WARRIORS.(The Talk of the Town)(George W. Bush and John Kerry)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 16-FEB-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

In Seattle last Tuesday night, John Kerry gave a perfectly O.K. victory speech. He was a little wooden, though marginally less so than he'd been in Manchester the week before or in Des Moines the week before that. He still has a tendency to orate at people ("We will resume the great march of our history"), though as he gets closer to the presidency his stiff, solemn formality gets easier to take. Yes, the speech was perfectly O.K. And what was most O.K. about it, from the point of view of many Democratic voters, was that it was a victory speech. With great passion, Democrats want to win--want to win more than they want to dominate or punish each other. The result, so far, may be the least bitter struggle for an open Presidential nomination in living memory. The traditional circular firing squad looks weirdly like a phalanx.

There are plenty of reasons for Senator Kerry's emergence, but the most important can be plainly seen in those primary-night tableaux....

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