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PLEASE SUPPORT THIS BLOG! CLICK HERE TO MAKE A DONATION. Wednesday, September 01, 2004 IS FRANCE JOINING THE WAR? Something important is happening in France. The Jihadist threat to murder two French journalists if Paris doesn't rescind its ban on head-scarves in public schools has proven one thing: these fanatics are not responding to Western excess or the war in Iraq. They are theocratic fascists using the old methods of terror and violence to get their way. You cannot appease them, although Paris is trying to get its Arab friends to help out. But the event may shift French opinion our way and reveal to them that they too are at risk and that appeasement cannot work. Here's today's editorial in Le Monde. It's revealing in its hopes and its fears: They say that every cloud has a silver lining. The kidnapping of the two French journalists Georges Malbrunot and Christian Chesnot and the blackmailing of the French government by the kidnappers to force the government to repeal its new law against wearing the Islamic veil in school has two objectives. The first is to show that no Western country, no democracy -- even one that, like France, opposed the American intervention in Iraq -- is sheltered from the fanaticism of the soldiers of the "holy war" launched on September 11, 2001 by Al Qaida. The second is to show that France, despite or even because of its status as the largest Muslim state in Europe, has become a preferred target of this ideological war. . . . [But the terrorists have missed their mark.] Even if the current consensus in France remains fragile, even if ambiguities remain, even if the law against wearing the Islamic veil remains for many Muslims a strike at their religious liberty, we can do nothing but rejoice to see French Muslims on the front line of defense of the Republic.But for how long? And how solid will French Muslim support be if France really begins to fight back? - 8:38:42 PM HATE IN NYC: Here's an email that says a lot: Tuesday night I ventured over to Herald Square, where delegates had to be escorted into the Garden by riot police. An angry throng of demonstrators was lined along 32nd Street to "greet" them with screams, jeers, placards, raised middle fingers and the vilest form of name-calling. The bile and hate was palpable and, as a lifelong New Yorker, I found the offensive display hugely embarrassing. This is not how a world-class city behaves.This does not only come from one side, of course. But the pathologies now affecting the far left are as real and as deep as those afflicting the far right. They deserve each other; but they do not deserve to usurp the discourse in the next two months. - 8:26:01 PM BLAIR FOR KERRY? One of his cabinet ministers drops a hint. - 4:36:05 PM SALETAN ON ARNOLD: I don't agree with his assessment of the Iraq war, but I do agree that Arnold's pitch to conservatives like me was insufficient. And its insufficiency is related to its avoidance of all the hard questions that must be asked of Bush. - 4:17:03 PM KEYES VERSUS MARY: Alan Keyes calls Mary Cheney a "selfish hedonist" because she is a lesbian. (It's worth recalling that Keyes' intellectual mentor, the brilliant philosopher, Allan Bloom, was also a "selfish hedonist.") Meanwhile, the Family Research Council distributes fortune cookies at MSG with the message: "Real Men Marry Women." I guess Jesus and the Pope aren't real men. - 3:57:46 PM ME AS HAMLET: I thought this was kinda funny. (And I played Hamlet in grad school.) Yes, I am in political agony. As a classical conservative on most issues, my heart warms to the themes of this convention: freedom, strong defense, true diversity, personal compassion. I like Bush as a person and respect his good intentions. It is very hard to disagree with the central argument of my idols, McCain, Giuliani and Schwarzenegger, that Bush has the better temperament and will to conduct the war against our enemies. And I remain as committed to that war as I have ever been. You only have to see the carnage in Russia, or the hideous massacre of Nepalese workers in Iraq, or the threats against French journalists to see why this war is vital. But that doesn't mean you should not grapple with the other side of the equation: How will Bush bring us back to fiscal sanity? What will he do with Iran? How can he wage a competent war while alienating so many of our allies? (You should hear how the pro-war Brits talk of his diplomacy.) How can he unite the country while backing the agenda of Christian fundamentalism in all domestic issues? How can he guarantee progress in Iraq while the country is riven by two major insurgencies? The answers I keep getting from Republicans is: Kerry would be worse. That is not an answer. It is an avoidance. Conservatives should not let pure partisanship blind them to fiscal abandon, war incompetence, and social intolerance. Maybe Kerry's characterological weakness makes Bush the best bet in the war. Maybe that means he deserves your vote in November. But that doesn't mean these underlying questions can be ignored or forgotten. They could make a second term a disaster - for the country and for conservatism and for the world. - 3:46:29 PM EMAIL OF THE DAY: "Why so shocked about Bush girls! I was at the Garden last night, and was sort of surprised at how hot and decked out the women were -- lots of skin, decolletage, fashionable clothing, etc. We New Yorkers may be the prudes. We are certainly the snobs. You forget Republicans are not just Baptists -- and even if they are, they are usually so only on Sunday. They are fun-loving, rich Texas businessmen showing off their hot women and looking to have fun in the big city. Again, we forget that Southern women are VERY into being hot and flaunting it.The only swingers weren't just on the podium." Yes, the few times I have attended these shindigs, I've noticed that the Republicans are usually much sexier than the Democrats - especially the men. The people running the show are hipper as well. Odd, I know, given the religious right dominance. But striking nonetheless. - 3:14:21 PM THE SPECTACULAR INCOHERENCE: How to convey the spectacular incoherence of last night's continuing infomercial for the re-election of George W. Bush? The evening began with a series of speeches trumpeting vast increases in federal spending: on education, healthcare, AIDS, medical research, and on and on. No, these were not Democrats. They were Bush Republicans, extolling the capacity of government to help people, to cure the sick, educate the young, save Africans from HIV, subsidize religious charities, prevent or cure breast cancer, and any other number of worthy causes. The speakers were designed to target certain demographic and interest groups, just as the Democrats used to. The notion that these things are best left to the private sector, or that spending needs to be slashed in the wake of rising debt, or that the race of a speaker is irrelevant: all these are now Republican heterodoxy. The highpoint of this section was the speech of Bill Frist. I've never really listened to him give a speech before and this one was frighteningly bad. He has a cadaverous face and a terrifying smile. His first anecdote made no sense at all. His denunication of trial lawyers - the one moment when he didn't look like a funeral director - left him wild-eyed and awkward-gestured. He spoke as if to a bunch of seven year olds in their second language. How did this guy ever get to a position of leadership? He's the Senate Majority Leader and, on a bad day, he'd give small kids nightmares. His speech was a mishmash of comic cliches, pathetically contrived hand movements, that robotic swivel from teleprompTer screen to teleprompTer screen, and crude demagoguery. When you see who really runs the GOP (funny Tom DeLay isn't in prime time, isn't it?), you begin to realize why a cross-dressing ex-mayor, a dissident Californian and an unelected ex-librarian are among its major spokespeople. HIGHLIGHT OF THE NIGHT: Elisabeth Hasselbeck's ass. I know I'm not the best authority in these matters, but I think the C-Span cameraman had the same insight. THEN ARNOLD: My take on the California governor's performance can be read at The New Republic Online. - 2:39:06 AM THE GIRLS: But Jenna and Barbara really did steal the show. The word "sex" emanated from the stage. No, this wasn't an ad lib. The marketers who are promoting the policies of James Dobson and Rick Santorum were making jokes mocking the prudery of people who think "Sex and the City" is something only married people do and never talk about. Like the president's gaffe about not winning the war on terror, this could never have been uttered at a Democratic convention without the Dems being described as out-of-touch metrosexuals. But the delegates, knowing that this kind of front is necessary to win over the American middle, didn't seem to mind. Compared to the earnest, mature, almost somber Kerry daughters, these two were upper-class brats, giggling, cooing, pointing to friends in the crowd, giggling over their lines, and generally showing the maturity of the average "American Idol" contestant. I have to say I loved it - if only for its authenticity, for the sudden interruption of an actual reality into the sometimes surreal script of this convention. So we have an Austrian-American bodybuilder with a history of orgies and a couple of spoiled, hard-drinking party girls fronting for a party whose platform is inspired in large part by Biblical fundamentalism. Yep. It would be hard to convey a more vivid reflection of our fractured culture than that. LAURA: I'm one of those people who believe that the spouses of candidates should have no role at conventions or in government and are best seen and not heard (that goes for men as well as women). But Laura Bush is easily a more appealing character than a woman who has long forgotten that the only reason anyone is interested in what she has to say is her money. Laura's speech was boilerplate and that hideous, pink, cut-glass thingy they shoved behind her was distracting. My only real quibble is that it seems logically weird to argue that embryonic stem cell research is an abuse of human life and yet brag that her husband permitted the first federally-funded studies. If it's an abuse of human life, shouldn't it be deplored in all cases? DIVERSITY: Another theme was the alleged ideological diversity of the GOP. See - we allow our dissidents prime speaking spots, they argue. But the test of diversity is whether those speakers can actually dissent from party nostrums, and speak their own minds. But McCain, Giuliani, and Schwarzenegger all avoided any mention of domestic disagreements and merely vouched for Bush's character and qualifications to be a war-leader. That's not diversity. On the real issues that divide the party - the spending, the deficit, stem-cell research, the incompetence of the Iraq occupation, the FMA, immigration - there was and will be no dissent allowed. The platform is the most hardline religious right document ever put together by the GOP. In that way, the dutiful appearance by one dissident after another, all of whom merely express confidence in the blessed leader, comes off as actually quite creepy. Yes, they are welcome as Republicans. But only if they toe the line in public and help re-elect the ticket. Will their views be accommodated after the election? Are you kidding? And the real leaders of the party, and its intellectual inspirations, are kept off-stage. Yes: politics as usual and no big deal. But please spare me the diversity crap. In that respect, so far, this convention has had as much variation as Bob Dole's hair color. - 2:36:21 AM Tuesday, August 31, 2004 EMAIL OF THE DAY II: "The 'Email of the Day' you posted, about the Swift Boat people, is horrifying. It is, perhaps, the most eloquent example I have yet seen of how coarse and vile our political culture has become. The President's supporters are so twisted with hatred of their opponents that they cannot even acknowledge the simple fact that John Kerry put himself in harm's way, fought with courage, bled for his country. He could so easily have been killed -- that's a very strange way to plan your political future. Dozens of Swifties died on the rivers of the Mekong Delta, including Kerry's close friend and fellow Swift commander, Don Droz. He was ambushed and killed just a few weeks after Kerry shipped back sateside. It could just as easily have been Kerry. They patrolled side by side countless times. Like Droz, Kerry exposed himself to enemy fire to save men's lives. That anyone would begrudge Kerry taking the three Purple Hearts and the right to go back home that came with them is truly depraved." My feelings entirely. I notice, however, that now that the smears have taken their toll, the talking point from the GOP is that the real issue is Kerry's 1971 testimony. That indeed is a completely legitimate issue. But if these vets had just started with that, would they have gained traction? No - they had to challenge Kerry's medals in order to get the media attention that would allow them to refight the Vietnam war. What galls me is how people like the elder Bush and Dole and Gillespie and Novak and others now refuse to back up specifics impugning Kerry's medals but ask open-ended questions like: "Could they all be liars?" Or: "There are inconsistencies," - without having the balls to say what they are (because the most reliable records refute Kerry's critics on all but one trivial count). This is a classic smear tactic. But it's no use complaining, and Kerry was wrong to hope the media would ignore the smears. What worries me is what happens if Bush wins the election and a huge swathe of blue America concludes it was because of this swift boat business. The rancor that we have seen already could metastasize into something even more bitter and divisive. I cannot see how that benefits anyone in the long run. - 7:55:34 PM DONE BLOGGING: One blogger throws in the towel. The major reason? Endless emailed abuse and criticism. I'm tempted to say: deal with it. But after over four years of the same, I see his point. It's especially brutal now. Give Kerry any credit for anything, and the hatemail pours in. Ditto for Bush. The space for anything but hatred for either candidate gets smaller and smaller. And the constant personal abuse (in my case, larded with constant homophobic slurs) gets to you after a while. I'm used to it. But it does have an effect. And one effect is to leave the commentary to the Eric Altermans and Sean Hannitys. No way. - 7:32:24 PM EMAIL OF THE DAY: "I had hoped that your August break would help you to regain perspective and clear your thinking. From your recent comments in your blog, I believe that did not happen. I am particularly struck by your simultaneously overly-naive and overly-cynical treatment of the Swift Boat Vets issue. You are the man who inspired me to see "Shattered Glass", that excellent, horrifying portrayal of the fabulist Stephen Glass, and on other occasions you have repeatedly (and rightly) bashed the far Left for its outlandish, malicious conspiracy theories. Yet you now seem incapable of grasping that John Kerry is a fabulist -- an empty, manipulative, fabulist -- just as much as Stephen Glass was. And with regard to the 254 decorated veterans (including Admirals) who are bravely pointing that out to all of us in the face of enormous "mainstream" media smears and personal attacks against them -- you indulge the shallowest conspiracy theories of the left: that, just because they have taken some money from individual Republican donors and their sincere actions will ultimately benefit the Bush campaign, they "must" be mere creations of Karl Rove. Are you unaware that their main spokesman, John O'Neill, is an Independent who voted for Al Gore in 2000? and is a great supporter of John Edwards, just as you are? and is a plaintiffs' lawyer in Houston who files lawsuits against big corporations on behalf of the elderly and disabled? Is it really SO inconceivable to you that John O'Neill might be acting from a personal principle? -- a sincere horror at John Kerry's fabulism over the years and at Kerry's early, horrific slanders of those who serve in America's military which Kerry has never adequately retracted nor apologized for? The truth which the Swift Boat Vets are speaking will eventually be absorbed and acknowledged - whether or not Kerry wins in November - and when that happens, you will find your own apparent gullibility in buying Kerry's fabulism and in joining your "mainstream" media colleagues in trashing and dismissing the Swift Boat Vets to be most embarassing." - more tough feedback on the Letters Page. - 4:41:55 PM MOCKING THE MILITARY: 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. - 4:30:50 PM "WINNING" THE WAR: 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?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. - 4:24:48 PM THE GOOD SENATOR: 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. - 2:04:46 AM Monday, August 30, 2004 FIRST, McGREEVEY ...: 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. - 9:58:24 PM HOPE NOT FEAR: The Log Cabin guys make their case. - 6:37:29 PM ABU GHRAIB: 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. - 3:57:55 PM GOOD NEWS IN IRAQ: 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. - 3:30:38 PM FRANCE AND IRAQ: 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. - 3:07:20 PM DEW'S POINT: 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.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? - 2:55:36 PM SLEAZE, CONTINUED: 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. - 2:08:45 PM BUSH'S OPPORTUNITY: In New York this week, I want the president to tell us where we are in the war, how he will tackle the looming nuclear threat of Iran, and how he can pull together the centrifugal forces in chaotic Iraq. The Republicans are right: Kerry did waste some time at his convention by focusing on biography rather than his plans for the future. He had to, in some ways, after the character assassination attempts by the Bush campaign for months on end. But that leaves Bush an opening: can he offer a truly conservative domestic agenda? I mean: reform of entitlements, a U-turn on public spending, staying the course on education reform, reforming the military, simplifying the tax code. He deserves a chance to repudiate the big-government, nanny-state, sectarian legacy of his first few years and show us where his second term would leave us (and no, I don't mean Mars). Will he expand freedom at home or continue to curtail it? Will he reveal a strategy in the war that shows he has learned the dangers of waging war unprepared and on the fly? Can he show an ability to grow into more than a deeply polarizing president, more than a man who has clearly failed to win over fully half the country at a time when unity against Jihadist terror is essential? The party of McCain and Giuliani and Schwarzenegger could do that. The party of Santorum and Dobson and DeLay obviously cannot. I fear the battle is already lost, since Bush has caved to the Santorum wing on almost every single domestic issue. But I can still hope, can't I? - 2:44:14 AM THAT WAS AUGUST: Sometimes, when you do the Euro thing and take August off, you half-miss the tussle of an election campaign, the twists and turns of blogging, the daily adrenaline shots of getting hammered by various critics. But not this August. Every time I checked out the blogosphere or the cable news or the papers, I felt relieved to be absent with leave. The low point was obviously the Swift Boat vets, jumping like bait on the end of Karl Rove's line. For a president who never served in Vietnam to get his cronies to lambaste an opponent who actually put his life in danger was, well, breathtakingly bold. And you really have to hand it to Bush. He knows how to campaign hard, to deploy smears of opponents indirectly, to stoke fears of minorities to rally votes, and every other hardball tactic. I wish I could get all huffy about this, but it's always been Bush's campaign mojo: divide, smear and beam. Kerry should have seen it coming. The only thing that can deflect from it is a more effective smear in the other direction. But the Bush-haters have now so debased that currency Bush is essentially in the clear. Advantage: Rove. P.S.: I loved Bush's comment yesterday about the smear-ad: "I can understand why Senator Kerry is upset with us. I wasn't so pleased with the ads that were run about me. And my call is get rid of them all, now." "Us"?? I thought Bush had nothing to do with it. THE WAR: The attempt to put Iraq back together again seemed to lose ground last month as well. The awful slaughter in Najaf led to ... exactly the same situation as before. Sadr is still at large. Many hundreds of his soldiers have been killed, but there are more where they came from (Iran, in many cases). Sadr's legitimacy has increased in the population at large. The coalition is in danger of becoming an instrument in a civil war. Sistani has become a de facto ruler. Jim Hoagland had the right worries yesterday: "For a quasi-occupying power, as the United States is in Iraq today, the worst of all worlds is to have put in place a local regime that the outside power must support at all costs but does not control." That sums it up nicely. Falluja and Ramadi seem worse than Najaf. I guess we're left to hope that some kind of Allawi-led transition to some kind of democracy is still possible. But these kinds of clashes - when they do not end in clear victory - seem to me to increase bitterness, unrest, unease and resolve little. At best, we are back where we were. At worst, the mess has deepened. Does anyone believe that the administration has a clear idea of how to rescue the situation? I see few signs of candor or clarity. - 2:42:51 AM SURPRISE, SURPRISE: Then there were the predictable surprises. A closeted gay man trying to pretend he's straight eventually breaks down and reveals the truth under threat of blackmail from a lover. How many times has that happened? Worse, NcGreevey tried to spin it as an advance for gay rights. Nope. What the gay rights movement is trying to achieve is an end to these kinds of decptions and lies and phony marriages. Then a prominent moralist, a man who has aggressively denied any distinction between private morals and public lives, a theocon much beloved by the National Review crowd, turns out to have had a checkered past. Again: big surprise. And then that left-wing maniac, Dick Cheney, refuses to give up his federalist principles, his love of family and freedom, or his basic humanity, by signing on to the president's anti-gay constitutional amendment. Good for the veep, and the entire Cheney family. Too bad his own president has put them in such an awful position. And the GOP platform dispenses with any nuance and comes out not just against marriage rights for gays, but any kind of legal protections for their relationships whatever. That, of course, is what the FMA is designed to do, whatever lies its sponsors tell. No wonder Zell Miller is now the keynoter for the Republicans. Here's a man who once proudly condemned LBJ for backing civil rights for African-Americans, while Bush's Republican grandfather stood up for decency. History has come full circle, hasn't it? The Dixiecrats meet again in New York. Now they're called Republicans. DERBYSHIRE AWARD NOMINEE: "I am openminded about the possibility that some longstanding population groups just might not be capable of rational self-government," - John Derbyshire, refuting - yes, refuting! - the notion that he is a racist. A simple question: what does he mean by "longstanding population groups"? Except, of course, we know the answer. - 2:40:26 AM TWO BRITISH PERSPECTIVES: Must-reads - and not just because I agree with them. The Economist's sober devastation of much of what this president has done domestically (along with sober praise of some of the big and important decisions Bush has gotten right) is very well done. So is my old friend Niall Ferguson's piece in the Wall Street Journal. I think it's close to unarguable that a Bush second term, regrdless of whether you believe it would be good for the country, would be terrible for conservatism as a coherent political philosophy. You can only admire David Brooks for trying to find a sliver of coherence here, but the reality of what Bush has done and what he is likely to do has already made a mockery of conservatism as a governing ideology. It will take a period in opposition to put it back together. OLASKY'S BIGOTRY: What to make of the following sentences in Marvin Olasky's latest column about John Kerry's, George W. Bush's and Marvin Olasky's Vietnam experiences: "The other thing both [Bush and I] can and do say is that we did not save ourselves: God alone saves sinners (and I can surely add, of whom I was the worst). Being born again, we don't have to justify ourselves. Being saved, we don't have to be saviors. John Kerry, once-born, has no such spiritual support, nor do most of his top admirers in the heavily secularized Democratic Party."You will note the term "once-born." That means that the moral authority achieved by "born-again" evangelicals is unavailable to Catholics like Kerry, or indeed anyone outside the boundaries of fundamentalist Christianity. Hence Bush's extraordinary ability to draw a line behind all his wasted, irresponsible years, and his current piety. Hence, according to Olasky, Kerry's inability to question himself or his past. This is an almost seventeenth century piece of public sectarianism and anti-Catholic bigotry. But it's now the Republican mainstream. (Hat tip: Josh.) - 2:36:39 AM Saturday, August 28, 2004 IN AWE: I'll be back to regular blogging Monday but before I return to Shiites and Swift Boats, I just want to write some kind of note of gratitude to the Cape this summer. This past week reached new levels of beauty. Sometimes at the end of August or, more likely, in September, the air here gets drier and the sun clearer, and the light - ever changing - permeates everything. Colors become more themselves; the sunsets and sunrises dance with absurdly extreme tones of red and yellow and blue; the tides under the waxing moon become all the more alive with freckled, reflected light. There's a place toward the end of the coil of sand that sends Cape Cod back in on itself that never gets old. The marshland is so shallow and the tides are so dramatic, they fill a mile-wide basin and empty it twice a day. When the ocean first starts pouring into the inlet, it looks as if the sky has suddenly leaked into the earth. And then the earth slowly becomes the sky, except for vistas of green - now reddening - dune grass, separating earth from above. To see this in the late afternoon as the sun begins to decline, to allow yourself to drift with the tide toward more sudden lagoons of sea-water, is about as close to heaven as I'll ever get. Only the occasional horse fly reminds you that you are still on earth. People have asked me in the past what I understand by prayer. In my own life, it has meant all sorts of things: from recitation of the Rosary, to singing at Mass, to whispers before sleep, to holding a sick friend in silence. But it also must mean days like last week, where every day, if you let it, is a prayer, where the beauty of God's creation demands your attention, and your love, and your awe. - 10:17:44 PM  For past Daily Dish entries, view the Daily Dish archives.  copyright © 2004 Andrew Sullivan |
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