BRAVO!

Some of the Republican Convention rubbed me the wrong way. I got the nasty-nationalism vibe from it a bit too often. But I was anticipating a pleasant performance from Bush because of the following so-called gaffe, reported as follows by Sullivan.

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?

Pres. BUSH: I have never said we can win it in four years?

LAUER: No, I'm just saying, can we win it? Do you say that?

Pres. BUSH: I don't--I don't think we can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that the--those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in part of the world, let's put it that way. I have a two-pronged strategy. On the one hand is to find them before they hurt us. And that's necessary. I'm telling you it's necessary.

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.

Bush was forced to back down from the comment later, but I thought the juxtaposition was brilliant: McCain and the rest of them at the RNC insisting "We will win" the war on terror, while Bush is moderating the concept of victory. Bush is right: to "win" a war on an abstract noun is misconceived. The "war on terror" notion was perhaps a justified bit of poetic license in 2001, but we shouldn't be prisoners of that concept. Of course the Bush campaign would attack Kerry for it, politics is politics; the voters could decide, and I think the clear statement might do better than his muddling.

But there's a deeper point: the words would have a different meaning coming from Kerry. "Creating the conditions so that those who use terror as a tool become less acceptable in part of the world" sounds so easy. It could be an excuse for cowardice. Most people who talk that language would never have the nerve to do what it takes to create those conditions, for example to knock out the world's worst tyrannies and light the torch of freedom in the world's most benighted regions, and undermine the old UN ancien regime in the process. Bush is in the rare, almost unique position, of being able to talk that kind of language with credibility, without it being a kind of hypocrisy. He understands that "creating the conditions..." is not easier than a smashing military assault on somebody; it is harder, but nobler.

His speech did not disappoint. Bush is the #1 champion of the liberal theory of history, as Michael Mandelbaum calls it, in the world today. What was a beautiful but delusional and deadly dream for Woodrow Wilson, is finally becoming reality under President Bush. Bush's long focus on domestic policy was welcome and was just what the convention needed: there had been too much talk of foreign policy, where we already know where Bush stands and where he can't really tell us where he's going to go because it depends on events outside his control. We heard his plans for the next four years. He's still guilty of "fuzzy math," but this time around less so than Kerry. It's not the platform I would have designed. Too liberal, too big-government. But this is the political spectrum paradox: both parties go to the center, and the center is defined by where the parties go. When the Democrats return to Clintonomics, Republicans will move in the libertarian direction: the imperative is to crush the moment of paleoliberal revival and force the Democrats to finish reinventing themselves.

To counter-balance the excessive nationalism and militarism of the Convention, I was pleased to hear immigration trumpeted in such a positive light. Bush spoke (bad) Spanish, Schwarzenegger emphasized his immigrant roots, as did other speakers... It's true, as the NYT points out, that Bush didn't make any mention of his immigration plan, but I think there was a signal that that's still on the agenda.