Kerry needs to listen

by George S. Hishmeh

WASHINGTON - Senator John F. Kerry, the just-elected Democratic Party presidential nominee, should not feel certain that he can unseat President George W. Bush next November because of the prevalent mood in the country symbolised by the popular slogan, "Anybody but Bush". He failed to say how he hopes, as promised in his party platform, to make sure that America will be "respected, not just feared, an America that listens and leads" should he move into the White House next January.

This failure was best illustrated in the recent opinion polls which, once again, underlined the continued polarisation in the country. The latest Washington Post-ABC poll taken after the convention showed that Kerry has the unimpressive support of only 50 per cent of all registered voters, compared with 44 per cent for Bush. (Ralph Nader grabbed two per cent of the vote). Among the most likely to vote, Kerry's lead was cut down to two insignificant percentage points.

More to the point, Kerry was found lacking in ideas on how to bring to an end the bloodshed in Iraq, the terrorist threat that has its roots in the Middle East, and the economy which took a nose-dive under the Bush administration, all issues that have divided the electorate.

The Democrats must be very disappointed with this undramatic support for their plank and there is good reason for that. The Massachusetts senator, who happens to have the same initials, JFK, as another prominent president from his state, missed a golden opportunity to address head on the turbulence in the Middle East, which has affected Americans in their own cities, as evidenced in the security alerts issued in New York and Washington this week.

Doubtless no one expected the Democratic candidate to spell out in detail his ideas, but he gave no indication that he was ready to be more daring and call a spade a spade. If anything, there was only lip service paid to these issues.

It was left to the keynote speaker at the convention, Barack Obama, who is running for the US Senate from Illinois, to voice concern in a one-line sentence about Arab Americans whose anxiety is shared in the Arab world: "If there's an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties." But he did not elaborate on what his party would do. A few days later, it was revealed that the census bureau had provided population statistics on Arab-Americans to the Department of Homeland Security, including detailed information on how many people of Arab origin live under certain postal codes. This action, said to be legal, nevertheless alarmed Arab-American organisations who recalled that similar information was compiled about Japanese-Americans during World War II; their subsequent incarceration is public knowledge.

Kerry and his party missed an opportunity to be more even-handed and remained hopelessly biased on the Palestinian-Israeli question. The Democratic Party platform insisted that "Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths". It also favoured settling the Palestinian refugees in the projected Palestinian state, "rather than in Israel", and maintained that "it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice line of 1949".

M. J. Rosenberg, director of Policy Analysis for Israel Policy Forum here, stresses that the "bottom line" for Americans is the "need to vote on the issues that divide the two candidates and not on the issues which they share similar, if not identical, views. Israel is in the latter category no matter what partisans are telling you. Kerry and Bush are both "good on Israel".

Adding oil to the fire, and possibly to the growing animosity among Arabs and Muslims towards the US, was the Kerry campaign's alleged "talking points" on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict which were reportedly released by Jay Footlik, a former Clinton aide and Kerry coordinator for the Jewish community. Described as "extremely pro-Israel", the Kerry camp promised Arab-American protesters that these were not official and a final version of the "talking points" would be issued shortly and will not be identical to this controversial version.

Senator Kerry, who seemed forthright in diagnosing the problems created by Bush in failing to win international support and respect, thus earning international disdain, especially among Arabs and Muslims, missed the point in avoiding any direct discussion on how he proposes to make amends and pledge to undertake this mammoth task forthwith to regain respectability for the United States. He should try and live up to his promise to "listen" to other people's complaints if, as promised in his party platform, he wishes to "help build a safer, more peaceful, more prosperous, more democratic world". The time to begin is now.

This article was published in the Friday-Saturday, August 6-7, 2004 edition of the Jordan Times. It is used here with permission.