And other conservatives who might have missed this:
American Conservative magazine endorses Kerry:
http://www.amconmag.com/2004_11_08/cover1.html
Kerry’s the One
By Scott McConnell
There is little in John Kerry’s persona or platform that appeals to conservatives. The flip-flopper charge—the centerpiece of the Republican campaign against Kerry—seems overdone, as Kerry’s contrasting votes are the sort of baggage any senator of long service is likely to pick up. (Bob Dole could tell you all about it.) But Kerry is plainly a conventional liberal and no candidate for a future edition of Profiles in Courage. In my view, he will always deserve censure for his vote in favor of the Iraq War in 2002.
But this election is not about John Kerry. If he were to win, his dearth of charisma would likely ensure him a single term. He would face challenges from within his own party and a thwarting of his most expensive initiatives by a Republican Congress. Much of his presidency would be absorbed by trying to clean up the mess left to him in Iraq. He would be constrained by the swollen deficits and a ripe target for the next Republican nominee.
It is, instead, an election about the presidency of George W. Bush. To the surprise of virtually everyone, Bush has turned into an important president, and in many ways the most radical America has had since the 19th century. Because he is the leader of America’s conservative party, he has become the Left’s perfect foil—its dream candidate. The libertarian writer Lew Rockwell has mischievously noted parallels between Bush and Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II: both gained office as a result of family connections, both initiated an unnecessary war that shattered their countries’ budgets. Lenin needed the calamitous reign of Nicholas II to create an opening for the Bolsheviks.
Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation’s children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing cliché about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy. Add to this his nation-breaking immigration proposal—Bush has laid out a mad scheme to import immigrants to fill any job where the wage is so low that an American can’t be found to do it—and you have a presidency that combines imperialist Right and open-borders Left in a uniquely noxious cocktail.
During the campaign, few have paid attention to how much the Bush presidency has degraded the image of the United States in the world. Of course there has always been “anti-Americanism.” After the Second World War many European intellectuals argued for a “Third Way” between American-style capitalism and Soviet communism, and a generation later Europe’s radicals embraced every ragged “anti-imperialist” cause that came along. In South America, defiance of “the Yanqui” always draws a crowd. But Bush has somehow managed to take all these sentiments and turbo-charge them. In Europe and indeed all over the world, he has made the United States despised by people who used to be its friends, by businessmen and the middle classes, by moderate and sensible liberals. Never before have democratic foreign governments needed to demonstrate disdain for Washington to their own electorates in order to survive in office. The poll numbers are shocking. In countries like Norway, Germany, France, and Spain, Bush is liked by about seven percent of the populace. In Egypt, recipient of huge piles of American aid in the past two decades, some 98 percent have an unfavorable view of the United States. It’s the same throughout the Middle East.
Bush has accomplished this by giving the U.S. a novel foreign-policy doctrine under which it arrogates to itself the right to invade any country it wants if it feels threatened. It is an American version of the Brezhnev Doctrine, but the latter was at least confined to Eastern Europe. If the analogy seems extreme, what is an appropriate comparison when a country manufactures falsehoods about a foreign government, disseminates them widely, and invades the country on the basis of those falsehoods? It is not an action that any American president has ever taken before. It is not something that “good” countries do. It is the main reason that people all over the world who used to consider the United States a reliable and necessary bulwark of world stability now see us as a menace to their own peace and security.
These sentiments mean that as long as Bush is president, we have no real allies in the world, no friends to help us dig out from the Iraq quagmire. More tragically, they mean that if terrorists succeed in striking at the United States in another 9/11-type attack, many in the world will not only think of the American victims but also of the thousands and thousands of Iraqi civilians killed and maimed by American armed forces. The hatred Bush has generated has helped immeasurably those trying to recruit anti-American terrorists—indeed his policies are the gift to terrorism that keeps on giving, as the sons and brothers of slain Iraqis think how they may eventually take their own revenge. Only the seriously deluded could fail to see that a policy so central to America’s survival as a free country as getting hold of loose nuclear materials and controlling nuclear proliferation requires the willingness of foreign countries to provide full, 100 percent co-operation. Making yourself into the world’s most hated country is not an obvious way to secure that help.
I’ve heard people who have known George W. Bush for decades and served prominently in his father’s administration say that he could not possibly have conceived of the doctrine of pre-emptive war by himself, that he was essentially taken for a ride by people with a pre-existing agenda to overturn Saddam Hussein. Bush’s public performances plainly show him to be a man who has never read or thought much about foreign policy. So the inevitable questions are: who makes the key foreign-policy decisions in the Bush presidency, who controls the information flow to the president, how are various options are presented?
The record, from published administration memoirs and in-depth reporting, is one of an administration with a very small group of six or eight real decision-makers, who were set on war from the beginning and who took great pains to shut out arguments from professionals in the CIA and State Department and the U.S. armed forces that contradicted their rosy scenarios about easy victory. Much has been written about the neoconservative hand guiding the Bush presidency—and it is peculiar that one who was fired from the National Security Council in the Reagan administration for suspicion of passing classified material to the Israeli embassy and another who has written position papers for an Israeli Likud Party leader have become key players in the making of American foreign policy.
But neoconservatism now encompasses much more than Israel-obsessed intellectuals and policy insiders. The Bush foreign policy also surfs on deep currents within the Christian Right, some of which see unqualified support of Israel as part of a godly plan to bring about Armageddon and the future kingdom of Christ. These two strands of Jewish and Christian extremism build on one another in the Bush presidency—and President Bush has given not the slightest indication he would restrain either in a second term. With Colin Powell’s departure from the State Department looming, Bush is more than ever the “neoconian candidate.” The only way Americans will have a presidency in which neoconservatives and the Christian Armageddon set are not holding the reins of power is if Kerry is elected.
If Kerry wins, this magazine will be in opposition from Inauguration Day forward. But the most important battles will take place within the Republican Party and the conservative movement. A Bush defeat will ignite a huge soul-searching within the rank-and-file of Republicandom: a quest to find out how and where the Bush presidency went wrong. And it is then that more traditional conservatives will have an audience to argue for a conservatism informed by the lessons of history, based in prudence and a sense of continuity with the American past—and to make that case without a powerful White House pulling in the opposite direction.
George W. Bush has come to embody a politics that is antithetical to almost any kind of thoughtful conservatism. His international policies have been based on the hopelessly naïve belief that foreign peoples are eager to be liberated by American armies—a notion more grounded in Leon Trotsky’s concept of global revolution than any sort of conservative statecraft. His immigration policies—temporarily put on hold while he runs for re-election—are just as extreme. A re-elected President Bush would be committed to bringing in millions of low-wage immigrants to do jobs Americans “won’t do.” This election is all about George W. Bush, and those issues are enough to render him unworthy of any conservative support.
November 8, 2004 issue
This is for Calicowboy (though everyone should enjoy it)
This is for Calicowboy (though everyone should enjoy it)
"Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?" -Diogenes
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buckethead alien
- Posts: 2456
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Re: This is for Calicowboy (though everyone should enjoy it)
Just in the interest of accuracy, Am-Con did not "endorse Kerry," per se, as this quote from the above link explains:KellY wrote:And other conservatives who might have missed this:
American Conservative magazine endorses Kerry:
http://www.amconmag.com/2004_11_08/cover1.html
Still, it's a remarkable statement to appear in such a publication.Unfortunately, this election does not offer traditional conservatives an easy or natural choice and has left our editors as split as our readership. In an effort to deepen our readers’ and our own understanding of the options before us, we’ve asked several of our editors and contributors to make “the conservative case” for their favored candidate. Their pieces, plus Taki’s column closing out this issue, constitute TAC’s endorsement. —The Editors
Buckethead, Buckethead you are like an Alien
Buckethead, Buckethead your head is like a dish
Buckethead, Buckethead sometimes you wear the Maybelline
Buckethead, Buckethead sometimes you're full of fish
Buckethead, Buckethead your head is like a dish
Buckethead, Buckethead sometimes you wear the Maybelline
Buckethead, Buckethead sometimes you're full of fish
-
buckethead alien
- Posts: 2456
- Joined: Wed Sep 03, 2003 8:07 am
- Burning Since: 1997
- Location: Wrong Island
This has made the rounds somewhat after appearing here first on Sept. 9, 2004, and it is slated to run in the 444,000-circulation Miami Herald on Sunday.
http://www.easthamptonstar.com/20040909/col5.htm
The Unfeeling President
GUESTWORDS: By E.L. Doctorow
I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.
But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.
He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.
They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life . . . they come to his desk as a political liability, which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.
How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that, rather than controlling terrorism, his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice.
He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to.
Yet this president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much. This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing -- to take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their friends.
A war will do that as well as anything. You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and children. He is the president who does not feel. He does not feel for the families of the dead, he does not feel for the 35 million of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the 40 percent who cannot afford health insurance, he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills - it is amazing for how many people in this country this president does not feel.
But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he is relieving the wealthiest 1 percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing the quality of air in coal mines to save the coal miners' jobs, and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a-half benefits for overtime because this is actually a way to honor them by raising them into the professional class.
And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to our democracy is choking the life out of it.
But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I remember the millions of people here and around the world who marched against the war. It was extraordinary, that spontaneous aroused oversoul of alarm and protest that transcended national borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over he world most of the time.
But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war.
The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble.
Finally, the media amplify his character into our moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail. How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.
The novelist E.L. Doctorow has a house in Sag Harbor, N.Y.
http://www.easthamptonstar.com/20040909/col5.htm
The Unfeeling President
GUESTWORDS: By E.L. Doctorow
I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.
But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.
He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.
They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life . . . they come to his desk as a political liability, which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.
How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that, rather than controlling terrorism, his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice.
He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to.
Yet this president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much. This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing -- to take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their friends.
A war will do that as well as anything. You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and children. He is the president who does not feel. He does not feel for the families of the dead, he does not feel for the 35 million of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the 40 percent who cannot afford health insurance, he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills - it is amazing for how many people in this country this president does not feel.
But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he is relieving the wealthiest 1 percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing the quality of air in coal mines to save the coal miners' jobs, and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a-half benefits for overtime because this is actually a way to honor them by raising them into the professional class.
And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to our democracy is choking the life out of it.
But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I remember the millions of people here and around the world who marched against the war. It was extraordinary, that spontaneous aroused oversoul of alarm and protest that transcended national borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over he world most of the time.
But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war.
The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble.
Finally, the media amplify his character into our moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail. How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.
The novelist E.L. Doctorow has a house in Sag Harbor, N.Y.
A mantra for burners is "no expectations." I think the same should apply to Kerry. After he is sworn in on Jan. 20th, people will still die in Iraq, perscription drugs will still be too expensive for many, and the police will still have unprecedented authority to invade our privacy and curtail our rights.
He is still going to be a damm sight better then BushCo.
He is still going to be a damm sight better then BushCo.
Fight for the fifth freedom!
Re: This is for Calicowboy (though everyone should enjoy it)
That is actually true, although I think it counts for something that McConnell is the executive editor. I think they were split becuase publisher Pat Buchannan couldn't ever bring himself to endorse a Democrat, no matter how nutsy the GOP candidate is. But if you ever want to read an unenthusiastic, backhanded endorsement, read Buchannan's endorsement of Bush.buckethead alien wrote: Just in the interest of accuracy, Am-Con did not "endorse Kerry," per se, as this quote from the above link explains:
Unfortunately, this election does not offer traditional conservatives an easy or natural choice and has left our editors as split as our readership. In an effort to deepen our readers’ and our own understanding of the options before us, we’ve asked several of our editors and contributors to make “the conservative case” for their favored candidate. Their pieces, plus Taki’s column closing out this issue, constitute TAC’s endorsement. —
The Editors
It starts with a very long discussion about how Bush ignored the AC's warning's and went ahead with the idiotic Iraq invasion with no realisitc plan for stablizing the country, and how Bush's immigration policy wil be a disaster. He then goes on to say that he can't endorse Kerry because, basically, Kerry's a liberal and Buchannan hates liberals (he accuses Kerry of "sliming" fellow soldiers when he got back from Vietnam, and that Kerry will raise taxes - as if that's an accusation, instead of the plain fact that Kerry's said he WILL raise taxes, but only on the rich). The column ends with a bizarre plea for Bush to reject the neoconservative lunacy that has been the rule of his adminisration and come back to the fold. Considering that Bush and Cheney have insisted that they've made no mistakes at all and wouldn't do anything differently, I don't think that's too likely.
If you really want to subject yourself to PB's prose, you can follow original link and read it yourself.
So, Joel or any other pro-Bush folks here, any thoughts?
"Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?" -Diogenes
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Simply Joel
- Posts: 3483
- Joined: Wed Mar 31, 2004 9:08 am
- Location: Land of Lincoln
- Contact:
Re: This is for Calicowboy (though everyone should enjoy it)
yes, i think there is an election in a few days.KellY wrote:So, Joel or any other pro-Bush folks here, any thoughts?
Kerry's testimony before a congressional hearing and his anti-war statements were "aiding/abetting the enemy" as far as i am concerned, Kerry violated his oficer's oath (below).Kerry of "sliming" fellow soldiers
"I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion, and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter, so help me God."
Democrats... snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, daily!
slap my salmon, baby
slap my salmon, baby
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Simply Joel
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PARTING THOUGHTS
Wm F Buckely Jr
For just about 24 hours, the people of the United States will be happy and at peace. That will be between 10 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 1, and approximately 10 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 2. We'll be happy because the carping will have stopped, and the guns of litigation will not have begun to fire. These fusillades will begin when the television blinkers register "Undecided," referring to voters in Michigan or Florida, or Ohio, or Colorado.
The networks will incline to "Undecided" later than in the past, when computers projected winners based on hygienic extrapolation. There ain't no extrapolation these days that will make the protesters go away, and television commentary will reflect all the problematics. Bring on one protester with a chad between his thumb and forefinger yelling about equal protection, and you'll have an "Undecided" to abort any composure the American people might have hoped for.
The 24-hour solace on Nov. 1-2 will reflect the joy of political stillness. The president will have given his final speech, and Sen. Kerry his. Neither will, one hopes fervently, go the road of Bob Dole, who campaigned through the night, from whistle-stop to whistle-stop. In 1996 Dole's persistence was in a lost cause. Bill Clinton was going to win that election. This time, no one knows who will win, but the contenders haven't suggested that they will go on speaking past midnight to catch the attention of late-night celebrants of All Saints' Day. On the assumption that CBS doesn't come up with evidence that George Bush cheated in grade school, the hours of political contention will have ended.
What are we left with? The New York Times, so vibrant with partisanship, is nevertheless scrupulous in its effort to isolate and document the bones of contention. One week before the election, the paper published a supplement, "Voter Guide 2004." The 10-page section attempts to touch down on the political issues raised during the campaign. One especially useful page is introduced as "Where They Stand, What They've Done." There divisions are described on the full range of issues before the voters: Abortion, Death Penalty, Economy, Education, Environment, Foreign Policy, Gay Rights, Gun Control, Health Care, Homeland Security and Defense, and Social Security.
If the reader still has the energy to analyze, he is quickly given the opportunity to do so. Under Death Penalty, the two candidates are given only a single line each: Bush: "Supports the death penalty." Kerry: "Opposes the death penalty, except for terrorists."
You feel that little pre-gag clutch in the throat. Why "except for terrorists"?
After the bombing in Oklahoma City, President Clinton inveighed against the perpetrators. They will be hunted down, they will be tried, and they will be executed, he promised. As much was done to Timothy McVeigh.
Yet the purist experiences once again the philosophical slouchiness of the candidate. If capital punishment is wrong, then it is wrong. Why is the murderer less heinous if he shoots his own mother, than if he shoots someone else's when engaged in terrorist activity?
There are historical examples of definitions defied. The state of Israel disallows execution -- but executed the chief Jew-killer, Adolf Eichmann. Kerry doesn't work these problems out. He tends to worry only about such distinctions as reflect popular intensity. People are madder these days at terrorists than at ordinary murderers. So execute the former, and just put away the latter into lifetime jails. You're against capital punishment, but nothing's too much for terrorists.
There are shadings to be done on the question of abortion -- and education, and gay rights, and homeland security and defense. The lists go on, and caviling is endless, but then so are the demands of democracy, which is best thought of as a means by which public policymakers are elected, not a means by which epistemological progress is made in moral or philosophical thought. Those who are finicky can plausibly conclude that neither one of the contenders has earned complete confidence. OK. But be ready, then, to proceed to the corollary: that political democracy is organically defective.
We shrink from that. And will have to worry mostly about whether the chaos ahead will be generated by chaddism.
Let us hope somebody wins decisively.
COPYRIGHT 2004 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
Wm F Buckely Jr
For just about 24 hours, the people of the United States will be happy and at peace. That will be between 10 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 1, and approximately 10 p.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 2. We'll be happy because the carping will have stopped, and the guns of litigation will not have begun to fire. These fusillades will begin when the television blinkers register "Undecided," referring to voters in Michigan or Florida, or Ohio, or Colorado.
The networks will incline to "Undecided" later than in the past, when computers projected winners based on hygienic extrapolation. There ain't no extrapolation these days that will make the protesters go away, and television commentary will reflect all the problematics. Bring on one protester with a chad between his thumb and forefinger yelling about equal protection, and you'll have an "Undecided" to abort any composure the American people might have hoped for.
The 24-hour solace on Nov. 1-2 will reflect the joy of political stillness. The president will have given his final speech, and Sen. Kerry his. Neither will, one hopes fervently, go the road of Bob Dole, who campaigned through the night, from whistle-stop to whistle-stop. In 1996 Dole's persistence was in a lost cause. Bill Clinton was going to win that election. This time, no one knows who will win, but the contenders haven't suggested that they will go on speaking past midnight to catch the attention of late-night celebrants of All Saints' Day. On the assumption that CBS doesn't come up with evidence that George Bush cheated in grade school, the hours of political contention will have ended.
What are we left with? The New York Times, so vibrant with partisanship, is nevertheless scrupulous in its effort to isolate and document the bones of contention. One week before the election, the paper published a supplement, "Voter Guide 2004." The 10-page section attempts to touch down on the political issues raised during the campaign. One especially useful page is introduced as "Where They Stand, What They've Done." There divisions are described on the full range of issues before the voters: Abortion, Death Penalty, Economy, Education, Environment, Foreign Policy, Gay Rights, Gun Control, Health Care, Homeland Security and Defense, and Social Security.
If the reader still has the energy to analyze, he is quickly given the opportunity to do so. Under Death Penalty, the two candidates are given only a single line each: Bush: "Supports the death penalty." Kerry: "Opposes the death penalty, except for terrorists."
You feel that little pre-gag clutch in the throat. Why "except for terrorists"?
After the bombing in Oklahoma City, President Clinton inveighed against the perpetrators. They will be hunted down, they will be tried, and they will be executed, he promised. As much was done to Timothy McVeigh.
Yet the purist experiences once again the philosophical slouchiness of the candidate. If capital punishment is wrong, then it is wrong. Why is the murderer less heinous if he shoots his own mother, than if he shoots someone else's when engaged in terrorist activity?
There are historical examples of definitions defied. The state of Israel disallows execution -- but executed the chief Jew-killer, Adolf Eichmann. Kerry doesn't work these problems out. He tends to worry only about such distinctions as reflect popular intensity. People are madder these days at terrorists than at ordinary murderers. So execute the former, and just put away the latter into lifetime jails. You're against capital punishment, but nothing's too much for terrorists.
There are shadings to be done on the question of abortion -- and education, and gay rights, and homeland security and defense. The lists go on, and caviling is endless, but then so are the demands of democracy, which is best thought of as a means by which public policymakers are elected, not a means by which epistemological progress is made in moral or philosophical thought. Those who are finicky can plausibly conclude that neither one of the contenders has earned complete confidence. OK. But be ready, then, to proceed to the corollary: that political democracy is organically defective.
We shrink from that. And will have to worry mostly about whether the chaos ahead will be generated by chaddism.
Let us hope somebody wins decisively.
COPYRIGHT 2004 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE
Democrats... snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, daily!
slap my salmon, baby
slap my salmon, baby
Didn't think any pro-Bush folks would really want to comment on the AC article, but continuing the discussion of conservatives for Kerry, here's Thomas Friedman, whose columns Joel stopped posting when he started criticizing Bush too much.
The Apparent Heir
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 31, 2004
Columnists for this newspaper are not allowed to endorse presidential candidates. But I think this election is so important, I am going to break the rules. I hope I don't get fired. But here goes: I am endorsing George Bush for president. No, no - not George W. Bush. I am endorsing his father - George Herbert Walker Bush.
The more I look back on the elder Bush - Bush 41 - the more I find things to admire and the more I see attributes we need in our next president.
Let's start with domestic policy. The elder George Bush was the real uniter, not divider, the real believer in a kinder, gentler political dialogue. Yes, he had a Democratic Congress to deal with, so he had to be more conciliatory, but it came naturally to him. In 1990, the elder Bush sided with Congressional Democrats to raise taxes, because he knew it was the right thing for the economy, despite his famous "Read my lips" pledge not to raise new taxes. While that 1990 tax increase contributed to his re-election defeat, it laid the foundation for the Clinton tax increases, which, together with Mr. Bush's, helped to hold down interest rates and spur our tremendous growth in the 1990's and the buildup of a huge surplus.
On foreign policy, the elder Bush maintained a healthy balance between realism and idealism, unilateralism and multilateralism, American strength and American diplomacy. He believed that international institutions like the U.N. could be force multipliers of U.S. power. Rather than rubbing Mikhail Gorbachev's nose in the dirt, the elder Bush treated him with respect, and in doing so helped to orchestrate the collapse of the Soviet Union, the liberation of Eastern Europe and the reunification of Germany without the firing of a single shot. The nonviolent unraveling of the Soviet Empire ushered in a decade of prosperity and an era of unprecedented American power and popularity.
The alliance that Mr. Bush, Brent Scowcroft and James A. Baker III built to drive Saddam out of Kuwait had so many allies it virtually turned a profit for America. Mr. Bush chose not to invade Baghdad in 1991. Right or wrong, he felt that had he tried, he would have lost the coalition he had built up to evict Saddam from Kuwait. He obviously believed that the U.S. should never invade an Arab capital without a coalition that contained countries whose support mattered in that part of the world, such as France, Egypt, Syria or Saudi Arabia.
The elder Bush rightly understood that it was not in Israel's interest, or that of the U.S., for Israel to be expanding settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The Madrid peace conference convened by the elder Bush paved the way for both the Oslo peace process and the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, which ended Israel's diplomatic isolation with countries like India and China. It was also the elder Bush who laid the groundwork for the Nafta free-trade accord, completed by President Bill Clinton.
In short, the elder Bush understood the importance of acting in the world - but acting wisely, with competence and preparation. His great weakness was his public diplomacy. He wrongly antagonized American Jews by challenging their right to lobby on behalf of Israel. He could have given more voice to the amazing liberation of humanity that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented and to the American anger over the Tiananmen Square massacre. Although, in his muted response to Tiananmen, the elder Bush kept China-U.S. relations from going totally off the rails, which kept China on a track to economic reform. Although he raised taxes, he never really explained himself. So his instincts were good, his mechanics were often flawless, but his words and music left you frustrated. Still, the legacy is a substantial one. Over time, historians will treat the elder Bush with respect.
So as we approach this critical election of 2004, my advice, dear readers, is this: Vote for the candidate who embodies the ethos of George H. W. Bush - the old guy. Vote for the man who you think would have the same gut feel for nurturing allies and restoring bipartisanship to foreign policy as him. Vote for the man you think understands the importance of facing up to our fiscal responsibilities for the sake of our children. And vote for the man who has the best instincts for balancing realism and idealism and the man who understands the necessity of using energetic U.S. diplomacy to make Israel more secure - by helping to bring it peace with its Arab neighbors, not just more tours from American Christian fundamentalists.
Yes, next Tuesday, vote for the real political heir to George H. W. Bush. I'm sure you know who that is.
The Apparent Heir
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 31, 2004
Columnists for this newspaper are not allowed to endorse presidential candidates. But I think this election is so important, I am going to break the rules. I hope I don't get fired. But here goes: I am endorsing George Bush for president. No, no - not George W. Bush. I am endorsing his father - George Herbert Walker Bush.
The more I look back on the elder Bush - Bush 41 - the more I find things to admire and the more I see attributes we need in our next president.
Let's start with domestic policy. The elder George Bush was the real uniter, not divider, the real believer in a kinder, gentler political dialogue. Yes, he had a Democratic Congress to deal with, so he had to be more conciliatory, but it came naturally to him. In 1990, the elder Bush sided with Congressional Democrats to raise taxes, because he knew it was the right thing for the economy, despite his famous "Read my lips" pledge not to raise new taxes. While that 1990 tax increase contributed to his re-election defeat, it laid the foundation for the Clinton tax increases, which, together with Mr. Bush's, helped to hold down interest rates and spur our tremendous growth in the 1990's and the buildup of a huge surplus.
On foreign policy, the elder Bush maintained a healthy balance between realism and idealism, unilateralism and multilateralism, American strength and American diplomacy. He believed that international institutions like the U.N. could be force multipliers of U.S. power. Rather than rubbing Mikhail Gorbachev's nose in the dirt, the elder Bush treated him with respect, and in doing so helped to orchestrate the collapse of the Soviet Union, the liberation of Eastern Europe and the reunification of Germany without the firing of a single shot. The nonviolent unraveling of the Soviet Empire ushered in a decade of prosperity and an era of unprecedented American power and popularity.
The alliance that Mr. Bush, Brent Scowcroft and James A. Baker III built to drive Saddam out of Kuwait had so many allies it virtually turned a profit for America. Mr. Bush chose not to invade Baghdad in 1991. Right or wrong, he felt that had he tried, he would have lost the coalition he had built up to evict Saddam from Kuwait. He obviously believed that the U.S. should never invade an Arab capital without a coalition that contained countries whose support mattered in that part of the world, such as France, Egypt, Syria or Saudi Arabia.
The elder Bush rightly understood that it was not in Israel's interest, or that of the U.S., for Israel to be expanding settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. The Madrid peace conference convened by the elder Bush paved the way for both the Oslo peace process and the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty, which ended Israel's diplomatic isolation with countries like India and China. It was also the elder Bush who laid the groundwork for the Nafta free-trade accord, completed by President Bill Clinton.
In short, the elder Bush understood the importance of acting in the world - but acting wisely, with competence and preparation. His great weakness was his public diplomacy. He wrongly antagonized American Jews by challenging their right to lobby on behalf of Israel. He could have given more voice to the amazing liberation of humanity that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented and to the American anger over the Tiananmen Square massacre. Although, in his muted response to Tiananmen, the elder Bush kept China-U.S. relations from going totally off the rails, which kept China on a track to economic reform. Although he raised taxes, he never really explained himself. So his instincts were good, his mechanics were often flawless, but his words and music left you frustrated. Still, the legacy is a substantial one. Over time, historians will treat the elder Bush with respect.
So as we approach this critical election of 2004, my advice, dear readers, is this: Vote for the candidate who embodies the ethos of George H. W. Bush - the old guy. Vote for the man who you think would have the same gut feel for nurturing allies and restoring bipartisanship to foreign policy as him. Vote for the man you think understands the importance of facing up to our fiscal responsibilities for the sake of our children. And vote for the man who has the best instincts for balancing realism and idealism and the man who understands the necessity of using energetic U.S. diplomacy to make Israel more secure - by helping to bring it peace with its Arab neighbors, not just more tours from American Christian fundamentalists.
Yes, next Tuesday, vote for the real political heir to George H. W. Bush. I'm sure you know who that is.
"Of what use is a philosopher who doesn't hurt anybody's feelings?" -Diogenes
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Simply Joel
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KellY wrote:Didn't think any pro-Bush folks would really want to comment on the AC article, but continuing the discussion of conservatives for Kerry, here's Thomas Friedman, whose columns Joel stopped posting when he started criticizing Bush too much.
DVD Burner wrote:Joel. heyyyyy. glad to see you did'nt leave after all.
really.
but are you going to be just a cut and paste kinda guy?
you need to write your opinion more.
really glad you're back
KellY, Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Democrats... snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, daily!
slap my salmon, baby
slap my salmon, baby