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New York Times - August 30, 2004 Vast Anti-Bush rally greets Republicans in New York By TODD S. PURDUM In a few dozen blocks of the same slender island, two worlds collided yesterday: the Republican convention's calculated claims to patriotism and the presidency met elaborately planned and heavily Democratic street protests that turned those same arguments back at President Bush - in ways that might help, or hurt, both sides. The demonstrations were New York City's biggest in decades, and the most emphatic at any national political convention since Democrats and demonstrators turned against each other in fury over Vietnam in Chicago in 1968. But the first day was overwhelmingly peaceful, and the demonstrators doused a good bit of Mr. Bush's intended message with television images of dissent. This was not the reception the Republicans had planned. They chose New York to evoke the moment of national unity that rallied Americans to Mr. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks, only to find protesters claiming Mr. Bush had forfeited that goodwill by attacking Iraq. The marchers carried placards calling Mr. Bush "the next Milosevic" and demanding, "What would Jesus bomb?" The Republicans stuck to their script in the face of the flak, hoping that if they can make it here - for at least four days - they can make it anywhere. Vice President Dick Cheney arrived at Ellis Island, opposite the gaping hole in the Manhattan skyline, and praised Mr. Bush as "a man calm in a crisis, comfortable with responsibility and determined to do everything necessary to protect our people." And some of the delegates suggested that the protests would backfire to Mr. Bush's benefit, by painting Senator John Kerry - whose sister, Peggy, joined some of the weekend's events - as captive to demonstrators outside the mainstream. "I left God's country," said Leon Mosley of Waterloo, Iowa, co-chairman of his state party. "They could use a bunch of people from Iowa to come here to show New Yorkers what life is all about, what being patriotic is all about, and what country is all about. I'm as confident about Bush being re-elected as I am that eggs are going to be in New York tomorrow morning.'' But some veteran conventiongoers suggested that the Republicans would be unwise to count their chickens just yet. In their own outspoken way, the protesters were making precisely the same point as Mr. Mosley, with children in strollers, grandparents on canes, all accepting the withering Sunday heat - and the overwhelming security presence intended to keep the march past Madison Square Garden orderly. "I've been going to Republican conventions since 1972, and I've never seen a convention with as many protesters in the streets," said David Gergen, who has worked for several Republican presidents, and Bill Clinton. "The irony is that was a convention held here because of echoes of 9/11, but it opens with echoes of Chicago and the Vietnam war….. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/30/politics/campaign/30assess.html |