Month: July 2004

I’ll be instapunditing tonight and every night of the DNC shindig. And please hit the tip-jar to keep the blog alive.

THE SLIMING OF ARMSTRONG: It’s not only the French.

Responds to Michael Moore. “Fahrenheit 9/11” is having a devastating effect on morale. Which was, of course, the point.

Since I’m getting swamped by emails lambasting me for leaning toward giving Kerry a shot, it may be worth defending myself from the assertion encapsulated by the following email:

Why don’t you just admit it Andrew? Whom ever supports Gay marriage can count on your support.

Of course, John Kerry doesn’t support marriage rights for gay people. And in 2000, George W. Bush, whom I endorsed, didn’t support equal marriage rights. I haven’t noticed my supporting Al Sharpton or Dennic Kucinich on those lines either. The notion that someone who has views about a whole host of topics and who has backed both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush for the presidency is some kind of one-issue voter strikes me as deeply unfair. But telling. I should say up-front that, of course, the president’s support for the most extreme measure imaginable on the issue of marriage – a constitutional amendment – has obviously affected my view of him. The fact that he did so without even attempting to explain himself to the gay community or even his gay supporters merely compounded it. Many of you think it’s no big deal, and you’re entitled to believe that. For someone who has spent much of his adult life arguing for gay equality and for gay inclusion in the Republican party, it obviously is a big deal. How could it not be? If Bush favored an amendement restrcting the rights of, say, Catholics, would anyone be surprised if a Catholic decided not to support him on that basis? Would the blame be assigned to the voter or the president? The very notion that a gay person should simply acquiesce in the FMA is itself an expression of prejudice against gay people and the legitimacy of their aspirations and beliefs.

MANY ISSUES ANDREW: But, of course, my concerns about Bush are emphatically not merely related to the marriage issue. The blog speaks for itself on this – over the last few years. From the minute Baghdad fell, I expressed concern about hubris and chaos. At the first sign of fiscal disaster, I called Bush to account for his spending policies. As a cultural liberal, I’m obviously alienated by Bush’s embrace of everything and anything James Dobson says. As a believer in free trade, I was offended by steel tariffs; as a federalist, I was appalled by his incursion on states’ rights, from marriage to marijuana; as a balanced-budget conservative, I was horrified by the president’s insouciance toward deficits and expansion of entitlements; as a strong believer in the moral superiority of American values, Abu Ghraib was an indelible lapse, however effectively it is white-washed by the Defense Department. Does all this represent a capitulation to the “left”? On all these matters, I’d argue that my core principles remain unchanged. Should the war trump every other issue? In some ways, yes. But, as I have argued, I’m not sure that the choice is as stark as some want to make it out to be. I have yet to discern a distinction between Bush’s and Kerry’s Iran policy, for example. If our major unfinished task is “nation-building,” I’m not convinced Kerry would be much worse than Bush. And Bush’s errors – the WMD debacle, for example – have definitely made him less effective on the world stage. No British prime minister will go out on a limb for an American president in the foreseeable future. Pre-emption has been largely discredited – by Bush himself. When I listen to the president on the war, I am heartened by his support for democracy. I take back not a word of praise for his conduct after 9/11 and during the buildup to the Iraq war. But I think he has shown himself to be at worst incompetent and at best feckless in many aspects of the conduct of the war at a time when such lapses are unforgivable. All this leads me to look at the alternative. Heaven knows I have been critical of Kerry. But I want to give him a chance. So sue me. I know in this polarized climate, such indecision is rare and punished. But it’s my best take on what’s going on. And the joy of a blog is that I can simply write that – and let the chips fall where they may.

The good news is that our traffic keeps going up. The bad news is that our bandwidth costs have also risen, and although I was hoping to go a full year without asking for more support, the site needs some extra cash to keep going at least until the election. If you read this site regularly and have never contributed, please take a moment to send $20 or more our way. If you have contributed in the past, please help us again with another donation. We’ve deliberately kept this site reader-supported, because the community of readers it now sustains is, to my mind, its greatest asset. You can see that from the Letters Page, where I am regularly corrected, rebutted and challenged by some of the smartest readers on the web. The blog is also, of course, hard work. This year alone, I’ve written 300,000 words for the site, provided hundreds of links, comments, provocations, and written morning, noon and deep into the night to keep the site up to date. I don’t expect to get paid at the same rates as I do for other work, but I do need to keep the site financed without dipping into my own pockets, and a small stipend for the work involved strikes me as a fair bargain. I know I’ve annoyed lots of you this year, but that’s what independent writers do. It’s what a blog allows for a writer – the space to challenge partisan boundaries where other sites will not. So please take a moment to keep this blog – and its community of readers – alive and well and poised for one of the most interesting campaigns of my lifetime. Click here to contribute.

HBO VERSUS BUSH: An emailer wrotes:

The past two episodes of “Six Feet Under” on HBO (July 18 and 25) included several anti-Bush lines spoken by the performers, plus a prominent product placement for an anti-Republican book. None of these occurences advanced a story line or character; they were gratuitous throwaways.
Here, as best as I can recollect, is what I saw:
In the July 18 episode, Nat is reading the paper, and says (paraphrasing), “Man that Bush just lies and lies and nobody does anything about it.” His mother Ruth responds only by addressing his recent bitterness. The political angle never comes up again.
Until the July 25th episode. This time it’s Ruth’s husband George, reading “Perfectly Legal,” a book by a New York Times reporter claiming that the super-rich gouge the middle class. As he puts the book down he says (paraphrasing), “They’re just hollowing out the middle class until there’s nobody left.” Later in the episode he’s seen reading the book again. Nothing else in these scenes addresses this activity.
In the same episode, Claire and her friends create art on the walls of her room, making several comments along the lines of “dropping bombs and calling it peace,” and painting the phrase “Terror Starts at Home” on the wall.
Here’s the ironic thing about this kind of stealth political campaigning: it’s easier to follow the money behind it than in the more up-front kind.

But I also have the feeling this stuff just washes off an audience – especially one sophisticated enough to enjoy “Six Feet Under.”

Here’s a WSJ round-up of the bloggers at the DNC convention. When I started this blog over four years ago – yes, when Clinton was president and 9/11 was unimaginable – it never occurred to me that this new media methodology would take off quite as quickly as it has. Good for all of them.

Another reader chimes in:

I don’t know how the reader whose letter you posted can see Bush as in any way libertarian. Does s/he not remember the state of the union address where he called for mandatory drug testing for high school students? Does s/he not remember that he federalized crime by signing the partial birth abortion ban? Does s/he not remember that he favors state intervention into a woman’s womb, or that he was appalled by the Lawrence decision or favored sodomy laws while Governor of Texas? Does s/he not think that anti-smoking laws are just as much products of the puritan right as of the politically correct left? Did s/he not notice that Bush was itching to re-up the assault rifle ban? Or that he has used federal dollars for “faith based initiatives” which could impede both the establishment clause as well as the equal protection clause when homos are able to be disriminated against? Where in anything that Bush has done is the spirit of John Stuart Mill, John Locke or Ronald Reagan?

I’m with this guy. Bush, of course, never pretended to be much of a small government libertarian type, and he shouldn’t be blamed for misrepresenting himself. But he has certainly disappointed that wing of the party more profoundly than anyone I know expected.

A moving tribute.

Well, if I reprint it, Reuters won’t get the full credit.

The anti-Americanism even infects the sports coverage.

Courtesy of Charles Dickens.

KERRY AND LANGSTON HUGHES: He’s edited a book of Hughes’ poetry as a tie-in for the election. Noah has the details.

LIBERTARIANS FOR BUSH: A reader writes in:

You posed the question “Why would libertarians vote for Bush?” Well, I hold many libertarian views, hate the war on drugs, and yet support Bush emphatically. Why? Well, I don’t think the left will do anything to remediate the drug problem right now (to be fair, they can’t without getting whacked). But the left does and will support infringements such as anti-smoking laws, seatbelt laws, hate crime laws (and maybe hate speech laws soon?) and so on. I assert that, overall, the much greater threats to our civil liberties emanate from the left.
Furthermore, the left will infringe upon us with ever greater spending, ever spiraling entitlement programs, and ever more punitive taxation. If you believe that a Kerry administration will reduce the deficit, I think you must be smoking some of that “stronger” pot! Income taxes are regressive and damaging to productivity and personal incentive, not to mention a blatant and expensive method of redistributing wealth.

I guess my problem with this is that it would be extremely hard to raise spending and borrowing as swiftly as Bush has and I simply do not trust him to restrain spending in the second term. He clearly doesn’t care about the size of government, unless attacking it wins him votes. I don’t see much difference between Bush Republicanism and Kerry liberalism on nanny-state issues – Bush is a strong supporter of hate crime laws, for example, (except for the gays, who are uniquely excluded from such protections). I guess I believe that supporting a Republican who is anathema to libertarian conservatives is a bad thing in general. But, hey, it’s not as if Kerry is that great either.

NOT SO STRONG: The new super-pot notion is rebutted – at least in Britain.