan’s lead and was ahead by six points. In Gallup’s polls from then until the last two weeks of the election, Carter would remain ahead, losing out to Reagan only after the climactic October 28 debate between the two men, when Reagan was able finally to establish his credibility as a future president. Once Reagan did that–Carter had refused to debate him until the very end–the electorate turned dramatically away from Carter, and Reagan won by a landslide.

The Bush-Kerry election has a similar trajectory. In mid-June of this year, Kerry was ahead by four points among registered voters. His lead widened to seven points in mid-July, but with the approach of the Republican Convention, it has narrowed to only one point. Presumably, Bush will forge ahead by as many as five points in the polls taken after this week’s convention. But that won’t mean Bush has already won reelection. Kerry’s initial support in the summer, like Reagan’s support in the summer of 1980, primarily reflected dissatisfaction with the incumbent rather than positive support for Kerry. He was bound to lose this advantage during the Republican Convention, regardless of the Swift Boat ads. Kerry’s challenge, like Reagan’s, lies in the fall and in the debates. He still has to convince voters that he would be preferable to Bush–that he could do a better job.

So with even more focus on the upcoming debates (assuming they actually happen), an upcoming book about reframing the debate by George Lakoff should provide some good advice (via Mousewords)

Richard Nixon found that out the hard way. While under pressure to resign during the Watergate scandal, Nixon addressed the nation on TV. He stood before the nation and said, “I am not a crook.” And everybody thought about him as a crook. This gives us a basic principle of framing, for when you are arguing against the other side: Do not use their language. Their language picks out a frame ? and it won’t be the frame you want. Let me give you an example. On the day that George W. Bush arrived in the White House, the phrase ?tax relief? started coming out of the White House. It still is: It was used a number of times in this year’s State of the Union address, and is showing up more and more in preelection speeches four years later. Think of the framing for relief. For there to be relief there must be an affliction, an afflicted party, and a reliever who removes the affliction and is therefore a hero. And if people try to stop the hero, those people are villains for trying to prevent relief.

When the word tax is added to relief, the result is a metaphor: Taxation is an affliction. And the person who takes it away is a hero, and anyone who tries to stop him is a bad guy. This is a frame. It is made up of ideas, like affliction and hero. The language that evokes the frame comes out of the White House, and it goes into press releases, goes to every radio station, every TV station, every newspaper. And soon the New York Times is using tax relief. And it is not only on Fox; it is on CNN, it is on NBC, it is on every station because it is “the president’s tax-relief plan.” And soon the Democrats are using tax relief ? and shooting themselves in the foot.

It is remarkable. I was asked by the senate senators to visit their caucus just before the president’s tax plan was to come up in the senate. They had their version of the tax plan, and it was their version of tax relief. They were accepting the conservative frame. The conservatives had set a trap: The words draw you into their worldview.

That is what framing is about. Framing is about getting language that fits your worldview. It is not just language. The ideas are primary ? and the language carries those ideas, evokes those ideas. There was another good example in the State of the Union address in January. This one was a remarkable metaphor to find in a State of the Union address. Bush said, “We do not need a permission slip to defend America.” What is going on with a permission slip? He could have just said, “We won’t ask permission.” But talking about a permission slip is different. Think about when you last needed a permission slip. Think about who has to ask for a permission slip. Think about who is being asked. Think about the relationship between them.

Finally, lemme just go down on record as saying that I’m really tired of hearing about Vietnam. Granted, the Bush National Guard story still has some interesting wrinkles (Why is the White House still able to release documents when they already “released everything”? Did Bush disobey direct orders? Is he still lying about his service?), I’d love to see Kerry set a good example by publicly denouncing the whole subject and refuse to comment on it further. It wouldn’t make the issue (or the public’s interest in it) go away, but it would at least allow him to focus on more important things without it looking like the Kerry campaign is obsessed with Vietnam.