Frank Rich says that, according to conventional wisdom, entertaining quality is something Americans looking for in their president. And we all know Bush is an entertaining guy - this is if you like horror movies. Kerry? Not so entertaining. But he is knowledgeable, thoughtful, intelligent and honest. I'll take these qualities in the president over entertaining any day.
Rich suggests that it's quite possible that America overdosed on entertainment, and feels that this particular movie (with Bush in a leading role) may have gone on too long, have too many plot holes and may have been too clever by half.
The president hoped to give the tragedy of 9/11 a speedy happy ending by laying out a simple war pitting God's anointed against the evildoers, then by portraying Iraq as the "central front" in that war, then by staging a stirring victory celebration weeks after that central battle began. But when our major combat operations turned out not to be "over," this purported final reel was seen as the one thing the American public hates even more than an unhappy ending - a false one.
Remember toppling of the Saddam statue, "Mission Accomplished" stunt, Thanksgiving turkey in Iraq? All false, of course. And Karl Rove as movie director is scrambling.
Last weekend the Rove studio showed its desperation. In Florida Mr. Bush risked ridicule by re-enacting "Mission Accomplished," this time landing by helicopter in sports stadiums to the theme from "Top Gun," the same movie that had inspired the stunt landing on the carrier U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. (The new banner read "Soaring to Victory.") This had been directly preceded by another cinematic misfire. On the same day that the president took to attacking Mr. Kerry for seeing the war on terror as "a metaphor," his own campaign released with great fanfare a new TV ad portraying terrorism as ... a metaphor. The metaphor in this case was a pack of wolves that looked as if they could easily be taken out by the rifle-bearing Kerry...
The whole Bush presidency was a bad, bad, show. Unlike with a bad show on TV, we can't just turn it off, ignore it, stop watching - it has real life consequences for all of us. But we can end it altogether and soon. No sequels, please...
After three years of nonstop thrills, Americans will just have to decide on Nov. 2 whether there could be fates even worse than spending the next four years being bored.