The Laquedem household should be prime territory for George Bush's campaign this fall on both economic and policy grounds. The President wants to cut taxes for us and our friends in the Mausoleum Club, and he's a strong supporter of Israel, two causes near and dear to what passes for our heart. We're not sure what to make of his War on Terra, the Laquedems' ancestral planet, but he does make it sound like a good thing, even if we have to walk barefoot through the airport because of it. On these issues, if President Simon Says he's going to do something, we're generally willing to support him.
But we don't understand his current fixation on "nuance," which is apparently the stealth buzzword of his campaign. He wants the voters to believe that John Kerry is too nuanced to be president, at least that's what I think his campaign is spinning. Look at the Commentary page of the April 28 Oregonian. In "Another View" it quotes an editorial from the Philadelphia Inquirer: "Bush speaks in unapologetic, Lincolnesque fashion of America as the Almighty's instrument of human emancipation....Many Americans -- weary of a politics of polls, positioning, spin and evasion -- lap it up....they don't want someone hamstrung by nuance, plagued by misgivings." At thebottom of the same page is a column by Myriam Marquez of the Orlando Sentinel, criticizing Senator Kerry as the "King of Nuance" yet allowing that "a leader who doesn't consider the nuances of issues will face dire policy problems (see Iraq), but there's a point where nuance becomes a liability." I'm guessing that it's the Bush campaign that's trying to tag Senator Kerry as being full of nuance.
A lot of us like nuance. We like to know that our leaders understand the ramifications of what they're doing. And (subject to the objection of Mrs. Laquedem) the woman who flirts in a nuanced way will command more of our attention than the woman who simply flashes.
It takes a certain amount of intellect to be able to provide nuanced analysis of current problems, something a Simple Simon can't do. It takes much less intellect to come up with a snappy sound bite.
Mr. President, if you want our votes, you're not going to get them by having your campaign staff continue to spread the word that Senator Kerry is smarter than you are.