Actually, I'd thought the quote was, "Hope is on the way," which among other things referred back to Clinton's 1992 campaign autobiography film, "The Man From Hope," which referred back to his home town.
Ya know, "Kane," I get a little tired of these silly accusations, such as, "what a thief he can be." In the first place, it's absurd to complain that a politician borrows--or refers--to another successful politician. That's what they do: they trade in images and ideas, and often these images and ideas are lifted from previous images and ideas.
Odd that you'd object to Kerry's doing this, but have no problem with the President's doing exactly the same thing, or with Reagan's doing it previously.
Or maybe it's not so odd. The big accusation--and the big lie--against Democrats always seems to be moral, these days, and usually it's based on this sort of flimsy evidence. Or, as with Clinton, it's based on digging into things that are, strictly speaking, none of anybody else's damn business.
Believe me, these accusations about sex and character aren't hurled for moral reasons. They're thrown around to win elections, and to cover up the sorts of weird crap that Republicans get up to from time to time. For example, there's that Jack Ryan character, who had to drop out after he got caught a) trumpeting his morality at after opportunity; b) dragging his wife to sex clubs. There was Henry Hyde, who drove his girlfriend to the clinic for an abortion (yes, he was married at the time), and campaigns against Choice every chance he gets.
Beyond the wish to win no matter what--which has always been part of American politics!--there's prurient interest. People were encouraged to Read All About Clinton and Monica! Get All the Details!! because they got off on it. They got off sexually, and they got off through feeling morally superior.
Me, I tend to think that dragging the country into an unnecessary war based on flimsy and/or faked evidence is a little more serious than a pompous campaign phrase or three. I tend to think that having your VP (shades of Spiro Agnew...remember him? he got canned because he was taking envelopes stuffed with cash from developers, sitting in the VP's chair, in his office...) entangled with companies like Halliburton, which somehow mysteriously get a no-bid contract (no-bid contracts are illegal, incidentally) worth billions is a little more serious than your wife's money. I even tend to think that taking big chunks of campaign money and support from a company--Enron; heard of 'em?--that subsequently goes bankrupt from lying about revenue and debts, screws tens of thousands of employees out of their stocks and retirement benefits, and gets caught manipulating prices illegally, is somewhat more morally serious than, say, being a personal injury lawyer.
And let's not even start up with the morality of trumpeting about going to war, after a personal history of getting your daddy's buddies to find you a soft spot in the ANG, and a repeated set of attacks on guys like Gore and Kerrey, who whatever their other flaws actually WENT to frickin' Vietnam and served.
Oh yeah, and if we want to get into the whole plagiarism issue--I notice nobody's discussing Doris Kearns Goodwin (Reagan's speechwriter and biographer), or that other Republican historian--what's 'is name?--wrote about WWII and the decline of American morality, got caught plagiarizing wholesale.
Personally, I thought the DNC was boring as hell, and I wasn't impressed by Kerry's speech. But then I don't really care, because I think that adults should be able to get by without stars in their eyes and lots of free balloons.
