Like father, like son (we hope)

From the they-never-learn files:

DALLAS - Former President Bush said Tuesday that John Kerry's Democratic presidential campaign is using the same rhetoric about the state of the economy against his son that Bill Clinton used against him in 1992.

But the elder Bush said President George W. Bush has a stronger case to take to the voters this time around because the economy has begun to show signs of recovery.

"I was out telling people things were getting better, but the Clinton campaign ... portrayed me as being out of touch," the former president recalled at a business luncheon for 1,500 people.

The elder Bush said he was optimistic about the economy and cited statistics showing growth in job creation and home ownership as examples of the current president's leadership.

But he warned that "in politics, you have to remember it isn't what's actually happening. It's the perception that's out there."

I remember that campaign. I remember how Bush Sr. kept trying to portray everything as hunky-dory when it was obvious to most everyone outside his inner-circle that the hunky was not so dory. It wasn't the fact that Clinton called him on this that made Bush lose. It was the fact that Bush refused to admit that things were as bad as they were and thus cemented in people's minds the idea that he was out-of-touch.

If his son is going to take the same approach in this election (happy talk, smile, happy talk, everything's great, happy talk, smile) then he will go down to defeat as well. People can sense when they are being sold a line of bull that big and they don't react well to it. That old 41 still doesn't get this just proves that he and his son share the same clueless gene.

Kerry spokesman Bill Burton said it probably was easy for Bush to talk up the economy at the $100-per-plate luncheon "but if you talk the three million who've lost their jobs since George Bush became president I think they'd probably have a different view. President Bush and his son are both good people who did a bad job with the American economy," he said.

Ah! Now that's the way to go after these guys. Don't question them on their character. Just keep hammering away at their incompetence.

Lord knows they've given us a pretty big hammer to use against them.