Hugh Hewitt asks: Why vote for Bush and what’s wrong with Kerry?
John Kerry is half-right in one sense. This is a single-issue election about getting more of the same. Based on experience, you can reasonably expect that a re-elected Bush will renew the foreign and domestic policy goals he pursued in his first term. His campaign has been a continuation of his record of four years. With Bush, what you see is what you get.
Kerry’s campaign has been a string of unresolved inconsistencies alternately true to and at odds with his twenty-year record of raising taxes while undercutting national defense. Based on experience, you can reasonably expect that a President Kerry will be both liberal and inconsistent, i.e. more of the same. With Kerry, you can believe his election year promises or you can believe your lying eyes.
The single issue for Bush supporters is that we must win the war on terror now. The single issue for Kerry supporters is that we must replace George W. Bush with a Democrat now. There are a slew of other issues of varying degrees of import in the national campaigns and on ballots throughout the land. But they all add up to a hill of ash when a jihadist drops a dirty bomb on your neighborhood.
John Kerry told New York Times Magazine that 9/11 did not change him, his approach to terrorism or his opinion that it is a containable "nuisance," implying that a certain level of terrorism is acceptable. His chief advisors are holdovers from the Clinton administration, which portends that the Kerry years could be 1998-2000 all over again. You may recall that Clinton, in response to terrorist attacks on our interests abroad, authorized missile strikes, got gun shy after a few setbacks and then kicked the can down the road.
There is nothing in Kerry’s record, policies or character that suggests he is prepared to ride out the inevitable setbacks in the war on terror. When President Kerry gets spooked and calls a time-out, we already know the terrorists won’t take their balls and go home. If you don’t think that’s a likely outcome, just ask the anti-war voters why Kerry’s their guy.
Kerry would like to redefine Bush’s gritty resoluteness as inflexible stubbornness and his consistency as a lack of nuance, but those are the two qualities that reassure Americans no terrorist can rest easy on Bush’s watch. When your home and family are under assault, you don’t want the police officer that comes to your door to be a weak-kneed braggart who boasts about his honors at the Academy to compensate for his lack of accomplishment since. You want an experienced cop who will apprehend the bad guys and make sure they never threaten your safety again.
If you want to know which candidate the terrorists fear, just watch what they do in these final days to influence our election like they did in Spain. My hunch is that they gave a free pass to Afghanistan and Australia for a bigger payoff in Iraq or here, if they can pull it off. As valuable as the coalition support has been, John Howard and Tony Blair cannot wage this war successfully without our full commitment and our enemies know it. If we lose this battle and Kerry wins the election, the costs of recovering later will be much greater than 9/11.
Monday, October 18, 2004
Four More Years
When Luis and I married on October 18, 2000, I was an obsessive political junkie and he was fascinated by history, not current events. I pledged to love, honor and share the remote control. That last part was a conditional vow, as he soon learned.
We wed a little more than two weeks before the general election. "I'll stop watching the news every night and all weekend long," I promised with honorable intentions at the time, "after the election is over." How was I to know the election would last until December? By that time, I was delighted to relinquish the TV controller as we were both heartily sick of the Florida controversy.
Four months later Luis went to work in an environment dominated by well-informed GOP activists, further awakening his civic sensibilities. Then came September 11th, which transformed my husband’s worldview to such a degree that he has considered running for elective office someday. This election he is persuading more undecided voters to support Bush than I am. We are a big, happy family of political junkies, but we do have one television per person, just in case.
Aside from the birth of my son, whom Luis has taken on as his own, these have been the very best times. I think we mesh so nicely because we share values, a powerful devotion and an irreverent sense of humor, the antidote for a lot of ailments. Luis has a mime-like gift for graceful physical comedy and makes me laugh when I would rather cry. He is remarkably free of neuroses and helps me focus on all my wonderful blessings. He is a loving family man who wears responsibility and commitment with elan. He is wise and perceptive beyond his years.
He sat beside me during chemotherapy sessions. He bolstered our son and me with his unfailing strength. He comforted us when my sister died unexpectedly. He moved my handicapped brother from Florida back to California and welcomed him into our home. I cannot imagine life without him. He makes my life worth fighting for.
On this, our fourth, anniversary, Luis and I have agreed to give it a try for four more years, God willing. I am the luckiest woman in the world.
We wed a little more than two weeks before the general election. "I'll stop watching the news every night and all weekend long," I promised with honorable intentions at the time, "after the election is over." How was I to know the election would last until December? By that time, I was delighted to relinquish the TV controller as we were both heartily sick of the Florida controversy.
Four months later Luis went to work in an environment dominated by well-informed GOP activists, further awakening his civic sensibilities. Then came September 11th, which transformed my husband’s worldview to such a degree that he has considered running for elective office someday. This election he is persuading more undecided voters to support Bush than I am. We are a big, happy family of political junkies, but we do have one television per person, just in case.
Aside from the birth of my son, whom Luis has taken on as his own, these have been the very best times. I think we mesh so nicely because we share values, a powerful devotion and an irreverent sense of humor, the antidote for a lot of ailments. Luis has a mime-like gift for graceful physical comedy and makes me laugh when I would rather cry. He is remarkably free of neuroses and helps me focus on all my wonderful blessings. He is a loving family man who wears responsibility and commitment with elan. He is wise and perceptive beyond his years.
He sat beside me during chemotherapy sessions. He bolstered our son and me with his unfailing strength. He comforted us when my sister died unexpectedly. He moved my handicapped brother from Florida back to California and welcomed him into our home. I cannot imagine life without him. He makes my life worth fighting for.
On this, our fourth, anniversary, Luis and I have agreed to give it a try for four more years, God willing. I am the luckiest woman in the world.
Sunday, October 17, 2004
Blogger Hoax
Yesterday I received the message below at my blog e-mail address:
"RatherGate proved that bloggers are the best fact checkers. That is why we are writing to a few bloggers asking for help. Yes Bush Can has collected several documents that are clearly suspect. But we need your help to prove they are fake: http://www.yesbushcan.com/falsedocs.shtml Let's spring to action before these documents needlessly tarnish the reputation of our Commander and Chief. You know the drill: analyze the handwriting, search for factual errors, and post your discoveries. And keep us posted by sending email to FakeDocs@yesbushcan.com. Thanks in advance for your help. YesBushCan"
This smelled fishy to me, so I checked out their web site, which features a campaign to reinstate the draft among other evidence of their real motives. A Google search reveals this as an anti-Bush group clearly inspired by Michael Moore that L.A. Weekly describes as "pranksters."
At best this is a lame promotional hoax, but at worst it is a dirty trick to collect documents to harm the Bush-Cheney campaign (you know, those damaging secret memos all the bloggers are hiding under their mattress). Please pass this warning along to your friends in the blogosphere.
Saturday, October 16, 2004
There's Something about Kerry: Hugh Hewitt Symposium #3
The predatory treatment of Mary Cheney by John Kerry, John Edwards, Elizabeth Edwards and Mary Beth Cahill reveals the path they have chosen and it’s not the high road. Two men in need of a heart and a soul took a wrong turn off the yellow brick road and mired themselves in a slough of despond. That can happen when your moral compass gets rusty.
Because our society attaches special value to family, we observe certain invisible boundaries in our private lives and public institutions. We all know someone who complains about their spouse or their children but, even if we agree, we are too respectful to join the criticism. When parents let their children become disruptive nuisances, we might be tempted to meddle but we bite our tongues instead. You could say we cherish families more than free speech. In breaching the privacy of the Vice President's daughter in the most public way, John Kerry crossed a line most of us take great care to avoid crossing.
Dick and Lynne Cheney have the right of family to invoke their daughters in public if they so choose. Michael and Ron Reagan have the right of family to invoke their father in support of their contrary positions on embryonic stem cell research. John Kerry’s unauthorized appropriation of the private life of Mary Cheney, whom he knows barely if at all, was as unseemly and out-of-bounds as his political exploitation of the personal tragedy suffered by Ronald Reagan, about whom Kerry had few kind words when he was alive.
The targeting of Mary Cheney by the upper echelons of the Kerry campaign appears to be a political calculation based on questionable premises. First and foremost, Mary Cheney serves as her father’s campaign manager, not as his gay outreach liaison. If she has opinions on same-sex marriage, she has not announced them nor designated a spokesperson in the Kerry campaign.
The Democrats must presume that their gay supporters will not object if Kerry and Edwards treat Mary Cheney like human bait while essentially echoing Bush’s stand on same-sex marriage. Undoubtedly there are those who delight in outing their own to make a point, especially if he or she is politically conservative as I noted earlier. Some of his supporters in the gay community, as in the anti-war crowd, might well believe that Kerry is paying lip service to moderate positions now and will make liberal policy to their liking later.
Kerry’s cynical strategy assumes that those who honestly share Bush’s opposition to same-sex marriage are right-wing Christian fundamentalist homophobes who would balk at a lesbian connection to the bottom half of their preferred ticket. A February 2004 poll taken in Massachusetts, the most liberal state, found that a majority there opposed same-sex marriage and an April follow-up indicated that a majority supported Governor Romney's efforts to stay the court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage. If Kerry is a shoo-in to win his home state and a majority of its inhabitants are against same-sex marriage, what does that say about the contempt he feels for his own constituents?
In my world, the Cheneys’ pride in both their daughters is the rule and not the exception. With parents as loving and supportive as they seem to be, all God’s children can grow up unafraid of being themselves, safe from the kind of stigma John Kerry was seeking to manipulate with the crassest of intentions.
There’s something about Kerry that seems artificial, venal, heartless, soulless, bloodless. That was the lasting image of Kerry captured by the camera during the final presidential debate. No amount of money can help him take that snapshot out of circulation.
Because our society attaches special value to family, we observe certain invisible boundaries in our private lives and public institutions. We all know someone who complains about their spouse or their children but, even if we agree, we are too respectful to join the criticism. When parents let their children become disruptive nuisances, we might be tempted to meddle but we bite our tongues instead. You could say we cherish families more than free speech. In breaching the privacy of the Vice President's daughter in the most public way, John Kerry crossed a line most of us take great care to avoid crossing.
Dick and Lynne Cheney have the right of family to invoke their daughters in public if they so choose. Michael and Ron Reagan have the right of family to invoke their father in support of their contrary positions on embryonic stem cell research. John Kerry’s unauthorized appropriation of the private life of Mary Cheney, whom he knows barely if at all, was as unseemly and out-of-bounds as his political exploitation of the personal tragedy suffered by Ronald Reagan, about whom Kerry had few kind words when he was alive.
The targeting of Mary Cheney by the upper echelons of the Kerry campaign appears to be a political calculation based on questionable premises. First and foremost, Mary Cheney serves as her father’s campaign manager, not as his gay outreach liaison. If she has opinions on same-sex marriage, she has not announced them nor designated a spokesperson in the Kerry campaign.
The Democrats must presume that their gay supporters will not object if Kerry and Edwards treat Mary Cheney like human bait while essentially echoing Bush’s stand on same-sex marriage. Undoubtedly there are those who delight in outing their own to make a point, especially if he or she is politically conservative as I noted earlier. Some of his supporters in the gay community, as in the anti-war crowd, might well believe that Kerry is paying lip service to moderate positions now and will make liberal policy to their liking later.
Kerry’s cynical strategy assumes that those who honestly share Bush’s opposition to same-sex marriage are right-wing Christian fundamentalist homophobes who would balk at a lesbian connection to the bottom half of their preferred ticket. A February 2004 poll taken in Massachusetts, the most liberal state, found that a majority there opposed same-sex marriage and an April follow-up indicated that a majority supported Governor Romney's efforts to stay the court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage. If Kerry is a shoo-in to win his home state and a majority of its inhabitants are against same-sex marriage, what does that say about the contempt he feels for his own constituents?
In my world, the Cheneys’ pride in both their daughters is the rule and not the exception. With parents as loving and supportive as they seem to be, all God’s children can grow up unafraid of being themselves, safe from the kind of stigma John Kerry was seeking to manipulate with the crassest of intentions.
There’s something about Kerry that seems artificial, venal, heartless, soulless, bloodless. That was the lasting image of Kerry captured by the camera during the final presidential debate. No amount of money can help him take that snapshot out of circulation.
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Sexual McCarthyism Regurgitated
I was disgusted but not surprised that cynical opportunist John Kerry would find an excuse to invoke Mary Cheney in a highly public forum. Maybe it’s just me, but I detected a similar sniff of self-satisfied righteousness in his tone on at least two occasions, during the first and last debates, when he alluded to the colorful Bush twins. No doubt many Kerry supporters who consider themselves humane and open-minded are congratulating their side for exposing the so-called hypocrisy of the so-called family values ticket while scaring away some of those so-called extremist homophobic right-wing religious zealots that form Bush’s so-called voting base. Ironically, Andrew Sullivan is now one of them.
Sullivan is a founding father of the blogosphere, a prodigiously gifted writer and editor, and an often forceful advocate of a humanistic libertarianism that appeals to some conservatives, including me. If weblogs are the most personal form of modern public writing, Sullivan is in large part responsible for breaking down barriers between writer and reader. To read his blog, as I used to do daily, was to gain an almost unfiltered glimpse into the workings of a grand intellect and a conflicted soul. More often than not, Andrew would successfully balance reason with emotion without sacrificing clarity or descending into propaganda.
From 2001 until 2003, Andrew Sullivan built a comprehensive case for pre-emptive action in the war on terror, an amicus brief in defense of the Bush doctrine. His support was neither blind nor uncritical but consistently pro-Bush. Suddenly last winter, when same-sex marriage first seemed like an imminent possibility, Sullivan started holding a fire sale on his well-documented principles and positions. He seems determined to lash out at many of his patient friends in the blogosphere, except for Christopher Hitchens with whom he recently appeared on Tim Russert’s weekend show on CNBC (the transcript is fascinating). Andrew’s blog has grown so incoherent and colicky that it depresses me to read it more than once a week.
Perhaps I have no right, but I expect Andrew to remember that there are malicious ways to expose someone who has already come out to an audience of his or her choosing and that to do so is a breach of privacy he termed sexual McCarthyism. When it happened to him, Sullivan recognized it immediately as payback for the audacity of an openly gay person to be politically conservative and an attempt to shake his supporters on the right. Both assaults, first on Andrew Sullivan and presently on Mary Cheney, came from the secular left.
The new Andrew Sullivan sees homophobic Christians under every bed. I miss the old Andrew Sullivan who used to know who Bush really is and lives now only in internet archives.
Sullivan is a founding father of the blogosphere, a prodigiously gifted writer and editor, and an often forceful advocate of a humanistic libertarianism that appeals to some conservatives, including me. If weblogs are the most personal form of modern public writing, Sullivan is in large part responsible for breaking down barriers between writer and reader. To read his blog, as I used to do daily, was to gain an almost unfiltered glimpse into the workings of a grand intellect and a conflicted soul. More often than not, Andrew would successfully balance reason with emotion without sacrificing clarity or descending into propaganda.
From 2001 until 2003, Andrew Sullivan built a comprehensive case for pre-emptive action in the war on terror, an amicus brief in defense of the Bush doctrine. His support was neither blind nor uncritical but consistently pro-Bush. Suddenly last winter, when same-sex marriage first seemed like an imminent possibility, Sullivan started holding a fire sale on his well-documented principles and positions. He seems determined to lash out at many of his patient friends in the blogosphere, except for Christopher Hitchens with whom he recently appeared on Tim Russert’s weekend show on CNBC (the transcript is fascinating). Andrew’s blog has grown so incoherent and colicky that it depresses me to read it more than once a week.
Perhaps I have no right, but I expect Andrew to remember that there are malicious ways to expose someone who has already come out to an audience of his or her choosing and that to do so is a breach of privacy he termed sexual McCarthyism. When it happened to him, Sullivan recognized it immediately as payback for the audacity of an openly gay person to be politically conservative and an attempt to shake his supporters on the right. Both assaults, first on Andrew Sullivan and presently on Mary Cheney, came from the secular left.
The new Andrew Sullivan sees homophobic Christians under every bed. I miss the old Andrew Sullivan who used to know who Bush really is and lives now only in internet archives.
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