Ken Ficara

The Guardian is asking its readers to write directly to U.S. voters asking them to vote against Bush. Letter writers include Richard Dawkins and John Le Carre, whose most recent novel, Absolute Friends, is basically a howl of fury about American foreign policy. He begins,

Maybe there’s one good reason – just one – for re-electing George W Bush, and that’s to force him to live with the consequences of his appalling actions, and answer for his own lies, rather than wish the job on a Democrat who will then get blamed for his predecessor’s follies.

If Kerry does win (ohpleaseohpleaseohpleaseohplease) we will need to work twice as hard to counteract the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, who’ll go into overdrive and make us wish for the pleasant days of Whitewater.

You think [Dubya is] an idiot, don’t you … all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don’t care. You see, you’re outnumbered two to one by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don’t read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it’s good for us. Because you know what those folks don’t like? They don’t like you!

— Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, quoted in Ron Suskind’s Times magazine article yesteday.