|
|
 |
 |
| The Republican Convention: Who Won? Who Lost? |
 |
| Print Version |
 |
JONATHAN COHN
Senior Editor, The New Republic
|
Posted 09.09.04 | 4:35 PM
John
I'm not going to defend every one of Kerry's past stances. I'm sure some of them were wrong, as he himself has admitted. (Note that changing your mind now and then isn't necessarily evidence of weak political mettle; it's evidence that you have a brain.) But on the B-2 debate, at least, I think you've oversimplified things. From the outset, critics warned that it wasn't worth investing so much money in an expensive, technologically questionable, hulk of a bomber when lighter planes and cruise missiles could do the job instead, for much less money. And, in fact, the history of the B-2 suggests it was a waste. Having it drop 2,000-pound bombs on Iraq is, as my friend Fred Kaplan put it, "like hopping in the Lincoln stretch limo to drop Grandma off at church." The fact that even many hawks (including McCain) eventually came to that conclusion suggests to me that Kerry may have simply been prescient about that program (as he likely was about the MX Missile and Strategic Defense Initiative). More important, perhaps, McCain's statements against the B-2 are a reminder that it's entirely possible to oppose one weapons system, or even many, on the grounds that doing so might actually redirect Pentagon spending into more efficient, more effective weapons. Or, to put it more bluntly, deciding to scrap a wasteful weapons program can actually make America stronger.
But enough of this back-and-forth; as you say, readers can draw their own conclusion on this and other points of contention. I'd now like to address a broader issue. Consider how our debate has unfolded. My first entry argued that Bush had misrepresented both himself and John Kerry. We then proceeded to argue, primarily, about Kerry. How much had he flip-flopped? Just how many weapons systems did he oppose, and did that really make him soft on defense? And so on. We spent almost no time examining my allegations about President Bush: that he flip-flopped too; that his domestic initiatives have been a mess; that he was irresponsible about counterterrorism before 9/11; that he took us to war with Iraq on false premises; that he's bungled the reconstruction of that country. (We did talk about Afghanistan, I realize.)
Of course, this is precisely how the presidential campaign has unfolded in the last few weeks. When a president runs for re-election, it is primarily a referendum on his performance in office. But this year's campaign has largely become a referendum on Kerry, at least in the last few weeks. And there's a reason for that. Bush and his advisers know they cannot run on their own record, because that record is so shoddy: The worst job creation record since Herbert Hoover, rising health insurance premiums, huge budget deficits, chaos in Afghanistan and Iraq, rising anti-Americanism across the world, and on and on and on. So they've done their very best to redefine the conversation, to make it about a challenger who has flaws that are easy to exploit politically. With the help of a compliant media, they've gotten away with it.
(Note: I'm not suggesting that you deliberately avoided those subjects for the same reason. Readers should know that deadlines and space constraints forced both of us to pick and choose our topics.)
Not that it's all the media's fault. In many ways, Kerry has only himself to blame for this situation. As I wrote in my last entry, Kerry is no more inconsistent than Bush has been on policy, but he always feels compelled to explain himself while Bush blithely ignores his own contradictions. And even when Kerry does push back hard, he does it in the wrong way. For example, when Cheney suggested the other day that electing Kerry would make America weaker, I'm not sure the appropriate response was to accuse Cheney of breaking the boundaries of acceptable debate. Kerry might have done better to argue that Cheney's argument was simply wrong on the merits — that it's Bush, not Kerry, who would leave America more vulnerable over the next four years.
I happen to think that argument (Kerry's) would be true. I imagine you don't. I'm sorry we didn't get to cover that ground this week, but here's hoping America does in the weeks to come.
Best,
Jonathan
Note: Jonathan Cohn's response concludes this debate.
|
|
|
 |
JOHN J. MILLER
National Political Reporter, National Review
|
Posted 09.09.04 | 9:15 AM
Hi Jonathan,
I've just read your link attempting to claim that the president's zinger about the New York Times was "dishonest." I've read it several times, in fact. I simply don't see any dishonesty. Not a shred. Bush's simple point remains wholly intact: It's terribly easy for people to become pessimistic about a situation when they don't have the advantage of historical hindsight. I suppose we'll have to let our readers look at the evidence and decide for themselves.
And yes, I maintain that there's a significant difference between the Cheney/McCain position on the B-2 and John Kerry's record on it. You cite a post-Cold War comment from McCain suggesting that the time had come to pull the plug on the B-2. Fair enough. Kerry, however, was opposing the B-2 much earlier. He wanted to eliminate it in the midst of the Cold War. Running for the Senate in 1984, he included it in a list of military programs he would cancel. (His list also included the B-1 bomber, the Apaches helicopter, the Patriot missile, the F-15, F-14A, and F-14D jets, the AV-8B Harrier jet, the Aegis air-defense cruiser, and the Trident missile system. He further urged reductions for the M1 Abrams tank, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the Tomahawk cruise missile, and the F-16 jet. My main source for this is a Boston Globe article by Brian C. Mooney, published June 19, 2003.)
Kerry was elected lieutenant governor of Massachusetts in 1982 as a nuclear-freeze candidate. In 1983, he wrote a revealing letter to a constituent: "What we as citizens can tell our government is that President Reagan should reorder his priorities. We don't need expensive and exotic weapons systems." Campaigning for the Senate in 1984, when he wanted to slash all the programs mentioned above, he announced: "The biggest defense buildup since World War II has not given us a better defense. Today, Americans are more threatened by the prospect of war, not less so." Here's a Boston Globe editorial from 1984: "[Kerry] opposes the major new weapons systems sought by the President and goes substantially further than the mainstream of his party, as represented by Walter Mondale, by calling for outright reductions in defense spending rather than a mere slowdown in growth." I could continue with Kerry's record on missile defense and various other programs. But I think Zell Miller, in his speech last week, did a pretty good job of summing up Kerry's views: "Against, against, against!"
Last year, in an interview with the Boston Globe, Kerry allowed that some of his positions on national defense in the 1980s were "ill-advised." He added: "I think some of them are stupid in the context of the world we find ourselves in right now and the things that I've learned since then."
I'm tempted to propose a bumper sticker: "John Kerry: Stupid then, stupid now." But you say that you don't want to question Bush's intelligence, so I won't question Kerry's.
Oh, and before we quit the subject of Kerry being a liberal dove: During the first Bush administration, there was a final really important difference between the Cheney/McCain record on military issues and the Kerry record: Cheney and McCain supported the Gulf War; Kerry opposed it.
As usual, Kerry tried to have it both ways — even on an issue as black and white as the vote to authorize war against Iraq in 1991. Check out this report, which my colleague Ramesh Ponnuru filed two years ago:
"In early January 1991, constituent Walter Carter sent Kerry a letter urging him to back the war. He received two responses. A January 22 letter from the senator, addressed to Carter as though he were an opponent of the war, indicated that Kerry favored sanctions and opposed war. A January 31 letter said, 'From the outset of the invasion [of Kuwait by Iraq], I have strongly and unequivocally supported President Bush's response to the crisis and the policy goals he has established with our military deployment in the Persian Gulf.'"
I should probably add that your magazine has criticized Kerry on this matter as well, here.
Yesterday, I said that I did not understand Kerry's current views on Iraq and asked whether you could explain them. You did not. Hey, I understand: We're still trying to figure out what he thought in 1991.
— JJM
|
|
|
COHN
|
Posted 09.08.04 | 5:45 PM
John,
We're supposed to be brief, so forgive if I run through this quickly …
The president's joke about the New York Times editorial writer was great. I actually laughed out loud when I heard it. But here's the real punch line: It, too, was dishonest.
Using Howard Dean's words to attack John Kerry? That sounds like an attempt to trap me. But, what the heck, I'll take the bait. No, I don't think we are safer because of the war in Iraq. And guess what? Neither do a majority of the American people, according to polls. Maybe they think that at this point the war in Iraq is soaking up men, material, and money that might otherwise be spent protecting our ports, securing our cities, and establishing order in Afghanistan. Maybe they think that our presence in Iraq has been the best recruitment poster Al Qaeda ever had. Maybe they think the latest news from Iraq confirms what the skeptics said all along: that the idea of using Iraq to seed democracy throughout the Mideast is a figment of Paul Wolfowitz's imagination. Or maybe they think we'd have a much easier time monitoring and infiltrating terrorists as they operate in foreign countries if the governments in those countries didn't despise us. Given that Iraq actually had nothing to do with 9/11, no meaningful ties to Al Qaeda, and nothing resembling a threatening weapons program, I find those arguments increasingly persuasive.
You cite more evidence of John Kerry's flip-flops. Again, I agree! But, as I've argued, Bush is even worse. If there's a difference between the two, it's in the way they react to their own inconsistencies. Kerry constantly gets sucked into discussions about his past statements; his subsequent attempts to explain or rationalize them frequently make him look, well, like a jar of jelly. President Bush, on the other hand, happily says one thing one day, one thing the next, never stopping to answer questions about why his positions contradict each other.
Strategically speaking, this is a problem that Kerry, or his handlers, need to fix. But in fairness to them, Bush has three structural advantages that allow him to get away with this: (1) The president lives in a protected bubble, so he can pretty much avoid questions except when he feels like answering them. ("What's that, Terry? I can't hear you over the blades of Marine One…") (2) Reporters and pundits, until very recently, barely questioned the inconsistencies or got bullied when they did. (3) As best as I can tell, Bush is almost completely lacking in self-awareness. I'll resist the temptation to say that means he's not intelligent; he's too clever to be dumb. I just think he's supremely uncurious, even about himself.
But I digress. Thanks for answering my specific criticisms of Dick Cheney and Zell Miller by pointing me to the article by your colleague, Jim Geraghty. But with all due respect to Mr. Geraghty, whom I'm sure does very good work, I didn't find his article terribly convincing. Leaving aside the debate about how the legislative process works, I'd like to focus on Mr. Geraghty's argument that Kerry did, in fact, oppose one of the many weapons systems in question: the B-2 bomber. To prove this, he pulls out a long quote in which Kerry attacks the B-2 as one of the Pentagon's "most costly, waste-ridden programs," one that's obsolete "with the dramatic changes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that have occurred."
Hmmm, that sounds like a plausible argument to me. In fact, it sounds a little like this one:
I have advocated the termination of the B-2 for over 2 years, and I voted for the termination of the B-2 in 1990 and 1991. While I recognized the fact that the B-2 was an outstanding technical achievement, I felt that an effort to procure 75 to 132 B-2 bombers in an era of sharply declining defense budgets would lead to massive further cuts in tactical aviation, strategic airlift, and the other high-priority power projection forces we will need in the future.
Or this one:
…the B-2's practical utility scarcely warrants the funding Congress lavishes upon it every year. If it could fly combat air patrols, I would be inclined to be a little more sympathetic. It's theoretical application to real world contingencies, however, leaves me aghast at the cost of that program….
The speaker? Senator John McCain. Or is he weak on defense, too?
Best,
Jonathan
|
|
|
MILLER
|
Posted 09.08.04 | 1:00 PM
Hi Jonathan,
One of my favorite lines from President Bush's speech last week took a shot at the New York Times. He quoted a 1946 Timesman's pessimistic appraisal of how things were going in Germany — an Allied "occupation policy" that has "failed" — then delivered his punch line: "Maybe that same person is still around, writing editorials."
Despite this, I'm sure you'll agree that the NYT is the source of much outstanding journalism. Since so much of our exchange has focused on John Kerry's defense record, I'll point to the words of Katharine Q. Seelye, who addressed this very subject in a March 20 article. I wish I had the space to reproduce the whole thing; here, at least, is how it begins:
"When he first entered the Senate, in 1985, John Kerry was a proponent of a nuclear arms freeze and he joined other liberal Democrats in challenging numerous elements of President Ronald Reagan's military expansion. He called the build-up unnecessary and said some of the weapons systems were useless.
"Mr. Reagan's military expansion was subsequently credited for helping hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union. And with the cold war ending, the world was suddenly a different place. The next president, George Bush, also a Republican, and his secretary of defense, Dick Cheney, began drawing down the armed forces and scaling back weapons systems, reaping the benefits of what was referred to as the peace dividend.
"Mr. Kerry, like most of his colleagues, went along. But he also occasionally went further than the majority of his party."
Now that's what I call "fair and balanced."
On the particular question of whether Cheney attacked Kerry for opposing defense programs that Cheney himself opposed, the picture is much more complicated than Fred Kaplan allows. One key point is that Cheney sometimes opposed additional spending on programs that Kerry opposed in their totality. That's a big difference, and for a fuller explanation, read my colleague Jim Geraghty's fine analysis here.
There's just no way around this central fact: The Democratic nominee for president is a liberal dove, and there's a long record to prove it.
You ask another question I can't avoid: "Have you heard Kerry, or any other leading Democrat, suggest that Iraq was a great place to live under Saddam Hussein?" Well, here's what I have heard, from one "leading Democrat." In May 2003, Howard Dean said: "We've gotten rid of him [Saddam Hussein] and I suppose that's a good thing." Now that's some stirring rhetoric! Later that day, Wolf Blitzer of CNN pressed Dean on this point, asking him whether he thought the Iraqi people were better off with Hussein gone. Dean's reply: "We don't know yet." (And don't forget that after Hussein's capture, Dean warned us that we're no safer for it — one of the comments that ultimately led to his unraveling.)
I don't mean to pick on Dean, but I do recall an article you wrote earlier this year more or less endorsing him for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Kerry hasn't said anything so quotably strange as Dean. Yet I did find something peculiar about his own convention speech: He failed to note that U.S. troops had accomplished anything worthwhile in Afghanistan or Iraq.
I gather that Kerry's current position on Iraq — I'm writing these words around noon on September 8 — is that we should get France and America's other great friends to pick up more of the tab. Here's what Kerry said just this morning: "I would not have made the wrong choices that are forcing us to pay nearly the entire cost of this war — more than $200 billion that we're not investing in education, health care, and job creation here at home."
This confuses me, because a year ago Kerry told Tim Russert on Meet the Press that the United States wasn't spending enough on Iraq:
MR. RUSSERT: Do you believe that we should reduce funding that we are now providing for the operation in Iraq?
SEN. KERRY: No. I think we should increase it.
MR. RUSSERT: Increase funding?
SEN. KERRY: Yes.
MR. RUSSERT: By how much?
SEN. KERRY: By whatever number of billions of dollars it takes to win. It is critical that the United States of America be successful in Iraq, Tim.
So does Kerry want America to devote more resources to Iraq, or less? I have no idea. Perhaps he was for it before he was against it. Like many people, I gave up trying to understand Kerry's position on Iraq long ago, because just about everything that comes out of his mouth on this subject seems based on opportunism rather than principle. Do you agree? If not, can you explain what John Kerry really believes we should be doing (or not doing) over there? And do you think he'll still believe it tomorrow?
— JJM
|
|
|
COHN
|
Posted 09.08.04 | 11:40 AM
John,
Did I mean to accuse Bush, Cheney, McCain, Schwarzenegger, Miller, and Pataki of dishonesty? Why, yes, I did.
I think I proved my point on Cheney. Or, at least, Fred Kaplan did for me. If you disagree — if you think it's fair for Cheney to attack Kerry for voting against weapons systems that Cheney himself opposed as wasteful — then please explain why.
As for President Bush, do you really want to defend his boast that "seniors are getting immediate help buying medicine" when just 4 million people have signed up for the Medicare cards, the only form of help available now, and the cards are already a boondoggle? If so, then I'd draw your attention to another, even more pernicious Bush representation: "My opponent and his running mate voted against this money for bullets and fuel and vehicles and body armor." I'm sure you know that's a reference to the $87 billion Iraq appropriations measure that Kerry voted against — just as I'm sure you know that, as the Washington Post recently noted, it was House Democrats who added much of the funding for body armor to the bill, and that Kerry voted against it because he preferred alternatives that would have paid for the measure (rather than simply adding it to the budget deficit). You can find more on this and other Bush distortions at the website for the Columbia Journalism Review's Campaign Desk.
OK, onto Pataki. Here is his full quote, referring to the Clinton Administration's antiterrorism policies: "How I wish the administration at that time, in those years had done something. How I wished they had moved to protect us. But they didn't do it." Now here is what we know about the historical record, from the 9/11 Commission and Richard Clarke's book, Against All Enemies: When Al Qaeda bombed U.S. embassies in Africa, Clinton ordered missile strikes against training camps in Afghanistan and a chemical plant in the Sudan. (You may recall that the Republicans loudly criticized these attacks, suggesting they were an attempt by Clinton to divert attention from the Monica Lewinsky scandal.) When U.S. intelligence picked up chatter about an attack on the millennium, Clinton convened crisis meetings of Cabinet-level officials — and eventually stopped a plot to explode bombs at Los Angeles International Airport.
To be sure, the Clinton administration had its failures, too; the 9/11 Commission concluded that Clinton officials missed four separate opportunities to stop 9/11. But, then, the commission also found that the Bush Administration missed six separate opportunities — i.e., two more than Clinton. One reason for this failure? Despite warnings from Clinton that terrorism would be the new administration's top security concern, and despite intelligence over the summer of 2001 suggesting a big attack was in the works, the administration didn't take the threat very seriously. Indeed, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice refused to hold Cabinet-level meetings on Al Qaeda until just days before September 11.
(Pataki, by the way, also boasted that Bush "ease[d] the tax burden on all Americans." The problem with this familiar boast is that 15 million taxpayers who pay only payroll taxes, not income taxes, got zero benefit.. And that's not to mention the tiny benefits for millions of others in the lowest tax brackets.)
That brings us to Zell Miller. Even if you don't agree with my point on this absurd business about outsourcing American foreign policy, consider Miller's blustering over the fact that Democrats have sometimes called American troops "occupiers." I don't see why the word is necessarily so awful, if it's used in a reasonable context. But whatever. The real trouble here is that the historical record is full of prominent Republicans using the word "occupier" or "occupation" — like this one, explaining that the Iraqi people are "not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either." The speaker? President Bush himself.
I'll concede that McCain's and Schwarzenegger's statements were not so much dishonest as deceptive. Still, I think both knew what they were doing when they threw out the examples of filmmaker Michael Moore (McCain) and Austrian socialism (Schwarzenegger) in their speeches: The idea was to identify Kerry and Democrats with the political fringe. Have you heard Kerry, or any other leading Democrat, suggest that Iraq was a great place to live under Saddam Hussein, as Moore has? I haven't. But that was an implication of McCain's speech. (I say that even though I, along with most of the political world, am an unabashed fan of McCain's.) And it's one thing to say, as you do, that Republicans are friendlier to private enterprise than Democrats. It's quite another to suggest, as Schwarzenegger did, that Democrats advocate the state ownership of private enterprise, which is my understanding of socialism. (By the way, for the record, I wouldn't agree that Democrats are necessarily less friendly to free enterprise; I think they simply believe — rightly, in my view — that sometimes the best way to preserve free enterprise is to police it very closely.)
Let me be clear about all of this: I totally respect the right of Republicans — and you — to attack Kerry and the Democrats on terrorism, Iraq, and the economy. Call him a "liberal dove," say he's more hostile to business, fine. We can argue about that. I may even agree now and then. What I don't respect is the right of Bush or his surrogates to misrepresent history or caricature Kerry's position in order to make themselves look more politically palatable. In other words, it's fine to argue that Bush will better protect America because he believes in the doctrine of preemption. That's an argument about policy. It's not fine to argue that Bush will better protect America because he didn't ignore terrorism before 9/11 as his predecessor did. That's simply a lie.
You mentioned Kerry's flip-flops, so let me be clear about something else: I agree (although I wouldn't have chosen that specific example, which actually does seem reasonable). I've never claimed that he was a paragon of political principle. On the contrary, my exact words were "political bravery is not, shall we say, Kerry's strongest character feature." But Bush has flip-flopped just as much. (Here's a fine list of them. The key difference between the two is that Bush also caricatures his opponent, rather grotesquely in my view. Kerry simply hasn't done the same to Bush. You find it hard to believe Bush and his supporters would do this when it is "so much easier for Bush supporters to go after Kerry himself" as he really is. But I suspect that Bush and his supporters think they need to tear down Kerry this way because the public is already so unhappy with the administration's record. Even in the latest Newsweek poll — the one taken right as the GOP convention was ending, and that likely oversampled Republicans — just 43 percent of respondents said they were "satisfied" with the direction of the country, while 49 percent said they were "dissatisfied." (In an ABC News poll the week before, just 44 were satisfied and 54 were dissatisfied.)
As for Afghanistan, you're right to call me on my very sloppy wording. I should have said "more like it did before we cleared out the Taliban." But this is also a far more serious problem than you let on. Here are two stories about the Taliban returning and gaining power. And here is a summary of the situation there my colleague Spencer Ackerman wrote a few weeks ago:
Even if the country is able to hold its twice-postponed national elections this year, it will still be in the hands of its various corrupt warlords. The Taliban, driven from Kabul and Kandahar but never destroyed, is steadily growing in strength. Its successful attacks on foreign aid workers have slowed reconstruction to a snail's pace. Al Qaeda's leaders — also driven from the country but never destroyed — are believed to be in the lawless tribal areas on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, carrying out or inspiring attacks around the world that have left hundreds murdered. … Warlords now control the country, not Karzai.
A major reason for our failure, Spencer goes on to note, has been our refusal to put more troops on the ground — at Tora Bora, when we had Al Qaeda cornered, and in the time since — relying instead on Afghanistan militias to do the work for us. As a U.S. counterterrorism official told The Washington Post, "We f**ked up by not getting into Tora Bora sooner and letting the Afghans do all the work. We didn't put U.S. forces on the ground, despite all the brave talk."
And you wonder why Bush might fear an honest examination of his record?
Best,
Jonathan
P.S. I've had the very same thought on why Democrats haven't made the failure to capture bin Laden an issue: It would backfire if — as we all hope — the U.S. does capture him. But, like you, I wonder if it's not a pretty dumb calculation.
|
|
|
MILLER
|
Posted 09.08.04 | 8:50 AM
Hi Jonathan,
So let's see, by my count you've accused President Bush, Vice President Cheney, John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Zell Miller, and George Pataki of "dishonesty" in their speeches last week. Did I miss anybody? Maybe you really do think the GOP convention was a festival of lying — but you're going to have to make a more persuasive case. (And before you try, take a deep breath and check out this list of Kerry waffles.)
I actually found McCain's criticism of Kerry and the Democrats remarkably light — too light by my tastes, for what it's worth. He didn't even mention Kerry by name. To the extent that he did challenge the junior senator from Massachusetts, however, McCain wasn't attacking "a caricature." It's so much easier for Bush supporters to go after Kerry himself, especially when Mr. Real Deal has been busy informing us that he wants to fight a "more sensitive war on terror." I don't see the "dishonesty" in suggesting that this kind of talk comes up short in the tough-on-terror category. Nor do I see the "dishonesty" in suggesting that Bush is a better friend to free enterprise. (By the way, the name "Kerry" didn't pass Schwarzenegger's lips, either.) And as for France, Kerry is trying to have his cake and eat it, too: He insists that Paris won't have a veto over his policies, but then he also talks about how he "would have done almost everything differently" with respect to Iraq. (To me, "almost everything differently" is a pretty good summary of how the French behaved.) And do you honestly mean to suggest that Kerry's extensive voting record on defense issues shows him to be something other than a liberal dove?
Speaking of dishonesty and the military, I'm reminded of one of those lively debates Kerry recently had with himself regarding the Bush administration's troop-redeployment plans.
Here's Kerry on August 1: "If the diplomacy that I believe can be put in place can work, I think we can significantly change the deployment of troops not just there [in Iraq] but elsewhere in the world. In the Korean peninsula, perhaps. In Europe, perhaps. There are great possibilities open to us."
Here's Kerry on August 18, two days after Bush proposed troop shifts: "I want to say something about the plan that the president announced on Monday to withdraw 70,000 troops from Asia and Europe. ... It needs to be done at the right time and in a sensible way. This is not that time or that way."
Please explain the nuances and complexities of that contradiction to me. Or better yet, explain this claim, because it's yours: "Afghanistan is a mess, looking like it did before we cleared out the Taliban." Do you really believe that Afghanistan is looking like it did before we cleared out the Taliban? Need I remind you that we did in fact clear out the Taliban? Now, I'm not suggesting that peace is right around the corner for the people of Kabul — and I'm aware that major Taliban figures are still at large and making trouble. But I'm also impressed that something like 7 or 8 million people have registered to vote and that an election seems to be in their future. From my perspective, Afghanistan is looking quite different from how it did before we cleared out the Taliban.
I am glad you brought up Osama bin Laden, however. Nearly three years ago, my colleague Ramesh Ponnuru and I speculated that the failure to capture or kill him would spell political trouble for Bush. Specifically, we wrote: "It is probably not an overstatement to say that getting bin Laden is now a necessary if not sufficient condition for Bush's re-election." This now seems like an overstatement itself, because Bush may very well be re-elected anyway. But I'm surprised that Democrats haven't made more of this. Granted, the war on terror can't be "won" in a conventional success. There won't be any "Hail to the Victors" parades. Yet it's still possible to lay down a few markers by which we can judge its success (or lack thereof), such as: Have there been any major attacks on U.S. soil? Another obvious one involves the fate of bin Laden. Maybe the Democrats didn't want to set a trap for themselves by demanding bin Laden's head — only to have Bush provide it. Then again, if between now and November 2 we learn conclusively of bin Laden's death or capture, Kerry's a goner. So why not take a chance?
— JJM
|
|
|
COHN
|
Posted 09.07.04 | 1:50 PM
John,
I'm so glad you commented on John Kerry's "guts," or supposed lack thereof, because that's precisely the topic I wanted to discuss, too. But it's not Senator Kerry's fortitude that's on my mind. It's President Bush's.
After all, one test of a candidate's political courage is his willingness to defend his candidacy honestly, risking a public verdict on his actual beliefs, record, and promises. And last week's display of demagoguery and duplicity at Madison Square Garden, while quite possibly "successful," suggests Bush and his supporters aren't willing to take that chance.
I know it's a cliché to say that President Bush is a liar. But last week convinced me of something else: He's a wimp, too.
Do you disagree? By my reckoning, Bush and the Republicans deployed three distinct sorts of dishonesty last week:
Dishonesty about John Kerry. I don't mind attack politics. Elections are about drawing contrasts, and one way you do that is by criticizing your opponent. But Bush must have feared that highlighting the actual contrasts between the two men might not win him another term, because instead of attacking the real Kerry, he and his surrogates attacked a caricature of him. In order to show that Kerry and the Democrats were soft on terrorism, Senator John McCain had to invoke the example of film director Michael Moore; in order to show that Kerry and the Democrats were hostile to free enterprise, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had to invoke the specter of Austrian socialism. Senator Zell Miller vowed not to question Democrats' patriotism; then he did just that, suggesting Kerry would give Paris a veto over U.S. foreign policy. Nor were the exaggerations about Kerry mere rhetorical flourishes. Both Miller and Vice President Dick Cheney tried to paint Kerry as a soft on defense by grossly distorting his voting record on past appropriations votes. (See this fine analytical piece by Slate's Fred Kaplan.). In some cases, the Kerry votes Cheney found so objectionable were consistent with how Cheney himself felt at the time.
All of this dovetailed with the attacks on Kerry's record in Vietnam, from the Swift Boat advertisements to the bandages with the purple hearts on them. I know, I know: Officially, Bush, Cheney, and everybody else in the GOP "honors" Kerry's Vietnam service. But unofficially, the Bush campaign did its best to keep the allegations about his tour in Vietnam alive, by refusing to condemn the ads specifically and by having the likes of Bob Dole to question Kerry's record on television. This is classic Bush family strategy: Striking a gentleman's pose while dispatching underlings do the dirty work. (My thanks to Joshua Marshall, who wrote about this many months ago.
Dishonesty about the state of domestic affairs. Whether it's the latest Census numbers on poverty, or the Congressional Budget Office forecasts on future budget deficits, it's difficult to make an intellectually honest case that the last four years have been particularly prosperous for the U.S. Maybe that's why Bush's acceptance speech was almost completely devoid of specific figures, in contrast to Bill Clinton's speech in 1996, when he was running for re — election. (DailyKos had a great entry on this: See here And lest you think that was just Clinton in his usual wonk mode, check out Ronald Reagan's similarly specific speech in 1984, when he was running for a second term. Note that the signs of economic growth were hardly unambiguous in either 1984 or 1996; in both instances, the country was emerging from recession, as it is now. If Bush had an honest case to make an economy, surely he would have done the same. He can't, so instead he sends out Arnold to call the Democrats "economic girlie — men."
Here's another example of Bush moral strength: His boasts about "strengthening Medicare." Even conservatives have a hard time defending the Medicare bill these days, because it adds financial liabilities to the program, further imperiling its financial future, without actually providing a well-designed drug benefit. Of course, these reforms make sense if your goal is to run the program into the ground, eventually forcing the government to transform into a less comprehensive, less generous voucher system. But Bush won't come out and say that's what he wants to do, undoubtedly because he and his advisers understand that the program is incredibly popular with seniors.
Dishonesty about national security and international affairs: Here, surely, is where the convention's departure from reality was most egregious. New York Governor George Pataki, among others, laid the blame for 9/11 squarely at Bill Clinton's doorstep. ("How I wish the administration at that time, in those years had done something," Pataki said of the previous White House. "How I wished they had moved to protect us.") But the 9/11 Commission found otherwise. Indeed, we now know the before the attacks on New York and Washingotn, the Bush Administration actually put less emphasis on terrorism than the Clinton Administration did. And let's not forget about that August 6 presidential briefing — you know, the one with the title, "Bin Laden determined to attack inside the U.S," the one that warned of "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings."
As for what happened after 9/11, well, let's see. Everything about the convention - from the lineup of speakers to the content of the speeches themselves — was designed to burnish Bush's image as a muscular protector of the American homeland. But in the words of one esteemed scribe, Bush has "repeatedly stifled efforts to strengthen domestic safeguards against further terrorist attacks. As a consequence, homeland security remains perilously deficient." (Details here. ) Several speakers in New York recalled Bush's visit to Ground Zero just days after the 9/11 attack, when he memorably promised rescue workers that the terrorists who brought down the Twin Towers would feel America's wrath. But Osama Bin Laden — remember that guy? — remains at large. Afghanistan is a mess, looking like it did before we cleared out the Taliban, but we have just 20,000 forces there because we need the rest in Iraq.
And speaking of Iraq, the talk about democracy certainly was stirring. I don't mean that sarcastically; I really did find it inspiring. The ability to call citizens to higher purpose is an important presidential skill, and I admire Bush for his ability to do that.
But Bush obviously feared that justifying the war purely on the grounds of spreading democracy wouldn't work, because he and his supporters continued to insist that Iraq was an imminent threat in 2003 — even though we now know Saddam had no significant weapons program and no ties to Al Qaeda.
* * *
I understand that politics is a dirty business - that hyperbole and distortion are routine - just as I understand that political bravery is not, shall we say, Kerry's strongest character feature. But do you recall Kerry and the leading Democrats in Boston being this egregiously dishonest, either about themselves or the Republicans? I don't. Of course, maybe that's because they have less to fear from the truth.
Best,
Jonathan
|
|
|
MILLER
|
Posted 09.07.04 | 10:35 AM
Hi Jonathan,
It's hard to imagine President Bush and the Republicans having a better convention than the one they just concluded in New York City. I can think of only one really bad speech from last week: John Kerry's, delivered just minutes after Bush's address on Thursday night. The Democrats' midnight rally looked like a sign of sheer desperation. Perhaps it was more than just a sign, given Kerry's campaign-staff shakeup and the new polls showing him trailing Bush by 10 points. (A word of caution to GOP partisans: The Newsweek survey may have oversampled Republicans.)
Then there's what Kerry actually said. Calling the Bush-Cheney team "unfit for duty" was downright silly. This pre-packaged soundbite (distributed to the press before it was spoken) merely reminded me of the title of John O'Neill's book, Unfit for Command. And by the way, why didn't Kerry have the guts to say these words to the American Legion, where he had appeared only one day before?
I gather that Kerry believes his handlers didn't react to the Swift Boat veterans with sufficient dispatch and that now he has some catching-up to do. Maybe that's true, but if so, his complaint is more about style than substance. And substance is what really matters here. No amount of political gamesmanship will allow Kerry to escape the fact that thousands of his fellow veterans resent what he said about them in Senate testimony way back when. I suppose the core problem is one Kerry can't resolve: Many in his band of brothers think they're owed an apology, and he's clearly not willing to offer one.
But enough about Democrats. The main speakers at the GOP convention were very good. Bush's speech on the front end was too much like a State of the Union address, with its proposals to increase federal spending on community colleges and the like. But it finished extremely well. Gov. Schwarzenegger's remarks were outstanding, both in content and delivery. I wouldn't be surprised if RNC chair Ed Gillespie went back to his hotel room and re-read Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution to see if there really isn't any wiggle room for everybody's favorite Austrian-American statesman (there isn't). McCain, Giuliani, and the First Lady were all solid as well. Only Vice President Cheney let me down — he had some effective lines, but the speech as a whole seemed flat. Our veep has many strong suits; oratory isn't one of them. Overall, I could have stood for some extra talk about the economy and a more elaborate explanation of the "ownership society," but I'm not sure whose speech I would have cut or rewritten in order to accomplish this. (Maybe the Bush twins? Please don't get me started on them.)
I certainly wouldn't have jammed anything else into Zell Miller's glorious stemwinder on Wednesday night. Judging from the cheering approval of conservatives and the angry reaction of liberals, it was quite an effective performance. I even heard that one guy was comparing Zell to Joe McCarthy and saying that the Georgia Democrat had "declared war on democracy." Can you believe it?
— JJM
|
|
|
|
| | | |
