In their Washington Post interview the Johns bring up a point that hasn't been talked about enough: how completely and utterly this White House wastes the opportunities it has:
"In one of a series of interviews since teaming up on Tuesday, Kerry and Edwards predicted they would win the political fight over which party best exemplifies the values and ethics of most Americans, but Kerry said they would wage that battle on their terms and not what he called the Republican Party's 'little political, hot-button, cultural, wedge-driven, poll-driven values.'"
The entire right wing of the Republican party has done absolutely nothing with all the power they have except push the stupidest, meanest parts of their platform. In their public utterances they've done nothing but pule and whine and bitch that Howard Dean was angry, Michael Moore was fat, and Whoopi Goldberg said they sucked. They've hated on gays and they've complained about the Supreme Court and they've moaned about the media that cheerleaded them into Iraq being "too liberal."
Imagine the Democrats with undisputed control of both houses of Congress and the Presidency. Imagine what could have been done with that power. We could have said we were going to Mars, and actually done it. We could have said we were going to cure cancer, and gone at it with all our power and might. We could have said we were going to eliminate the crushing poverty that makes street gangs a scourge in our cities that terrorists can only dream of. We could have lifted this country up in a way that would have inspired the world. We're capable of that.
Instead, we've picked on the small stuff, on the stuff that doesn't matter, and we've called it values. Values isn't a set of groups against which it's okay to discriminate, or a set of bills designed to send a message. Values are what define us, what we hold dear. And if the Johns can get their message about what Americans hold dear out to the public, if they can say, "We are bigger than this, we are better than this, and we can give you something to believe in and work for," well, they could go to Washington and take it all.
Republicans have used their four years in control of government to show us that the best thing they know how to do is put a loudspeaker up to their own inadequacies. What will we do when our time comes?
