EMAIL OF THE DAY

“I’ve been thinking about Kerry’s real dilemma. What if he wins? Assume for argument’s sake that he is as committed to the war on Islamofascism as Bush. What will be the situation he finds himself in? First, his victory will be accompanied with videos of cheering islamofascist crowds – the Arab and Islamic worlds will (perhaps unfairly) interpret his victory as a defeat for America – after all, in the Arab world regimes tend to change only when the nation is defeated. Second, our enemies and friends will tend to perceive Kerry as the “weaker” candidate – the one less likely to agressively assert US interests. In high school terms, Bush is the “Crazy Motherf**cker” that nobody messes with – because everyone knows what happened to Omar and Saddam. Kerry is like a Student Council Treasurer – not a bad guy but no reputation for aggression, indeed a reputation for avoiding conflict, a guy you might be able to intimidate. Paradoxically, this puts Kerry in the position of needing to be more agressive than Bush in the next term – he needs to demonstrate his willingness to assert US interests and take out bad guys so that the benefits of intimidation that Bush achieved don’t evaporate. By contrast Bush doesn’t need to do nearly as much because everybody knows that he’s a “Crazy Motherf**cker”.
Of course this assumes that Kerry wants to aggressively fight islamofascism. If he doesn’t he faces no dilemma – we just lose.”