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Thursday, March 4, 2004Recommended ReadingWilliam Saletan makes a good point about George W. Bush and suggests what strikes me as a sound criticism to voice of him and his administration. There's an unfortunate tendency to try and cast everything a politician does as a lie: If he takes one position and ten years later changes his mind, someone says he lied about his position. If he believes something that turns out not to be true, someone calls him a liar. To my mind, "liar" implies a conscious effort to deceive and that usually is not the case. But Saletan argues, and I think he's right, that the Bush administration takes a position and encourages everyone around them to alter the evidence to support it. The whole matter of Stem Cell Research is one of many where almost the entire scientific community is telling Bush he was wrong about his science and he won't admit it. Here's a piece over on Tapped that summarizes this one. The election won't turn on issues like this one but it might matter in this sense: One of the things a lot of people seem to admire about Bush is that they believe he has strong, firm resolve. It might cost him a lot of votes if that resolve is viewed as a stubborn refusal to deal with reality. • Posted at 9:08 PM · LINKToday's Political RantJohn Kerry doesn't even have a running mate yet and already I'm sick of this election. When I hear pollsters say, "If the election were held today," I immediately think, "Oh, if only we could arrange that." I think I'd almost rather see my guy lose now than win in November. Just to get this thing over with. The caricatures are firmly in place: Bush is a spoiled frat boy who has had everything in life handed to him without real effort. He is so out of touch with reality that he can pander shamelessly to the right wing on some issues without realizing what those actions do to human lives, and throw around cash shamelessly to court the political middle without caring about massive deficits...plus, he dragged us into war in Iraq based on, at best, faulty data and in so doing has enriched Halliburton and increased hatred of Americans and therefore the probability of more terrorist attacks. In the meantime, John Kerry is a one-time war criminal who betrayed his uniform. He has no leadership experience, misses Senate votes, veers way to the left of American mainstream, carouses with Jane Fonda, marries into money, and flip-flops outrageously on every issue. Oh, yeah — and he looks kinda French, which is a terrific reason to vote against anyone. All right, already. I got it. You don't have to spend the next eight months repeating these characterizations to me and adding in new ones. By August, these guys (or rather, their surrogates) will be charging their opponents with serial murder, pedophilia, and taking orders directly from Osama. Think I'm exaggerating? The other day, a Republican Congressman actually said, ""I promise you this, if George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden wins the election, it's that simple." I'm less amazed that someone in Congress would say something like that, than that they would be saying it in March. How is that guy going to be framing the debate if it's October and Kerry has a genuine lead? Some of the anti-Bush rhetoric is verging into that territory and you know it will only get worse. I have this strange idea of leadership: I think it's about standing up for principle, even if it means defending your opponents on some matter. No one does that. You rarely see anyone slap a member of their own party for such excesses because deep down, they're either afraid to tick off their pals or they figure they'll somehow benefit from the vitriol. I never believed most Republican leaders thought Bill Clinton had Vince Foster murdered or that he was involved in drug-trafficking...but I thought they felt the anti-Clinton mob was valuable and didn't want to do anything to discourage its activism. And now we have prominent Democrats enjoying the rise of the hate-Bush movement and what it can do for them. It's not that they necessarily think every accusation against G.W.B. has merit...but they think that in the coming election, the more reasons to despise Bush that are out there, the better. There's a famous anecdote from the Nixon era in which Pat Buchanan supposedly counselled that it would be a good thing to foment arguments that would divide the country because, he wrote, "If the nation splits in two, we'll have the bigger piece." I was already disgusted with Republicans for playing that game. I'm becoming disgusted with Democrats who seem to be welcoming an election that's only about demonizing the other guy. They figure, I guess, that there's just more to throw at Bush, and he'll wind up the muddier of the two. Ultimately, I think the voters that matter — the swing votes, the ones that could go either way — won't care about anything either guy did in the previous century. But between now and election day, we're going to hear enough about their past deeds and misdeeds to make you upchuck. I'm already well into that queasy sensation you get after a meal at Denny's... • Posted at 4:02 PM · LINKA Brief Commercial Announcement......and it isn't one of our shameless attempts to guilt-trip you into donating cash to help support this website. A friend is involved in this fun enterprise... |
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March 5, 2004
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