Sun, Feb 29, 2004 page9

• `Bring it on': a slogan that is gaining resonance in US politics

  • By William Safire / NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  More than a year ago -- on Feb. 22 -- a senator competing for the Democratic nomination hurled a challenge at US President George W. Bush: "If you want to talk about the insiders you've fought for versus the kids and families I've fought for, here's my message to you: `Mr President, bring it on!'"

  That ringing line brought some 350 members of the Democratic National Committee out of their seats to applaud. Those three defiant words at the end resonated with the partisan audience, who must have wondered: Could this guy use that ring-a-ding phrase to help him go all the way?

  Senator John Edwards had struck a match -- defying Republicans who planned to make an issue of his reputation as a trial lawyer -- but the metaphoric room was not yet filled with gas. The phrase was an Americanism on its way up: It had been used by Senator John McCain in 1999 about a threatened fight over his bill to delay litigation over potential millennial breakdowns. The year after that, it was the title of a movie about rival high-school cheerleaders, who clipped the challenge to a curt "bring it" (which had previously been baseball slang for "throw a fastball.")

  But last summer, the necessary gas for an oratorical explosion did fill the room. After the regime of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was overthrown, an insurgency began, aimed at the US occupation. On July 2, Bush warned terrorists and Baathist die-hards: "There are some that feel like -- if they attack us -- that we may decide to leave prematurely. ... My answer is, bring 'em on." On top of a much-publicized landing by the president on an aircraft carrier in front of a "Mission Accomplished" sign, this impromptu remark was promptly criticized as overconfident, even as inviting trouble.

  Now that the phrase had gained political resonance, it was considered for inclusion in Senator John Kerry's campaign announcement speech in September. Todd Purdum of The New York Times reported that Kerry and his longtime adviser, Robert Shrum, rejected it as too bellicose. But by November, with Howard Dean surging ahead in the New Hampshire opinion polls, Kerry decided the time had come to heat up his rhetoric.

  The man, the moment and the phrase were joined on Nov. 15 last year, before a crowd of 8,000 in Des Moines, Iowa: "If George Bush wants to make national security an issue in this campaign," said the underdog candidate with the stellar war record, "I have three words for him that I know he'll understand: Bring it on!"

  In turning Bush's phrase back on him, Kerry and his speechwriters made a slight modification. "Bring 'em on," as Bush used it, refers to people, plural, and has a courageous connotation of one defender against a crowd of attackers. But "bring it on," as Kerry used it (and as McCain, Edwards and the high-school cheerleaders used it), substitutes a single general subject for the flesh-and-blood people referred to by "'em." (You think I am splitting hairs here? You think this slight but significant change was not carefully considered by the Kerry camp? If so, you are mistaken.)

  The applause line became part of the Kerry stump speech. Joe Klein of Time magazine characterized it as "testosterone-laden." The Feb. 2 cover headline of The New Republic, following Kerry's victory in the Iowa caucuses, asked: "Bring it on? Is Kerry that much more electable than Dean?" In the article, Michael Grunwald zeroed in on the center word, "it," writing: "What if Kerry becomes the nominee and Bush wants to make the election more than a referendum on national security? What would the Republicans bring on then?"

  The phrase, even with its memory of Bush's usage fading, adopted the aggressive tone that had been Dean's trademark and helped ignite Kerry's formerly tepid campaign. It quickly became Kerry's slogan in the early primaries; John Edwards must have wondered why he ever let it go.

  We are likely to hear less of the red-meat phrase as the general election campaign approaches. "You have to begin to talk to America in a broader way," Kerry told James Kuhnhenn of The Detroit Free Press earlier this month. Although "bring it on" was a rallying cry "appropriate within our party faithful," the front-running candidate said, "I think the message will become more broad-based than, I think, `Bring it on.'"

  Another Kerryism directed at the current occupants of the White House, whom he sees as soon to depart, is: "And don't let the door hit you on the way out." This, too, is destined for a short life: If Kerry becomes the challenger and then wins in November, such a comment toward his predecessor would seem ungracious. If the challenger loses, of course, that line would come back to haunt him.

  There is one word that Kerry and his connotation-conscious top staff deliberately resist: "I don't like the word `front-runner,'" Shrum told The New York Times, "and John Kerry abominates it."

  This is one of the many horse-racing terms adopted by political writers. At the national convention in Boston, will anyone bolt? To use a term coined by Benjamin Disraeli in a novel, will a dark horse emerge? Is Kerry a shoo-in? (That's when corrupt jockeys form a ring to bet on a long shot, hold their mounts back and shoo in the horse that they have chosen to win. Do not spell it "shoe-in;" a "shoo-in" is a race in which the winner was the only one trying.)

  Note Shrum's use of "abominate." Often used in the Bible as a noun -- "abomination" -- it means "hate," which is both noun and verb. Word-sensitive politicians now avoid that word, which is part of the phrase "hate speech," except to use it as a combining form in counterattacks ("Clinton-hater," "Bush-hater"). As the synonymous verbs "detest," "despise" and "abhor" have acquired a bookish or elitist connotation, "abominate" -- its original meaning is "deplore as an evil omen" -- offers a forceful alternative.
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