MORE REPLIES TO TOM REASONER

Tom also pans the DNC, and, while calling his responses "more cooled-off" than mine, he is if anything more depressed, because he has the misfortune of feeling great antipathy towards George W. Bush:

But as I cooled off, I realized that even if Kerry does not deserve to be president, it would not be right to condone Bush's unilateralism and narrow-minded view of world affairs by allowing him to be re-elected... I feel Kerry cannot do much economic damage with his policies because of congress, but he will be able to veto the sorts of legislation that I disagree with entirely. He will also improve foreign relations just by not being Bush, which I think is very important at this stage in the game when we're trying to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan and bring "our boys" home at the same time. I've heard that there are some foreign leaders who refuse to help because of Bush, not because of the cause itself. Maybe that's childish, but it's understandable considering the ego that is required to attain leaderiship status. Anyway, all of this is to say that I hate Kerry, and I don't hate Bush quite so much as I used to, but I'm still voting "against Bush".

What unilateralism? For the billionth time, we had dozens of allies going into Iraq, and a lot of nations have troops there. Colin Powell has long since debunked this myth in Foreign Affairs:

It is an unfailingly effective applause line for critics of any U.S. administration to charge that the president has no vision for the world, that he has no strategy. Every trouble is attributed to this failing, as though the world would otherwise be perfectly accommodating to U.S. purposes. Unfortunately, this criticism has come close to being true in some administrations. But it is not true in the present one. President George W. Bush does have a vision of a better world. And he also has a strategy for translating that vision into reality. I know -- I was present at its creation. Another side benefit of electing Kerry is to keep Hilary Clinton out of running in the next election :)

And Bush's narrow-minded view of world affairs? Give me a break! Bush is tolerant in the extreme, preaching over and over again that everybody including Arabs and Muslims deserve human rights and are capable of democracy. A reasonable critique of Bush is not that he is narrow-minded but that he is panglossian. If anyone has a "narrow-minded view of world affairs," it is certainly the America First Democrats. As for Kerry's foreign affairs advantage for "not being Bush," I don't buy it at all. Here's the dirty secret: we were pretty unpopular in Europe and with the left even in Clinton's time. And if Kerry tries to recruit NATO to send troops to Iraq, that won't go over big. If Kerry is elected, every terrorist in the world will celebrate victory, and every dictator in the world will sleep much easier, and with good reason. And about Hillary Clinton, another little secret: while I'm no fan, she's a lot better than John Kerry.