Month: October 2004

A classic NYT wedding announcement correction.

In the interests of debate, here’s James Lileks’ dissection of my endorsement. I think it comes down to: he doesn’t trust Kerry in any way. If that’s your opinion, then I think you have to vote Bush. But it isn’t mine. One other thing: there is nothing in his piece about Bush’s record. Reading James is always a pleasure. But he could have written this piece a year ago without changing a jot. Has he learned anything from what has happened in Iraq? Or is he just not telling?

RUMMY FLASHBACK: Just to recall the heady days after the fall of Baghdad:

Rumsfeld: Let me say one other thing. The images you are seeing on television you are seeing over, and over, and over, and it’s the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it 20 times, and you think, “My goodness, were there that many vases?” (Laughter.) “Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?”

Ha ha ha. Just a few broken vases. Mission Accomplished. This is the judgment we want to see re-elected?

So the other tattered pro-war British shoe drops:

I am assuming for now that this is a single-issue election. There is one’s subjective vote, one’s objective vote, and one’s ironic vote. Subjectively, Bush (and Blair) deserve to be re-elected because they called the enemy by its right name and were determined to confront it. Objectively, Bush deserves to be sacked for his flabbergasting failure to prepare for such an essential confrontation. Subjectively, Kerry should be put in the pillory for his inability to hold up on principle under any kind of pressure. Objectively, his election would compel mainstream and liberal Democrats to get real about Iraq.
The ironic votes are the endorsements for Kerry that appear in Buchanan’s anti-war sheet The American Conservative, and the support for Kerry’s pro-war candidacy manifested by those simple folks at MoveOn.org. I can’t compete with this sort of thing, but I do think that Bush deserves praise for his implacability, and that Kerry should get his worst private nightmare and have to report for duty.

And so we agree again. Let’s see the National Review crowd spin that as a vote on the FMA.

MY ENDORSEMENT: It’s now posted opposite. Reihan will be assembling the best responses for the Letters Page. Forgive me for not responding to all the emails. It’s physically impossible. But I read as many as I could. Thanks for your praise and criticism.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “It is quite right to worry whether the Americans are sincere about bringing democracy to Iraq – given their record in the region, it would be insane not to be. But I don’t agree at all that if the Iraqis get the chance of democracy they won’t take it. If you look at all the opinion polls, they are absolutely unequivocal about his. They put tribe very low on their list of reason why they will vote for a candidate. The Ayatollah Sistani has emerged as a committed democrat – showing that democrats always emerge in the strangest of places. If Arabs are irredeemably tribal, then dictatorship is the only possible route for the region. I don’t believe that, and far more importantly, the evidence doesn’t show it. We shouldn’t be naxefve about US power, but we also shouldn’t be patronising about the capacities of Arabs.
And please remember: if the invasion hadn’t happened we wouldn’t be talking about Iraqi democracy, ever. We would be talking about Saddam and Uday and Qusay forever. I say better a chance at democracy and trade unions and decency – even if you think it’s slim – than an eternity of Ba’athism.” – Johann Hari, in an interesting debate with Robert Fisk, on his own website.

JOHN PEEL: Most Americans will have no idea who this irrepressibly individualist DJ was. But that’s what the British obits are for. Herewith the wonderful life and deep integrity of a man who knew what he liked in music and played it. I also admired his description of a professional relationship he had with a radio producer: it was that of “the organ-grinder and the monkey. With each one believing the other to be the monkey.”

Before crashing Monday night, I was bombarded with emails informing me that NBC had reported that the explosives at al Qa Qaa were gone before the U.S. troops arrived. But last night, Tom Brokaw reported as follows:

“Last night on this broadcast we reported that the 101st Airborne never found the nearly 380 tons of HMX and RDX explosives. We did not conclude the explosives were missing or had vanished, nor did we say they missed the explosives. We simply reported that the 101st did not find them. For its part, the Bush campaign immediately pointed to our report as conclusive proof that the weapons had been removed before the Americans arrived. That is possible, but that is not what we reported.”

Just for the record.

SADDAM’S WAR-PLAN: How he foiled the U.S. And how we can still win. An interesting assessment from the Belmont Club. Just ignore the anti-Kerry stuff at the end. The analysis is worthwhile.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “As a senior military officer, I am aghast at the incompetence associated with the Iraq planning and execution. I always thought we would win, but I also thought the President stretched his polemics, and I cannot comprehend (even recognizing the inherent political repercussions) anyone’s failure to acknowledge how these failures have stretched our troops thin, and endangered them more. I also find it unfathomable that no one has been held accountable. Perhaps it’s a factor of having been raised with “Catholic guilt,” but how can no one take responsibility for these shortfalls? My only explanation is this is all about power and not about doing what is right.” More feedback on the Letters Page.

“The commander of the first unit into the area told CBS he did not search it for explosives or secure it from looters. ‘We were still in a fight,’ he said. ‘Our focus was killing bad guys.’ He added he would have needed four times more troops to search and secure all the ammo dumps he came across.” – CBS’ latest press release on the missing explosives. Four times more troops. But that would have meant doing it right.

The social right, whose state amendments would ban civil unions in eight states, is mad at Bush for backing civil unions. Money quote:

“Civil unions are a government endorsement of homosexuality,” said Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women For America. “But I don’t think President Bush has thought about it in that way. He seems to be striving for neutrality while defending marriage itself.” … The head of another group, the Campaign for California Families, said it, too, wants a sweeping constitutional amendment that bars civil unions and same-sex marriage. “Here’s the truth, civil unions are homosexual marriage by another name,” said Randy Thomasson, the group’s executive director. “Civil unions rob marriage of its uniqueness and award homosexuals all the rights of marriage available under state law… Bush needs to understand what’s going on and resist counterfeit marriages with all his might no matter what they’re called,” Thomasson said.

So why didn’t this debate happen earlier? Because the White House was smart enough to keep Bush’s views under wraps, only allowing spokesmen to utter them, while signaling to the hard right that Bush wanted to gut gay relationships of all civil protections. How would this debate have played out if Bush had endorsed civil unions – perhaps in a federal bill – back in February? Completely differently. But Rove decided to use the issue to gin up the base and stiff a million gay Bush-backers. I’m sorry, but I’m not falling for this last-minute socially moderate spin now. Meanwhile, though, the message is clear from Bush himself: vote against those state amendments that ban civil unions as well as civil marriages for gay couples. Vote no in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Utah. Still waiting for word from Gallagher and Kurtz, on whether they support these amendments.

Now, Allawi uses the word “negligent” to describe U.S. policy in Iraq.

The endorsement I once never thought I’d write. Here’s a free link, courtesy of TNR. I’m now headed to an undisclosed location.

The dynamic in this final week often comes down to shoring up vulnerable states and winning the news cycle. Ryan Lizza emphasizes how successful Kerry has been with the latter:

As for the explosives story, it shows once again how effective the Kerry campaign has been at turning the spotlight away from its candidate and back onto Bush’s failures. Granted, it’s always easier for a challenger running against a failed incumbent to do this, but it’s still surprising, given the reputation of Bush’s communications shop, that Kerry is able to win more daily news cycles in the homestretch than his opponent. Bush’s problem is that he has run out of news to make. He has been making the same case against Kerry for almost eight months, and the press corps has tired of the story. Kerry’s team, meanwhile, gets up every morning and feeds the press with a new anti-Bush angle.

Some may see MSM bias at work here. And there’s some of that. But the real problem is the Bush record. It’s vulnerable. For the first time, Kerry is making that hurt the president. And Bush’s counter-attack – dismissing Kerry as too risky, too lightweight and too inconstant – was fatally undermined in the debates, leading to the Kerry-as-liberal meme. Too late, I’d say.

Mystery pollster helps wean you off the daily tracking polls. Every recent shift is within the margin of error and is basically meaningless. Oh well. But did you see the latest Rasmussen?