Broadcast Kerry's Speech

How can President Bush boost his approval ratings?

Here's an idea: buy an hour in prime time television and use it to broadcast Senator Kerry's speech yesterday at the Council on Foreign Relations.

The speech was devoted to criticizing President Bush, so it might seem self-defeating for Mr. Bush or his supporters to want it to be seen widely. But think about it - the president's popularity has been dropping steadily ever since last year's presidential election, when Mr. Bush stopped splitting time with Mr. Kerry and started occupying the national stage all by himself. There could be a certain political advantage for the president in reminding the American people, subtly or not, "Hey, you think I'm bad? It could have been a lot worse. You could have been stuck with the junior senator from Massachusetts."

One's mind wandered to such thoughts yesterday, observing Mr. Kerry at a luncheon speech at the Council on Foreign Relations here in New York. Gone was the Secret Service protection that followed Mr. Kerry during the presidential campaign. Gone were the packs of traveling press; the speech attracted a mere two television cameras and two still photographers. Gone was the buzz of excitement that a year and a half ago would have attracted an overflow, high-powered crowd instead of the medium-sized turnout at Pratt House yesterday.

What was left was John Forbes Kerry and that pompous, droning voice. "Our good will has been squandered," he said in full indignant senatorial-scold mode. "Washington is failing to take the basic steps necessary to keep us safe."

He said that holding detainees "indefinitely in a legal no-man's land" was eroding America's "moral authority" in the war on terror. He called for "an international order of mutual respect and cooperation," a "global consensus."

Those were just his prepared remarks. In the question and answer session, Mr. Kerry went further, declaring himself "very optimistic" about the prospect of negotiation with Iran, predicting that China is going to be "the preeminent economy of this century," and warning that Greenland's ice shelf is melting, with "devastating consequences" for New York, Boston, and Florida.

"We are not safer because of Iraq," Mr. Kerry said. "The region is in greater turmoil." He said that America's unpopularity abroad means that "A lot of people don't want to do business with us. That hurts our economy." The latest economic growth statistics and low unemployment seem not to have intruded on Mr. Kerry's world view.

For all the grating negativity, it needs to be said in Mr. Kerry's defense that it takes a certain amount of gumption to keep going on in the public arena after a defeat, rather than retreating to the comfort of one of his mansions or to the Kennedy School of Government or the land of American Express commercials or Viagra ads a la Michael Dukakis or Robert Dole.

And it needs to be said, too, that Mr. Kerry is hardly the worst that his party has to offer. Rather than deriding the growth of democracy in Iraq, he said yesterday that he thinks the upcoming election there "is going to be a momentous event, an important event." He said a total American withdrawal in Iraq in the next month or two would "endanger our interests," and he said that if it were up to him, there would still be tens of thousands American troops in Iraq a year from now.

Mr. Kerry concluded his speech with an appeal to President Bush "to put a little more Harry Truman in his foreign policy." Mr. Kerry, in an allusion to Mr. Bush, said that Truman was "another president who prided himself on simple virtues and unshakable resolve."

Mr. Kerry praised Truman for presiding over "the greatest era of bipartisan, multi-lateral foreign policy our country or the world has ever seen." Well, that is one thing he is known for, and that is what Mr. Kerry seemed to be speaking of when he asked Mr. Bush to be more like Truman. But Truman is also known for ordering the use of the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And for leading America into a Cold War that lasted two generations. Mr. Kerry didn't mention either of those aspects of Truman's legacy.

The more Mr. Kerry droned on earnestly, the more convinced this listener became that it is George W. Bush, not John F. Kerry, who is Truman material. President Bush may not be winning any popularity contests at the moment, but he won the election, and there is nothing like sitting and listening to Mr. Kerry talk for an hour to remind Americans why.