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He's the (Any)One

beat the devil

By Alexander Cockburn

This article appeared in the August 16, 2004 edition of The Nation.

July 29, 2004

Can someone win the presidency entirely on the basis of a negative asset? I wouldn't have thought so, but here's John Kerry, three months shy of election day, promoting himself as a man of presidential caliber entirely on the basis that he's the Anyone in "Anyone But Bush." Come next January the Anyone behind the desk in the Oval Office may be a bit taller. There'll be medals on the bookshelf showing he killed Vietnamese in the service of his country. As for the policy furnishings, most everything else will stay the same. Kerry's been pretty clear about that, letting his core constituencies know that as President Anyone he's not going to cut them any favors.

The nation's hungry, its underemployed, its jobless? In April Kerry announced that his economic strategy will be to wage war on the deficit, which means he'll do nothing to alleviate problem number one in America today--the lack of jobs and the rotten pay for those lucky enough to have some form of work.

Women? Kerry, the man who voted for Bill Clinton's savage assault, labeled "welfare reform," on poor women, said he might well appoint antiabortion judges, adding magnanimously that he wouldn't want such appointments to lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

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About Alexander Cockburn

Alexander Cockburn has been The Nation's "Beat the Devil" columnist since 1984. He is the author or co-author of several books, including the best-selling collection of essays Corruptions of Empire (1987), and a contributor to many publications, from The New York Review of Books, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly and the Wall Street Journal to alternative publications such as In These Times and the Anderson Valley Advertiser. With Jeffrey St. Clair, he edits the newsletter and radical website CounterPunch, which have a substantial world audience. more...
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