I’ve been reading with some disbelief all sorts of proposals for president Bush’s next two years. Here’s the only one that matters: win the war. If we can rid the world of Saddam Hussein and see Iran’s dictators pushed to the brink, then an entirely new set of circumstances prevails in the world. What the president needs to focus on now is disarming Saddam. This election wasn’t a mandate for tax simplification or welfare reform (however important those two things are). It was a vote of support for victory. If Bush lets Saddam wriggle through the gaping U.N. net, and lets al Qaeda off the hook, then he will deserve to be defeated in 2004. Getting the war right is paramount. Everything else will follow. Nothing else, in comparison, matters.
CNN’S “COUP D’ETAT”: “Around 1:30 a.m., White House spokesman Ari Fleischer announced that for the first time in U.S. history the president’s party gained seats in the House during the administration’s first midterm elections. He also noted that the same Republican coup d’etat was accomplished in the Senate.” – John King, CNN. But Saddam Hussein was elected.
SONTAG AWARD NOMINEE: “Even as the bullets ricochet, it should be said there are some problems with this approach to international peacekeeping. For a start, it is illegal. The Yemen attack violates basic rules of sovereignty. It is an act of war where no war has been declared.” – the Guardian on the U.S.’s successful attack on al Qaeda leadership in the Yemen. No war has been declared? Were they alive on September 11, 2001?
THEY EVEN SPIN THE MAPS: Check out this New York Times map of the Governor’s races. It looks pretty good for the Democrats. But, as a liberal reader regrets to point out, there are five – count them – five errors. Georgia is simply left white, as if there had been no gubernatorial election. And Vermont, Maryland, New Hampshire and Minnesota are all colored as “wins” for the GOP, when they should be colored as “gains.” Now most of this is obviously just sloppy, as you’d expect from the Times these days. But it’s also true that every single error makes the Democrats look as if they did better than they did. Somehow, I’m not surprised. (I’ve got a saved copy of the map if they fix it by the time you read this.)
BOB SOLDIERS ON: Poor Bob Herbert. His column degenerates today into a final whimsical lament for the days of Lyndon Johnson. Before that, he argued that the Democrats need to be less timid, more full of hell-fire, less careful, or they face more losses. Then his first example of excessive timidity is the Wellstone rally. Huh?
The Dish 