Category: Old Dish

Hey, if it helps beat John Kerry, who cares? These Purple Heart bandages are plain sickening. The mindset that enables them is depraved. Both sides have their extremists. And it’s good that the GOP hierarchy has disowned these gimmicks. But it also tells you something about what motivates some of the Republican base.

Looking at the context of president Bush’s remarks yesterday on the Today Show does not undo the weird gaffe. Here’s the conversation:

LAUER: You said to me a second ago, one of the things you’ll lay out in your vision for the next four years is how to go about winning the war on terror. That phrase strikes me a little bit. Do you really think we can win this war of ter–on terror? For example, in the next four years?

Pres. BUSH: I have never said we can win it in four years?

LAUER: No, I’m just saying, can we win it? Do you say that?

Pres. BUSH: I don’t–I don’t think we can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that the–those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in part of the world, let’s put it that way. I have a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand is to find them before they hurt us. And that’s necessary. I’m telling you it’s necessary.

The odd thing is that this really does sound like a parody of Kerry. And if Kerry had indeed said that, we would be hearing nothing else for weeks. And indeed, every time I hear the president talk extemporaneously about the war – his interview with Tim Russert last February was a classic – he does seem to have almost no conceptual grasp of what he’s talking about. Back then, he seemed flummoxed by the very concept of a distinction between a war of choice and a war of necessity. Now he seems to be parroting a Council on Foreign Relations confab on the permanence of terrorism. We’re all told that the president knows what he believes about this war and today he corrected himself. But the issues here – how to fight Islamist terror, what constitutes success, the necessary blend of military action, diplomacy, police work, etc. – are not minor. You have to be impressed by this president’s resilence in the war and his aggression. He also deserves enormous credit for shifting U.S. policy toward democratization in that part of the world. But there are times when you have to wonder whether he really understands this issue as deeply as he needs to; and whether that limited grasp has led to some of the calamitous “miscalculations” that even he has now acknowledged.

Last night in New York was a shrewd and, to my mind, often effective attempt to recapture why so many of us admired George W. Bush’s leadership during the dark days after 9/11 and the precarious, nail-biting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It still seems to me that no one will ever take away the power of those days – or the soaring rhetoric of Bush’s speech to Congress that lifted him to a new level of leadership. John McCain’s speech struck me therefore as ultimately about character. It was not a complete endorsement of everything Bush. Far from it. Here’s a passage that struck me as an implicit rebuke to Bush’s hubris after the fall of Baghdad:

We must not be complacent at moments of success, and we must not despair over setbacks. We must learn from our mistakes, improve on our successes, and vanquish this unpardonable enemy.

McCain also avoided harsh partisan name-calling; and you can easily see why an honorable man like this would recoil from old soldiers trying to besmirch the medals of others. Nevertheless, he made a strong case for Bush as a solid leader in wartime, and, more importantly, for the nobility and importance of taking out Saddam. His point about the foolish notion that we could somehow have left Saddam in power in a stable status quo is one I’ve made before and critical to a serious defense of the decision to go to war. It was also delicious to watch this genuine hero go after that dishonest charlatan, Michael Moore. I only wish it didn’t make Moore feel even more important. The only flaw in McCain’s speech was the delivery. It was oddly flat, almost drained. McCain seemed tired. But he gives me hope that the GOP is not doomed to become the reincarnation of the Dixiecrats, that it can avoid the rancid recesses of its own fears, that it can rise to the occasion of this war.

THE FEISTY MAYOR: Giuliani was on fire. He spoke so easily, so amusingly, and so emotionally that for long passages, you forgot he was giving a speech and felt he was talking with you. His iconic status is oddly a problem for him, because it has tended to obscure his street-smart, clear-eyed chattiness – the kind of thing a New York mayor can use from time to time. But it was on display last night to great effect. Again, Giuliani spoke to Bush’s emotional intelligence after 9/11, his genuine attempt to do what he believed was best for the country at a time of terror, and to Bush’s personable nature. You just cannot imagine a story in which a huge, ham-handed construction worker would ever give John Kerry a big, warm bear-hug. Or that John Kerry would answer a long disquisition from a man in a hard-hat and feel satisfied to respond with two simple words: “I agree.” Again, Giuliani reminded us of why we tend to like George W. Bush. (Personally, I’d rather have pins stuck in my eyes than endure a conversation with John Kerry, but I’d love to hang with Bush.) All of this matters. A president in wartime needs to be able to connect with people. Bush can. Kerry can’t. It also matters that Bush does seem to have faith in what he is doing. The problem is that he seems to have too much faith at times, and not enough skepticism. You need skepticism in war to second-guess your intelligence sources, to doubt the efficacy of a war with too few troops, or an occupation easily derailed by insurgent forces you greatly under-estimated and failed to foresee. Giuliani’s gamble, however, is that, if you have to pick between faith and skepticism in a war president, the former is more important. If the choice between Bush and Kerry can be conveyed as such a choice, then Bush wins easily. It is, of course, much more complicated than that. But the point of last night was to reduce complication to simplicity. It worked, in so far as anyone saw it.

THE SHIFTING CAMPAIGN: In all this, you can almost feel the election swinging Bush’s way a little. The swift boat smear was important in jolting the conversation, in changing the dynamic that was pointing to a Bush defeat. But Kerry’s weaknesses are also at play here. I don’t believe his convention was wasted. He had to emphasize national security. But it’s domestic policies that will win him the election, if he does win, and he hasn’t yet made them the focus of the battle. Maybe he will. But the bottom line is that Kerry is a deeply weak candidate, and it took McCain and Giuliani, almost by simple contrast, to remind us why. Bush still has a case to make – defending his record deficits, his errors in the war in Iraq, his vast new spending, his refusal to tackle entitlements, his protectionism, his anti-gay amendment, and so on. But he’s ahead on the leadership front, even before he gives his acceptance speech. Not bad.

Now, Schrock. A conservative Republican congressman in Virginia drops out of his re-election race, after being “outed” by a website. Ed Schrock’s district includes Pat Robertson’s Regents University. It’s another unpleasant tale of our divisive and emotional times. And I fear it will only get worse.

The Log Cabin guys make their case.

A reader rightly points out that I need to comment on the reports on the Abu Ghraib calamity that came out last month. Long ago, when it became clear that Don Rumsfeld had nixed expanding interrogation techniques at AG, I felt enormous relief that nothing too nefarious had gone on in the Pentagon. Knowing Rummy, I had found it very hard to believe that he would have sanctioned anything like what went on in AG. And that turns out to have been the case. But the reports rightly point out that confusion at the top about what was sanctioned and what wasn’t did indeed contribute to the p.r. debacle and the unforgivable abuse itself. Not malevolence nor malfeasance, just the same incompetence that under-manned the occupation and made a difficult situation unmanageable. Bush and Rumsfeld do bear responsibility for that, as Rumsfeld conceded in front of Congress. Bush, of course, has yet to accept responsibility for what went wrong. He very rarely does. The deeper question, however, is: do we have confidence in this administration’s competence (not will) to conduct the war effectively and bring it toward victory? There are plenty of arguments on both sides of that question. Waging war requires both determination and effectiveness. Bush has a lot more of the former than the latter. And, if we want to avoid more Abu Ghraibs, that counts.

Arthur Chrenkoff continues to perform an invaluable service. Telling and encouraging that the Wall Street Journal is now publishing him. The blogosphere continues its mainstream integration.

Paris never wanted to be involved, but the notion that even a chief appeaser of Islamist terror can escape its fury is getting less and less persuasive. French journalists have been kidnapped in Iraq in protest of France’s admirable secularism in its education system. France refuses to give up its head-scarf ban in schools. More innocents are likely to be murdered. One can only hope that Paris gets the message. There is no escaping this fight. It is civilization or Jihadism. We can and should debate tactics; but the sides are clear enough.

The invocation for the GOP Convention today will be given by one Sheri Dew, a Mormon. She has described the movement for marriage rights for gays as the equivalent of Nazism. Here’s an excerpt from a recent speech:

I found myself reading the latest edition of one of the nation’s most popular news magazines. One of the major articles was about gay “marriage.” There were several statements that stood out for me in a dramatic and terrifying way, but one of the most sobering features of the entire article was a picture of two handsome, young men, getting “married.” What distressed me most was the fact that they were both holding an infant “daughter” – twin girls they had adopted. I was, frankly, heartsick. What kind of chance do those girls have being raised in that kind of setting? What will their understanding of men and women, marriage and families be?-Is there any chance that, as adults, they could expect to marry and enjoy a healthy relationship with a man, including rearing children together? In addition, there were alarming concepts about “family” presented throughout the article – concepts that even questioned the validity of heterosexual families.

To say I found the entire article sobering would be a grand understatement. And I found myself thinking, “Talk about influence. Imagine the influence of that one magazine in presenting ideas about the family that are totally in opposition to God’s plan and will for His children.”

This escalating situation reminds me of a statement of a World War II journalist by the name of Dorothy Thompson who wrote for the Saturday Evening Post in Europe during the pre-World War II years when Hitler was building up his armies and starting to take ground. In an address she delivered in Toronto in 1941 she said this: “Before this epic is over, every living human being will have chosen. Every living human being will have lined up with Hitler or against him.- Every living human being either will have opposed this onslaught or supported it, for if he tries to make no choice that in itself will be a choice.- If he takes no side, he is on Hitler’s side.- If he does not act, that is an act – for Hitler.”

Look, she has every right to oppose same-sex marriage and every right to feel strongly about it. But comparing well-meaning advocates for including gay people in their own families as the equivalent of Nazis is just, well, sadly typical of what the GOP is fast becoming. Is Dick Cheney the equivalent of a Nazi?

Partisanship seems to have hardened even further in August, it appears. I’ve now gotten many emails defending the honor of the anti-Kerry Swift Boat vets and claiming that they had nothing – nothing – to do with the Bush campaign. Please. Do I think the vets have a right to say what they believe? Of course they do, and 527s are fine with me. Free speech and all that. Am I exercising a double-standard by not worrying about the Kerry-backed 527s? Hardly. I don’t recall my being soft on MoveOn.org and all the other hysterical anti-Bush screeds; and their connections to the Kerry campaign are obvious. But there is something different between cheap, ugly shots at presidential policy and quibbling with a man’s war medals. And it is surely naive to believe that the Bush campaign was unaware of this and that their Texas cronies didn’t help finance and produce the ads. If this had never occurred on Bush’s watch before, you might dismiss it. But obviously it is an old tactic he deploys whenever he needs to. I said so in the 2000 campaign, long before I endorsed Bush. Here’s my take on his pandering to the Bob Jones crowd in South Carolina. Again, I haven’t changed my mind. I just haven’t rented it out to partisanship. I owe no apologies to people who want me to.