Her reason? “In the hope that he will restore our alliances and reduce rabid anti-Americanism in this era of terrorism when international good will and cooperation are crucial.” That’s one good reason. One of my intellectual idols, Steven Pinker, is also for Kerry. His case? “The reason is reason: Bush uses too little of it. In the war on terror, his administration stints on loose-nuke surveillance while confiscating nail clippers and issuing color-coded duct tape advisories. His restrictions on stem cell research are incoherent, his dismissal of possible climate change inexcusable.”
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO SAFIRE? I’ve never thought of him as a purely partisan attack-dog, and his criticism of Kerry’s fear-mongering on social security and the draft is well-taken. But how is it possible to call the Kerry campaign the principal fear-mongers in this election? The entire premise of the Bush campaign has been that if Kerry is elected, the country will be blown to smithereens. I have lost count of the emails telling me that I have to back Bush because if I don’t, I won’t be alive to observe any elections or gay weddings. Cheney walked right up to the line earlier this year of saying that a catastrophe will occur if Kerry wins. Yesterday, he said:
“The biggest threat we face now as a nation is the possibility of terrorists ending up in the middle of one of our cities with deadlier weapons than have ever before been used against us – biological agents or a nuclear weapon or a chemical weapon of some kind to be able to threaten the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.”
And Cheney subsquently argued that “I don’t think there’s any evidence to support the proposition that [Kerry] would, in fact” be the same type of aggressive counter-terror president as Bush. Isn’t the implication obvious? Vote for Kerry and get nuked. But, hey, it works in other areas. The candidate who avoided Vietnam has surrogates who impugn his opponent’s war medals. The candidate who favors stripping gay couples of all legal protections gets to call the other guy a gay-baiter. And the candidate who tells people he’s the only thing between them and Armageddon gets pundits targeting his opponent as the fear-monger.
The Dish 