THANKS POLIPUNDIT

I just got an assist from PoliPundit. Many thanks.

To match my new website, I'm switching to a different blogsite from now on.

NEGATIVE

I think we've had too much negativism in US politics in recent years. First there were the Clinton-haters in the 1990s. Now the Bush-haters are as bad or worse. It would be nice, if Kerry wins, to be noble and try to be more positive.

But I'm afraid that wouldn't be impossible. To talk about Kerry is to say something negative. Kerry just doesn't have any positive traits to talk about. He's a cross between Nixon-- humorless, paranoid, bitter, ruthlessly ambitious, uncaring about freedom-- and and Carter-- weak, vacillating, electable only because of who he is not, riding untenable campaign promises. No one on the left admires him.

Glenn Reynolds' predictions for a Kerry presidency, though unappetizing, are not nearly pessimistic enough.

BUSH'S SECOND TERM

FOREIGN POLICY. This projection is based on a variable and a trend. The variable is strength. The trend is easing towards normalcy.

Strength involves not only action but the credible threat of action. A credible threat of action amplifies your actual resources, because you can get people to do what you want without actual using (expending) those resources. Those who prefer "jaw jaw" to "war war" (like me) must understand that a strong leader is in a better position, not only to wage war, but also to negotiate.

Israeli Prime Minister Rabin told his policemen to break legs to end the first intifada. He was widely condemned at the time. But later he came close to achieving peace through the Oslo process, after a conflict that had lasted 50 years. He was able to do this because of strength. He was widely admired by liberals who had condemned him before, not understanding the link between strength and negotiation.

It will be the same with Bush.

Iraq. Allawi enjoys the confidence of the people and is determined to bring democracy to the country. Sistani has tremendous moral authority, and is set on peace and elections. The insurgents can't win, because they do not represent Iraq (as The Onion pretends) but only a subpopulation of the Sunni Arab minority. They just don't have the numbers to overcome the Iraqis who are fighting against the country's dark past.

The resistance is banking on a Kerry win. It may melt away as soon as Bush is elected. If not, the country may slide into civil war, but if so "our side," the Allawi-Sistani side, the CPA-installed government, will win. Perhaps bloodily. The elections will be held, whether in the whole country or only part. Whether "we" will win is a question with a false premise: we wanted to remove the Saddam government, and we did. "Mission Accomplished" was right all along. This is just the epilogue for us. It's their war now. And they will win, too. Our troops will stay on in military bases as Iraqis take over the fighting.

Iran.
Israel will bomb Iran's nuclear facilities in early December. This will provoke a tidal wave of rage at the UN and among the Arab League, will be condemned by Sistani, Allawi, Tony Blair and many others. But a condemnation from the US will remain ominously absent. Public opinion polls in the US will show strong support for Israel, and the neocons will call for a repositioning of troops in case war with Iran is necessary. After a few tense weeks, Bush will pull a Richard Nixon and show up in Teheran. At a historic summit with Khatami which shocks the world, Iran will agree to recognize Israel, drop the "Great Satan" for America, and dissolve its nuclear program in return for a lifting of the sanctions, sizeable dollops of US aid, and a sharing of intelligence about the insurgency in Iraq. Iran will also demand, and be granted. a place at the negotiating table in any future talks on Israel-Palestine. (This will be their vengeance against Israel for the bombing.)

As Afghanistan and Iraq become democracies, and with Khatami's standing strengthened by the meeting with Bush, the path will be opened to Iran's "velvet revolution." In mid-2005, massive demonstrations will erupt across the country, and the Revolutionary Guards will decline to fire on them. The regime will dissolve. A large swath of the Greater Middle East will have been opened up to democracy.

With the end of the Islamic Republic, and with the acknowledgment by leading Democrats that OBL is probably dead, the "war on terror" will start to fade out of history. This will be the beginning of a shift in Bush's reputation, from warmonger to the great peacemaker.

Europe
As with Reagan, anger against Bush will fade. Rather quickly in fact, after the election.

DOMESTIC POLICY

Economic growth will continue strongly throughout Bush's second term. The deficit will shrink because of rising revenue.

Fiscal discipline.
In Bush's third debate performance, it became pretty clear that Bush really likes spending money. He just doesn't have the conservative instinct to begrudge spending more money. Nor Congress. Nevertheless, I think Bush will restrain federal spending in his second term, for two reasons. First, it was a campaign promise, and he's pretty good about keeping those. Second, he will-- indeed, I think he already is-- getting the message from conservatives who are angry about the deficit.

But if the Republicans don't learn fiscal discipline, the Democrats will. After a defeat in 2004, Democrats would have to face the fact that the only thing they had to show for the past 24 years, politically, is the still-popular Bill Clinton presidency. And that was popular because he turned the budget to surplus, reformed welfare and grew the economy. In 2006, some Democrats will unseat Republicans in the House and Senate by calling themselves "Clinton Democrats" and sticking to one issue, the deficit. This will set the trend for the 2008 election; and the Bushies will get the message, too.

Social Security reform.
Bush will force this through with the same boldness he showed in going to war in Iraq. Once it's passed, it will be a huge political success. The elderly will soon discover that everything the Democrats said about their benefits being cut was a lie. The reform will channel a lot of money into capital markets, increasing the savings rate and business investment, reducing the trade deficit, and accelerating economic growth. But it will drain the trust fund and take a trillion dollars out of the government's coffers, which will help frighten the federal government into fiscal discipline. Bush will resist pressure for tax hikes, but many states and cities will hike taxes to fill in the gap left by federal spending.

Immigration reform.
After January, Bush will once again push his guest card proposal. Signs that Bush is making headway with Hispanics will provoke a lot of Democrats to support it. It won't solve much; immigration will keep surging; and it will be more of an issue in 2008 than in 2004.

MORNING IN AMERICA

By 2008, the political landscape will have been transformed, and America will be looking towards a new dawn. The Democrats will have reinvented themselves in the Clinton image: free-traders, budget-balancers, liberal interventionist. John Kerry's campaign will already be the bad old Bush-hating days. A lot of people who like Bush will consider voting for the Dem in 2008.

INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING

I've been watching a lot of polls lately, mostly on RealClearPolitics. It occurs to me: these would be so much more interesting if we had instant-runoff voting!

To explain: in instant-runoff voting, you get three choices for president, or senator, or whatever. This year, for example, the presidential candidates are

Republican Party George W. Bush
Democratic Party John F. Kerry
Libertarian Party Michael Badnarik
Green Party (I forgot his first name) Cobb
Reform Party Ralph Nader
Constitution Party Michael Peroutka

And so on.

Now everyone knows that either Bush or Kerry will win. So a third-party vote is sometimes called a "wasted vote." Third-party candidates retort that a vote for Tweedle Dem or Tweedle Repub is a "wasted vote," because they're both the same (too capitalist, too socialist, whatever.) But usually voters do have a preference between Republicans and Democrats. Major-party candidates think third-party candidates are taking votes away from them and call them "spoilers." So Democrats are brutal to Nader this year. Republicans would be just as bad, no doubt, if Badnarik or Peroutka looked like a serious threat.

With instant-runoff voting there would be no "spoilers." Pat Buchanan, for example, could vote as follows:

1. Michael Peroutka
2. George W. Bush

An ardent environmentalist lefty might vote like this:

1. David Cobb
2. Ralph Nader
3. John Kerry

Votes would be collected and counted. If one candidate had a majority of first-choice votes, that candidate would win. Suppose the first votes were distributed:

Bush 43%, Kerry 35%, Badnarik 5%, Peroutka 4%, Nader 10%, Cobb 3%.

Cobb, having the fewest votes, would be eliminated. His 3% would be distributed among the other candidates according to second-choice. Suppose 1% went to Kerry and 2% to Nader. The race would then be:

Bush 43%, Kerry 36%, Badnarik 5%, Peroutka 4%, Nader 12%.

Next Peroutka is eliminated. Let's say 2% of the second-choice ballots go to Badnarik, 2% to Bush. The race becomes:

Bush 45%, Kerry 36%, Badnarik 7%, Nader 12%

Despite the assist from Peroutka voters, Badnarik is eliminated next. Let's suppose that the second- or third-choice candidates appearing under Badnarik are 4% Bush, 2% Kerry and 1% Nader. The race is now:

Bush 49%, Kerry 38%, Nader 13%.

Bush still doesn't have a majority, so Nader's votes would have to be distributed too. Let's suppose 2% go to Bush, 11% to Kerry. The tally then becomes:

Bush 51%, Kerry 49%.

So Bush wins. But the "mandate" to emerge from the election would tell an interesting story.

This would also give smaller parties more of a chance to emerge from obscurity. In this election, for example, Libertarians could thrive, given that many conservatives are disgruntled with Bush's big spending, and many across the spectrum dislike the war. If you got a 35% Libertarian vote, that would send a message.

In this time of ideological confusion, this could be a great guide to the future.

PAT BUCHANAN, ALLY OF CONVENIENCE

So Pat Buchanan is endorsing Bush despite his great misgivings.

If Bush loses, his conversion to neoconservatism, the Arian heresy of the American Right, will have killed his presidency. Yet, in the contest between Bush and Kerry, I am compelled to endorse the president of the United States. Why? Because, while Bush and Kerry are both wrong on Iraq, Sharon, NAFTA, the WTO, open borders, affirmative action, amnesty, free trade, foreign aid, and Big Government, Bush is right on taxes, judges, sovereignty, and values. Kerry is right on nothing.

I am no Pat Buchanan fan, not by a long shot. I think Bush is right about most of the issues where Pat Buchanan says he and Kerry are wrong. I enjoyed reading the essay not only because it might help Bush to win but because Pat Buchanan highlights the diversity of ideas on the Republican side The Democrats, by comparison, are intellectually bankrupt.

Buchanan's differences with Bush are so stark, however, that it does look like the Republicans are headed for a civil war if Bush wins. Bring it on! There is great potential for enlightening debates within the Republican coalition. I hope the Democrats will join in, too, grabbing Republican positions in a smorgasbord way. I look forward to free-market Democrats, liberal-interventionist Democrats, deregulation Democrats, trying to make their party viable again after the crushing defeat of 2004. It will be great to watch.

IN DEFENSE OF THE HANDLING OF THE IRAQ TRANSITION

Some people, like Pat Buchanan, think the war in Iraq was always bound to lead to an unwinnable quagmire. Buchanan writes:

In the fall of 2002, the editors of this magazine moved up its launch date to make the conservative case against invading Iraq. Such a war, we warned, on a country that did not attack us, did not threaten us, did not want war with us, and had no role in 9/11, would be “a tragedy and a disaster.” Invade and we inherit our own West Bank of 23 million Iraqis, unite Islam against us, and incite imams from Morocco to Malaysia to preach jihad against America...

Everything we predicted has come to pass. Iraq is the worst strategic blunder in our lifetime.

I disagree, but it's plausible. Others, like Andrew Sullivan, argued and still maintain that the war was a good idea, but still consider the present situation a disaster, and claim that the administration has managed the post-war incompetently. Here's Andrew Sullivan, yesterday:

The only reasonable response to the Bush administration's non-existent war-planning is outrage, mixed with incomprehension.

Today he added:

So both Garner and Bremer have now publicly faulted what was obvious very early on. The rest of the Michael Gordon piece makes you want to weep: because of the promise in Iraq that was lost, because of a noble, vital war undermined by arrogance and incompetence.

I read the Michael Gordon piece, by the way. The first thing to note is that it is in the New York Times, a notoriously anti-Bush source; nevertheless, I certainly didn't come away with the sense that the Bush administration had been especially incompetent (though certainly the piece suggests that mistakes were made).

Defying conventional wisdom, I think we handled the transition pretty well. Against this, the standard line is "We didn't have enough troops, and we didn't have a plan to win the peace."

What would the war have been like if we had done things the way the "incompetence" camp thinks we should have?

1. If we had sent more troops...

Would more troops have pre-empted the insurgency? Would they have kept order in the all the cities, all the streets, so that Iraqis would have a more positive attitude towards the new authority? Would they have "won the peace" more quickly? I doubt it. More troops would probably have meant more casualties on both sides. They would have increased the sense of occupation. There would also have been greater strain on US resources. We would have more vulnerable elsewhere with more troops tied down in Iraq. And we would have had fewer troops to rotate into Iraq if the insurgency took place all the same.

2. If we had "a plan to win the peace..."

Would a firm, definite plan for post-war Iraq have enabled the transition to go smoothly? Would we have been better positioned to establish a legitimate authority, in control of the country, which Iraqis would buy into and support? We must take another look at the paradox of "imposing democracy." To the claim that it can't be done, the answer is: Japan and Germany. By way of explanation, one may distinguish the form of government (democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, dictatorship) from the substance of governance (laws and policies). Democracy is a form of government, which gives the people channels to express their will, but someone must impose the form first before these channels are operational; once democratic procedures are up-and-running, the people determine laws and policies.

In practice, though, form and substance, laws and men are not so neatly separable. We couldn't just write the rules; we needed to empower people, Iraqis, who understood and were committed to the rules. Who? From the pre-invasion perspective, there were two choices: 1) exiles, 2) Baathist officials. Both groups' legitimacy was very suspect, Baathists because of their implication in the old regime's crimes, exiles because they were out-of-touch and, having lives abroad, were likely to be under-committed to Iraq's success.

The most valuable leaders in Iraq to date are Sistani and Allawi. Each has emerged as an ally and leader in the course of the transition. Sistani has displayed wisdom and calm and used his great moral authority to dissuade armed insurrection against the coalition, and to encourage the country's move towards elections; and he has declined to pursue theocracy. Allawi, unlike so many Governing Council members who vanished abroad when the going got tough, has shown a bold and passionate commitment to Iraqi democracy and won the country's trust. Neither figure's emergence as a force for good in Iraq was foreseeable. Neither was "planned" by the Americans. If they had been, they would have been less legitimate.

3. If we had maintained the army and let high-ranking Baathists stay in the civil service, they wouldn't have fueled the insurrection...

The idea that our army would induce the collapse of Saddam's authority, then we would turn around and tell their army, which had been "the enemy" days or weeks before, to stay in the barracks, and pay them, and that we would maintain in power people who were high-ranking officials of the Baathist party, agents of a murderous totalitarian state, is crazy. So crazy that it just might have worked. Iraqis would have been frightened. "They just want to install another strongman, another Saddam, only more friendly to them," Iraqis would say. And the Arab press, the international left, you name it. People would remember that we had helped Saddam come to power, we had supported him. It would be taken as evidence that we didn't care about Iraqi freedom, we just wanted to secure our oil supply. But then the revolution could come from below. We would, with feigned reluctance, allow anti-Baathist and anti-American organizations to form. The Baathists, afraid of a revolution from below, would turn to us for support; and we would give it to them, a little bit, but not enough. Order would be maintained for a while while a peaceful popular revolution surged up from below...

Maybe.

Overall, though, I think the administration has done a very difficult job pretty well. More troops or a "plan to win the peace" would have been a mistaken, and to befriend the Baathists and pay the army and make the Iraqis win their freedom in the face of our apparent indifference would have required more Machiavellian cunning than America could pull off. What happened was basically that we walked into a revolution. Revolutions are unpredictable and often bloody. You have to improvise. Overall, we did all right.

To the extent there were mistakes, there's a flip side to mistakes: learning. I think the past two years have been a fantastic lesson about people's desire for freedom and its difficulties, about what an army can do to navigate in a post-totalitarian imbroglio, in what capacities we need and will need in the future.

It's worth bearing in mind, of course, the bad things that didn't happen. There wasn't an Iranian-style revolution leading to an Islamic Republic. The country hasn't been partitioned, and there hasn't been a Shia-Sunni-Kurd civil war. The death toll is far less than Bosnia, Rwanda, Darfur, the Congolese civil war, the number killed by the Iraq sanctions, the Iran-Iraq war, US casualties in Vietnam (let alone Vietnamese!), and so on. Is the glass one-quarter empty or three-quarters full?

Something else didn't happen, too. A Rumsfeld worry:

Neither the Defense Department nor the White House, however, saw the Balkans as a model to be emulated. In a Feb. 14, 2003, speech titled "Beyond Nation Building," which Mr. Rumsfeld delivered in New York, he said the large number of foreign peacekeepers in Kosovo had led to a "culture of dependence" that discouraged local inhabitants from taking responsibility for themselves.

By now, Iraqis have come to understand they'll have to fight for their own freedom against monsters like Zarqawi. And they're doing it. By contrast, in Bosnia and Kosovo there's no foreseeable exit from being US/UN/NATO protectorates.

I think Iraq was the Bush administration's most brilliant move. It was a great place to stage a strike against Hobbesian sovereignty and the dictator-legitimizing UN ancien regime. It's not just that "the world is better off without Saddam Hussein" (though it is!) Iraq is a valuable warning to dictators everywhere, and I hope it will prove a fruitful precedent.

BUSH AND KERRY IN ROBERT KAPLAN'S WORLD

I haven't blogged for the past couple days because I've been working on an ambitious new column for my website. It contrasts Bush and Kerry's foreign policy in terms of the legend of Siddhartha. Let's call it the Buddhist case for George W. Bush. :)

In other news, Putin endorses Bush; or at any rate, he thinks it's "obvious" that terrorists in Iraq are targeting Bush and that a Bush defeat would be a major setback in the fight against terror. This despite reiterating his opposition to the war in Iraq. Fascinating. I guess, as an old KGB spook, he would be the expert on how agents of totalitarian ideologies size up democratic leaders and seek to demoralize democratic countries. In case you missed it, Gallup is reporting an 8-point Bush lead! This poll is an outlier, but all the polls show a Bush lead of various sizes lately. But Kerry is doing well in the swing states, with the result that he's as close in the electoral college projection as he's been in weeks.

Events in Iraq are moving in the right direction. I think Bush will win there. Even Kerry might.

REVERSE GENDER GAP

Kausfiles notes an interesting detail of some recent polls:

Newsweek plays down its likely-voter results** (showing a 6-pt Bush lead) and finds:

Bush has a clear advantage with women, who prefer him 49 percent to 43 percent. Kerry has a slight edge with men, 50 percent to 46 percent.

Which country did they poll again? ... If this Newsweek poll is accurate, something more than Security Momming would seem to be required to explain the 10 point reverse gender gap. (The poll followed a debate on domestic policy, after all.) Maybe something about how Kerry reminds women .... not of their first husband so much as of a guy who never got to be their first husband because he bored them on their first date so he never got a second one. Meanwhile, for men, Kerry actually out-machos Bush in debate if you turn off the sound (and maybe even if you don't). ... Backfill: Alert reader J.G. notes that in this CBS poll--conducted between debates 2 and 3--Kerry also led among men and trailed among women, though the reverse gender gap was not quite as large. ...

Very interesting. Bush sounded nicer in all three debates, especially the third. Kerry sounded tough, even if in an empty-braggart kind of way. He talked a lot about "killing." (Terrorists, that is.) Bush talked a lot about educating kids.

It occurs to me that 1) Andrew Sullivan may not be totally off the mark with his banging on about how conservatives should really support Kerry, and 2) we're talking about "selfish jerk" conservatism here, the kind I had forgot existed thanks to Bush. But the real problem is that our political lexicon is hopelessly warped. The first problem was that "liberalism" had its meaning reversed: the name of the laissez faire political philosophy was transferred to regulation-intensive social democracy. Then "conservatism" appeared as champion of the old free-market view (among other things.) Now Clinton's and Bush's triangulation has transformed the political spectrum again.

To flip-flop the whole political spectrum and call Bush "liberal" and Kerry "conservative" would be somewhat false.

Substitute "conservative vs. liberal" with "Reaganite vs. the reactionary left." How does that sound?

IMMIGRATION CAUSES POVERTY

Robert Samuelson makes the case, statistically, that immigration is the main cause of the increase in poverty in the past few years. This is 1) good because the analysis is surely right and dispels Kerry's bogus middle-class declinism, but 2) bad because it seems that, as with Lou Dobbs' protectionism on CNN, an iniquitous position is being injected into the mainstream by old big media. Here's the claim:

Compared with 1990, there were actually 700,000 fewer non-Hispanic whites in poverty last year. Among blacks, the drop since 1990 is between 700,000 and 1 million, and the poverty rate—though still appallingly high—has declined from 32 percent to 24 percent. (The poverty rate measures the percentage of a group that is in poverty.) Meanwhile, the number of poor Hispanics is up by 3 million since 1990. The health-insurance story is similar. Last year 13 million Hispanics lacked insurance. They're 60 percent of the rise since 1990... if the poverty persists—and is compounded by more immigration—then it will create mounting political and social problems. One possibility: a growing competition for government benefits between the poor and baby-boom retirees.

President George W. Bush and various Democrats have offered immigration plans that propose different ways of legalizing today's illegal immigrants. That's fine as long as the future inflow of illegal and poorer immigrants can be controlled.

This is an example of the apartheid mindset, by which poor people are a "social problem" if they're on our soil but not if they're abroad. Immigration will increase the number of people living below our (arbitrary) official poverty line, and that's fine, because the vast majority of people in the world live far below our official poverty line. Americans should adapt by increasing their physical and human capital to reduce their reliance on raw unskilled labor. Some native-born Americans will fall through the cracks and end up worse off than without the immigration, but that price will have to be paid. The net gains, to most Americans, to immigrants and their countries, to freedom will be far greater than the losses.

KINDS OF LIBERTY

Tom is perfectly right that

There are two kinds of liberty: physical, and psychological. A person is physically liberated if she is unrestricted in her abilities to act. She is psychologically liberated if she has the capacity to change her opinions and desires. It is possible for someone to forcibly liberate someone in the physical sense. It is not possible to forcibly liberate someone in the psychological sense, however.

But it does not follow that we should not ensure people's physical liberty unless they are psychologically free. Millions of Americans sleepwalk through life, going to the same job, coming home at the same time, doing everything by numb routine, and they're too afraid to deviate from the routine or take risks. We nevertheless guarantee their physical liberty and would punish any violation of it. Tom's distinction is valid, but irrelevant to the question at hand.

Tom has written a clever and interesting polemic about the war in Iraq. But it depends on the (obscene) idea that Iraqis somehow consented to Saddam's rule.

A woman may be in an abusive and oppressive marriage with a man who inhibits her freedoms to a significant degree, but she may also be in love with him, in spite of how he treats her, being psychologically bound to him.

This description may fit Germany under Hitler. It might apply to modern Russia under Putin, Pakistan under Musharraf, or China under Communist rule. It most definitely does not apply to Iraq under Saddam. The aftermath of the war has left no doubt that the Iraqis hated Saddam in the highest degree. Saddam's rule began with a numerous high-profile murders to signal what would happen to anyone who resisted.

If I were an Iraqi who had stayed quiet during Saddam's rule because I didn't want to get tortured, killed and thrown in a mass grave and jeopardize the lives of my family members, and if Tom told me that by refraining from this empty suicidal gesture I had "consented" to Saddam's rule, I would conclude that Tom had consented to having my clenched fist ram its indignant way through his face.

IMMIGRATION: WHO'S MORE LIBERAL?

One of the most important questions about the debate, for all those people out there who believe that freedom of migration is a human right, that we should not discriminate against anyone on the basis of place of birth, that our iniquitous policies create a system of world apartheid that mocks our Declaration of Independence's claim that "all men are created equal," that immigration restrictions are not laws but merely violence and that "illegal immigrants" are not lawbreakers but admirable heirs to a long and glorious tradition of civil disobedience which has been an essential part of the advance of liberty over the past 300 years, is which candidate is more liberal on immigration. Here's what they said; maybe comments later; for now, judge for yourself...

UPDATE: Comments have been inserted.

SCHIEFFER: Let's go to a new question, Mr. President.

I got more e-mail this week on this question than any other question. And it is about immigration.

I'm told that at least 8,000 people cross our borders illegally every day. Some people believe this is a security issue, as you know. Some believe it's an economic issue. Some see it as a human-rights issue.

How do you see it? And what we need to do about it?

BUSH: I see it as a serious problem. I see it as a security issue, I see it as an economic issue, and I see it as a human-rights issue.

We're increasing the border security of the United States. We've got 1,000 more Border Patrol agents on the southern border.

Bad.

We're using new equipment. We're using unmanned vehicles to spot people coming across.

Worse. Scary, in fact. If you have humans doing it, their consciences can get in the way of being too repressive.

And we'll continue to do so over the next four years. It's a subject I'm very familiar with. After all, I was a border governor for a while.

Many people are coming to this country for economic reasons. They're coming here to work. If you can make 50 cents in the heart of Mexico, for example, or make $5 here in America, $5.15, you're going to come here if you're worth your salt, if you want to put food on the table for your families. And that's what's happening.

Oh yeah! "If you're worth your salt." Bush seems to be approving of illegal immigration here! He's almost suggesting that people who stay in Mexico earning 50 cents an hour are unenterprising bums!

And so in order to take pressure off the borders, in order to make the borders more secure, I believe there ought to be a temporary worker card that allows a willing worker and a willing employer to mate up, so long as there's not an American willing to do that job, to join up in order to be able to fulfill the employers' needs.

Very good! My only worry is the clause "so long as there's not an American willing to do that job." Americans' willingness to do the job depends on the wage. If you offer a high enough wage, you can probably get at least someone to do almost anything. On the other hand, you can always get Americans to turn down a job by pushing the wage low enough.

That has the benefit of making sure our employers aren't breaking the law as they try to fill their workforce needs.

Very interesting. If employers are breaking the law, don't enforce the law, change the law. The logic is suspect, but the conclusion is deliciously laissez-faire.

It makes sure that the people coming across the border are humanely treated, that they're not kept in the shadows of our society, that they're able to go back and forth to see their families.

Bush understands the human issues here. He really cares. Good man.

See, the card, it'll have a period of time attached to it.

The "time period" suggests that people will be forced out, which is somewhat illiberal and perhaps not credible. But this is a huge step in the right direction.

It also means it takes pressure off the border. If somebody is coming here to work with a card, it means they're not going to have to sneak across the border. It means our border patrol will be more likely to be able to focus on doing their job.

Which is? What is the border patrol's job? To prevent terrorists from infiltrating the country? Or to protect American workers from low-wage immigrant competition? Bush almost seems to be implying that the border patrol's function is strictly national-security-related. If so... excellent!

Now, it's very important for our citizens to also know that I don't believe we ought to have amnesty.

I agree, no amnesty. Amnesty implies that immigrating without a visa is a crime. I believe it is an exercise of one's rights. I think we should consider granting amnesty to those who use violence to prevent people from exercising those rights, but first we need to stop them from doing so.

I don't think we ought to reward illegal behavior. There are plenty of people standing in line to become a citizen. And we ought not to crowd these people ahead of them in line.

I don't quite follow the logic here. Why should anyone "worth his salt" stay in Mexico earning 50 cents an hour when he could be earning $5.15-- just because someone he's never met is waiting for a visa somewhere?

If they want to become a citizen, they can stand in line, too.

Now, really, Mr. Bush. Don't you remember what you just said about putting food on their families' tables?

And here is where my opponent and I differ. In September 2003, he supported amnesty for illegal aliens.

Great answer, though it ended on a bad note. But I doubt that in the long run we can keep a large section of our society locked into an "illegal" second class status. Particularly if new immigrants are coming in with guest cards. Particularly since Bush is obviously sympathetic to immigrants, and in this debate, he was sounding like a softie from head to toe. He's got the last bit wrong, but I think he might come round.

SCHIEFFER: Time's up.

Senator?

KERRY: Let me just answer one part of the last question quickly, and then I'll come to immigration.

[Omit stupid cultivation of victim complex among the middle class...]

Now with respect to immigration reform, the president broke his promise on immigration reform. He said he would reform it. Four years later he is now promising another plan.

Here's what I'll do: Number one, the borders are more leaking today than they were before 9/11. The fact is, we haven't done what we need to do to toughen up our borders, and I will.

It sounds to me like Kerry is trying to outflank the president on the right on immigration. But I'm not sure yet.

Secondly, we need a guest-worker program, but if it's all we have, it's not going to solve the problem.

Glad there's agreement on the guest worker program.

The second thing we need is to crack down on illegal hiring. It's against the law in the United States to hire people illegally, and we ought to be enforcing that law properly.

An interesting distinction here. Bush seems to think employers have no choice but to hire illegals, and the only answer is to change the law so they're no longer illegal. Kerry likes force and fear.

And thirdly, we need an earned-legalization program for people who have been here for a long time, stayed out of trouble, got a job, paid their taxes, and their kids are American. We got to start moving them toward full citizenship, out of the shadows.

Good policy. I approve.

SCHIEFFER: Do you want to respond, Mr. President?

BUSH: Well, to say that the borders are not as protected as they were prior to September the 11th shows he doesn't know the borders. They're much better protected today than they were when I was the governor of Texas.

We have much more manpower and much more equipment there.

He just doesn't understand how the borders work, evidently, to say that. That is an outrageous claim.

And we'll continue to protect our borders. We're continuing to increase manpower and equipment.

SCHIEFFER: Senator?

KERRY: Four thousand people a day are coming across the border.

The fact is that we now have people from the Middle East, allegedly, coming across the border.

And we're not doing what we ought to do in terms of the technology. We have iris-identification technology. We have thumbprint, fingerprint technology today. We can know who the people are, that they're really the people they say they are when the cross the border.

We could speed it up. There are huge delays.

The fact is our borders are not as secure as they ought to be, and I'll make them secure.

My warmest welcome to the four thousand people who came across!

I would tap Bush as the liberal on immigration here.

NEW STUFF ON MY WEBSITE

I don't know whether this critique of my zig-zagging erstwhile hero, Andrew Sullivan, is any good or not. I wrote it in a few hours out in the courtyard on Tuesday night. I'll come back to it in a few days and make a judgment. But "Bringing Neoconservatism Home," from last May, is a gem. Please please please read it! :) In part it's a Bush campaign manifesto, but what I like best about it is the way it draws the link between Iraq (giving people freedom at the expense of the ancien regime principle of sanctity of borders) and immigration (giving people freedom at the expense of the ancien regime principle of sanctity of borders.) Here's the key passage:

And we see millions of immigrants living in an undocumented, vulnerable, sub-legal situation while they try to feed their families by providing services that our economy needs. If dark-skinned Third World nations were once persuaded by communist propaganda that portrayed white Americans as exploitative bourgeois pigs, it was because white Americans were behaving like exploitative bourgeois pigs towards dark-skinned Americans here at home. Likewise, if the images from Abu Ghraib strike hundreds of millions around the world the world as an accurate symbol of America, it is because scenes like those at Abu Ghraib are enacted every day in US embassies all over the world. No, there is no stripping naked and no hooding. But foreigners who pay us the compliment of wanting to come to our country are rewarded by being frisked and hustled through military checkpoints, crammed in endless lines, finger-printed, background-checked and eyed with suspicion like criminals, charged huge fees which will never be repaid even if the visa is denied, then have their lives and futures subjected to the arbitrary power of an official of Colin Powell's State Department, questioned and told to wait, left hanging with no information for a while, then, usually, denied, barred from a job or an education or a visit to friends and loved ones by US brute force. If they have to come illegally, they are deprived of the protection of the law and of basic life needs like a driver's license, deprived of the "inalienable rights" which the Declaration of Independence (written, significantly, by the slaveowning hand of Jefferson—this hypocrisy is a long tradition) proclaims. Of course, the American-born, who know they will never suffer the immigrant's indignities, tend to look at all this differently. But it is no wonder that Arabs, Iranians, Russians, Africans, Indians and Chinese find the images of Abu Ghraib so poignant, so symbolic, so familiar, so true.

FIRST REACTION TO THE THIRD DEBATE

Bush is a good man. Kerry is a bad man. So Kerry plays hardball. Bush won't. Kerry wins. I am so depressed.

Kerry is constantly telling the public about Bush's bad ideas and incompetence. He says it with a smooth, calm, confident tone. Bush doesn't really hammer Kerry when he could. He's a nice guy. Bush seems like a Little League coach with all his talk about education. (Kids under 18 don't vote.) Kerry sounds like a president.

Spend this. Spend that. It sounds to me like one liberal Democrat vs. another liberal Democrat.

I'm thinking Kerry might win...

FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Tech Central describes how we can create a democratic Iraq in the peaceful parts (most of the country) while isolating the no-go zones as "unorganized territories," abrogating the right to freedom of motion within the country for the time being. It's up to Allawi, of course: this is Iraqis' country and they should decide, though we have a say in whether a given strategy merits the deployment of US troops. If we pursue this strategy, we would have to hope for, and would probably get, more Sunni Triangle inhabitants to turn against foreign Arabs and terrorists like Zarqawi.

Both John Kerry and pro-war pundits like Andrew Sullivan and Tom Friedman are now saying Bush screwed up (though they rarely put it that mildly) in not sending enough troops, but would Kerry send more? If not (it seems not) that puts this critique into perspective.

Let me defend Rumsfeld's strategy here. We couldn't afford to send more troops. As far as I can tell, we don't have them. Nato has pointed out that we're "attriting our [Korean] peninsular presence" because of troops posted in Iraq. A letter on Andrew Sullivan's blog pointed out that three divisions are in Iraq; rotation requirements are three readying/recuperating to one deployed; that's nine; and we only have ten. Tom Friedman says that Rumsfeld sent "just enough troops to lose." Lose? What? Saddam's gone. Lack of WMDs is exposed. If we can still "lose" this, someone has changed the rules on us. No fair. For Iraq to become a democracy was a hoped-for outcome of the war, but not a condition of victory. It's also not a big part of the US national interest, though it would be helpful. Rumsfeld failed to anticipate how a commitment (over-commitment?) to Iraq's democratic transformation would emerge in the wake of the war, and turn from a possible bonus into a political imperative. If the administration were hard-headed enough to insist that even a civil war in Iraq would not make Operation Iraqi Freedom a failure (given what US interests were and what Iraq was like under Saddam, the case is pretty strong), then a somewhat more hands-off policy would have been an option.

The Duelfer report sounds to me like a real tour de force. David Brooks and Time tell the story, and it is a story! I found this passage from the Time version especially haunting:

Saddam had no clear picture of the U.S. He told his debriefer he tried to understand Western culture by watching U.S. movies and listening to Voice of America broadcasts. He loved Ernest Hemingway's novel The Old Man and the Sea because he read in the tale of the brave but failed fisherman a parallel to his own struggles.

I'm glad we relieved this pitiful old man of power, for his own sake. I pity the old man, and I'm glad we spared him from committing more crimes. Eased his burden at Judgment Day a little, maybe. And maybe he's come to understand a bit of the wrong he's done.

The Duelfer report doesn't just nail Saddam, as Brooks says; it nails France, too, or rather (let's not blame the whole country for corruption in high places) a lot of high-up French officials too. My column "In Defense of the French" was written as a joke, but, well... might it deserve another look?

Third, it is not surprising that the French seem not to care about right and wrong, because most of them don’t believe in God. Most US voters, and leaders like Bush and Blair, are adherents of Christianity. Our faith teaches us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us. So when we see our fellow human beings in Iraq suffering under a brutal dictatorship, we are willing to make sacrifices to liberate them, because we expect to be answerable to God for the use or non-use of the power that has been given us. It is easy to condemn the French for bonhomie with dictators like Saddam, for selling them arms, for undermining arms-control efforts in order to scoop up oil deals, etc., but first ask yourself this question: if you thought there was no God, if you thought your good deeds would go unrewarded and your bad deeds unpunished when you died, might not you too be as cynical as a Frenchman?

The Christian Science Monitor, basing its analysis in part on a New York Times piece, and David Brooks each try to contrast Bush's and Kerry's global strategies, for the reader's information. Here's CSMonitor:

In Bush's view, "America is the world's great force for freedom, unsparing in its use of preemptive might and unstinting in its determination to stamp out tyranny and terrorism." Kerry, by contrast, "seemed to offer no grand thematic equivalent..."

From Bush: militant pursuit of democracy. From Kerry: a more complex approach to what he sees as a more complex world. A clear distinction in their approaches.

Of course, when you put it that way, anybody would take Kerry, but this is tendentious. Bush is not bent on perpetual war to spread democracy, and his administration is perfectly aware that the world is complex. My doubts are precisely about the title of CSMonitor's piece, "Bush, Kerry: different lanes on the road to a free world." I don't think there's any evidence that Kerry cares if we're on the road to a free world. David Brooks puts the point better:

Put this way, the argument we are having about international relations is the same argument we are having about domestic affairs, just on a larger scale. It's a conflict between two value systems. One is based on a presumption of a world in which individuals and nations should be self-reliant and free to develop their own capacities - forming voluntary associations when they want - without being overly coerced by national or global elites. The other is based on the presumption of a crowded world, which emphasizes that no individual or nation can go off and do as it pleases, but should work instead within governing institutions that establish norms and provide security.

This formulation explains why Bush's foreign policy is not an aberration of conservatism, as Pat Buchanan and the other paleocons argue, but is actually its fruition. This formulation also explains why, in The Times Magazine on Sunday, Kerry compared terrorism to domestic organized crime, gambling and prostitution. In his mind there should exist an effective body of international law. It is a law enforcement problem when some group violates that law.

Seen in these terms, this election is not just a conflict of two men, but is a comprehensive conflict of visions. Both these visions have been bloodied of late. Still, they do address the central issue confronting us: How do we conceive of an international order in the post-9/11 world? Bush, the conservative, conceives of a flexible, organic, spontaneous order. Kerry, the liberal, conceives of a more rationalist, planned and managed order.

I would add that both worldviews are inadequate. Our world order is both anarchic and over-regulated. We need Bush's boldness, his willingness to defy evil, his vision of spreading freedom to the whole world; and we also need to recognize that law must be an element of any healthy world order that may emerge from our efforts. Law amplifies force, because a credible threat of force can render its use unnecessary. Why do we need it? To free the world of atrocities like those in Darfur.

KERRY BLOWS IT ON ABORTION

I went to school at Notre Dame. I've sung a dedication to victims of a monument to the victims of the "abortion holocaust." My dad is (I think) a single-issue abortion voter. I knew a lot of people who went to anti-abortion protests in the Clinton era. I tried to avoid the topic. I'm a lazy pro-lifer. I can't figure the issue out. How can we know whether the fetus is a person or not. Yes, better not to take the chance, but I'd rather not think about it. I can't feel the outrage. I'm laid-back on the issue.

But Kerry managed to offend me. That he emphasized his Catholic faith while at the same time insisting not only on the right to abortion but to government-funded abortion was sickening. It was as if he was not just saying his own view, but arguing that Catholics are collectively wrong on this issue. With his argument that allowing abortion is an extension of the principle that we shouldn't impose his beliefs on others, he was taking on a much bigger adversary than President Bush. This was an insult to the Catholic Church. The argument by the way is absurdly bad. If consistently applied, it would mean that we shouldn't impose our beliefs that stealing, embezzling, or drive-by shootings are wrong on other people. That Kerry would think this argument fit for the American public to view is disturbing. It reminds us why it's a relief to have a president with no illusions about being an intellectual. President Bush knows that he has his place in society's division of labor, and refining complex arguments is not it.

The abortion stance threw a light on the mangled wreck that is John Kerry's conscience. He fought in Vietnam though he thought it was wrong. He seems to think himself virtuous for admitting to war crimes. He voted for the Iraq war because it was to his political advantage. Each time, he justifies himself with absurdly bad arguments. He claims that he authorized the president to use force only when it was a last resort-- of course, a last resort in John Kerry's retrospective opinion, not that of the man authorized. Now he suggests that abortion is murder but we have to allow it anyway, and also pay tax dollars to support it, to avoid imposing our religious beliefs on others. This really is part of a worldview. He no doubt thinks that the Vietcong was wrong to establish a Stalinist state, but that we were obligated to let them do it.

I can't say it enough. He's a bad man.

WHAT THE LEFT NO LONGER SAYS

I thought it might be worth linking to this essay from September 24, 2001 by Susan Sontag. It is remarkable in that it defies the political correctness of the 9/11 aftermath. She wrote:

The disconnect between last Tuesday's monstrous dose of reality and the self-righteous drivel and outright deceptions being peddled by public figures and TV commentators is startling, depressing. The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgement that this was not a "cowardly" attack on "civilization" or "liberty" or "humanity" or "the free world" but an attack on the world's self-proclaimed super-power, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions? How many citizens are aware of the ongoing American bombing of Iraq? And if the word "cowardly" is to be used, it might be more aptly applied to those who kill from beyond the range of retaliation, high in the sky, than to those willing to die themselves in order to kill others. In the matter of courage (a morally neutral virtue): whatever may be said of the perpetrators of Tuesday's slaughter, they were not cowards.

This article, I believe, provided the basis for Andrew Sullivan's "Sontag Award Nominee" series on his blog, where he scoured the internet for people voicing sentiments resembling Sontag's and linked to them to angrily mock them: a feisty self-appointed inquisitor.

Yet I think everything in Sontag's paragraph was pretty much right.

Sentiments like Sontag's have been strangely scarce in the past three years; or rather, they have been strangely confined to a left fringe. Is this because (as some would say) Bush led the right in insisting that the actions were a result of an evil enemy and were in no way blowback, and forced Sontag's idea out of mainstream public discourse? Maybe, but it's interesting that mainstream Democrats also came to avoid Sontag's formulation. If there was an inquisition, mainstream Democrats were complicit in it. Now Kerry echoes much of Bush's rhetoric.

I may seem like a paradox: I agree with Sontag and yet ardently support Bush in the so-called war on terror.

But that's not quite it.

I agree with Sontag and other marginalized lefties that the 9/11 attacks were blowback for particular, iniquitous American policies. Bush's first response to 9/11, "evildoers," "axis of evil," "our enemies thought we would splinter in fear and selfishnes... they are as wrong as they are evil," "let's roll," and so on; and this became his trademark, his public persona. George "War on Terror" Bush.

I wonder if he regrets that now. Like those musicians who have one early hit that tags them for the rest of their lives, which they think is mediocre and soon start to hate, yet they have to play it over and over again for the crowds.

In general, the concept of the "war on terror" gives me the creeps. It has an Orwellian ring to it. But I like the war on terror in George Bush's hands because in practice it's been a war to neutralize the world's most totalitarian regimes. The war on terror has given way to a forward strategy of freedom. It's almost as if Bush thought about it a little more and came to agree with Sontag that 9/11 was blowback for bad policies, and set out to change those policies. He pulled the troops out of Saudi Arabia. He advocated a Palestinian state. He ended the sanctions and bombing of Iraq, by ending the regime that needed to be sanctioned and bombed. More broadly, he increased funding to fight AIDS in Africa, and much more.

The scars of the anti-Sontag inquisition remain with us. The blowback question has not been adequately dealt with: the right and the center ignore it because it's politically incorrect, and the left is marginalized (in general, rightly so, of course). The debate goes on between those who say that we were wrong to invade Iraq because it was a diversion from the war on terror, and those who say we were right to invade Iraq because Iraq had actual and potential ties to terror. No one says that we were right to invade Iraq because the vile way we were treating Iraq gave the terrorists a just cause for attacking us. No one says we were right to invade Iraq because the terrorists had a point.

MANY NEW POSTS ON MY WEBSITE

Well, "new" in that I just put them there, though most of them are actually between a few months and a few years old. Still, I'll advertise them a bit.

Some of them are posted in a fairly decent-looking blue-and-white format. Others are old web pages that I made in February with a hideous color scheme. Check out one just to see how hideous it is, then jump back. The content of some of these articles is good, but probably not enough to justify the suffering a reader will endure because of the awful color scheme. One of these days I'll go back and adapt those to the blue-and-white color scheme. You can read them then.

ARTICLES WITH THE NICE COLOR SCHEME

On the Iraq war, "WMDs Don't Matter, Stupid" and "Robin Hood Imperialism" make the case for war in fairly similar terms, though one was written early in 2004 and one late in 2002. Frankly, events on the ground have never really been such as to change the original case for war. An excerpt from "WMDs Don't Matter:"

The absence of WMDs doesn’t affect the case for the war as a liberation. They don’t affect the case for war as a way to prevent the threat of a nuclear Saddam without killing children. Nor, be it noted, do they affect the legal case for war, since Saddam did fail to cooperate with the inspectors, even if he had nothing much to hide. They undermine the claim that Saddam was an “imminent threat,” but that claim was not made. Maybe some of the American people thought it was made. Maybe some of the American people believed it. Maybe some of the American people thought that that was the only reason we were going to war. There’s a word for those people. Stupid. But the case for war was not stupid. It was subtle, varied, profound, noble, visionary, decisive and as far as I’m concerned, irrefutable for informed people of conscience (of which, as the episode sadly revealed, there are precious few).

"Robin Hood Imperialism" is an article with huge ramifications. Here's the crux (and read the whole thing if you want more context):

But what about international law? Even some who are entertaining the idea of war in Iraq, such as French President Jacques Chirac, argue that “there are rules,” that the US can’t be allowed to just run amok and take out anybody it wants. The appeal to international law is usually made in reverent tones, an appeal to a higher moral authority. It’s like Gulliver and the Lilliputians. The US is so much bigger than anyone else that in practical terms there’s not much they can do to stop us, but they try to use the threads and needles of treaties and resolutions and inspections to neutralize our military strength and tie us safely to the ground.

The term “international law” implies some sort of world constitution. Is there such a constitution? Nobody in Texas has heard of it, certainly. But we can say by now that there is a world constitution, based on treaties, conventions, laws, comprised in organizations like the WTO and the World Bank, but above all in the UN. The due processes of this world constitution were on display, for example, when “peacekeeping” forces were sent to free East Timor from Indonesia.

So there is a world constitution of sorts, and what’s more, it’s a pretty lousy one. Take the General Assembly: it is admirably “democratic,” one-country-one-vote, whether that country has a billion or a million. Petty dictators have as many votes as the Western democracies. But then, maybe this is all right since the General Assembly is pretty powerless. More important is the Security Council, which has the opposite problem: in a concession to the realpolitik of long ago, the US, France, Russia, Britain and China sit permanently on the Council and wield mighty vetoes over all its actions. It is in these vetoes that Saddam Hussein hopes for salvation. The UN has very strict rules against inter-state aggression but none about how states may treat their own people. So while the world constitution has a “democratic,” or at least consultative, skin, its core is Hobbesian. Whoever takes power may keep it, even if he is a genocidal (though, admittedly, only on occasion) tyrant like Saddam Hussein. If no one manages to, you can no longer import order from your neighbors by being conquered: instead, enter the failed state, where life is nasty, brutish and short. Don’t forget human rights conventions, either—they allow free countries to preen themselves on their virtue, while obligating dictators (who, in Julius Caesar’s day, used to be fairly honest) to engage in more hypocrisy. Enforcement seems not to be the point: many human rights groups opposed even the war in world-champion human-rights-abuser Afghanistan, and hardly any signatories of human rights conventions back a war against Iraq, the best hope of Iraqis gaining the rights to free speech and the vote.

Coming from the plains of Texas, as a man uncorrupted by intellectual subtlety, you can understand why Bush has troubled grasping why exactly this “international community” is seen as a source of higher moral authority.

Of the two blue-and-white articles on Europe, "In Defense of the French" (hehe, oh yeah!! ;) is more worth reading than "Allies Worth Keeping."

"The Democrats Cry Wolf" is a good dismissla of the Democrats' unwarranted and self-serving gloom about the economy over the past few years. Voice of common sense on the economy, and casts a few aspersions on the Democrats' character. And... here's the proof that I actually did back (or consider backing) Edwards earlier this year, which proves my perfect nonpartisan objectivity in deciding that Bush would be a much better president than Kerry. No, just kidding. An excerpt from "A Strange Endorsement of Edwards":

Yet the good times don’t feel that good. We don’t have the sense, as we did in the late 1990s, that we’re in the midst of a Golden Age. Why not? Because the intelligentsia (journalists, academics, and so on) has taken it into their heads that Bush is all sorts of nasty things; corrupt, a fascist, a pawn of corporate interests, “unilateral,” and so on. The intelligentsia, you know, is sensitive, vain, stubborn, and easily outraged when it doesn’t get its way. Right now it is in a very grumpy mood. And by being so grumpy, even in good times, the intelligentsia spoils it for all of us. They’re so articulate, they control the media, it gets to the point where just for being happy with the present, hopeful for the future, and supportive of the administration, you’re some kind of pig. It doesn’t matter how good your arguments are. In most social settings where the intelligentsia are present, arguing in favor of Bush is not considered appropriate. Bush supporters must know their place: to keep quiet, or to state their opinions and be seen as a pig.

That’s why the idea of John Edwards for president is appealing. I disagree with him on some issues, particularly trade; but at least with someone else in the White House, the intelligentsia would hopefully be less grumpy, and quit spoiling it for the rest of us.

But I won't extend the same favor to John Kerry. For starters, his disdain for Bush seems calculated to insult those who have been Bush supporters (whom Edwards might be able to seduce); but there's a million more reasons that Kerry would have far less chance to get my support than anyone else in the Democratic field. (Lieberman-Edwards, I'd vote for; even Dean-Gephardt might have a chance; but John Kerry is a bad man.)

BUSH WINS DEBATE #2

My immediate reaction to the debate was that both of them did a good job and the debate was probably a draw. A good debate. Good questions. You got an idea of the differing political philosophies. Despite Andrew Sullivan's whining that small-government conservatism is dead, I think Bush talked about low taxes making the economy grow enough to reverberate. Of course, he also talked about spending on this and spending on that in a positive way.

Points that will last.

1) Kerry offended a lot of people tonight by talking about his Catholic faith and then defending partial-birth abortion almost as if the two were linked. I'm not one of those who would never vote for a pro-choice politician. I'd even consider voting for a politician who was Catholic and pro-choice, if he were discreet about it. But I was really offended by seeing him emphasize his Catholic faith and his support for abortion in the same speech was an insult to Catholics. That's for the pope to decide. Maybe Kerry had lost all the devout Catholics already. But if not, he lost more tonight. Then juxtapose that against Bush's eloquent and heartfelt defense of the "culture of life."

2) Hopefully Kerry will get fried for his mention of "bringing allies to the table." He acknowledged a couple of days ago that he knows Germany and France won't send troops. Will this get through to the voters?

3) "I own a lumber company? That's news to me!" (Long pause.) "Need some wood?" Hilarious. Most memorable line of the debate for me.

If you want the government to provide health care for you, you should have been convinced by Kerry tonight. If you believe that low taxes grow the economy, go with Bush. If you're pro-choice, you were liking Kerry; pro-life, Bush. If you think it's a good idea to tax the rich at a higher rate and redistribute, you were convinced by Kerry. If you don't believe in redistribution, you'll prefer Bush. If you think the war in Iraq was a good idea, Bush convinced you. If you think it was a mistake, you're with Kerry. On all those issues, the candidates laid out their differences clearly, and the voters can decide. That obviates the issue of winning and losing the debates.

On Iraq, despite the constant re-covering of the same turf, it's still not clear, because Kerry doesn't want it to be. "Plan plan plan" he says, a "fresh approach" as opposed to "more of the same," but the only detail he can give is "train troops more quickly," when Bush is training them as quickly as feasible. Oh yes, and "bring allies to the table," but Bush has already pulled together all the allies who will come. Kerry has no plan, or rather, he would just continue Bush's policies. He could, in theory, acknowledge this. "I'll do the same thing now that Bush would do, because he's blundered us into such a bind that there are no other options left." Would that help or hurt, I wonder? Instead, he's decided to pretend he has a plan, hoping that the American people will pick a "plan" that remains mysterious over a present that they're convinced (maybe) is very bad. The real difference between Bush and Kerry on Iraq is that Kerry might cut and run. He's made some noises that way. Also, a Bush win might demoralize the insurgents, a Kerry win might embolden them. If Kerry wins, the insurgents will have a valuable ally in the young John Kerry, whose voice will echo across the decades: "How do you ask a person to be the last man to die for a mistake?" On the other hand, even if nobody's going to send troops, maybe Kerry would bring some global political capital to the office, which might help in some way not presently foreseeable.

Kerry could say, "I'll bring our boys home." Cut-and-runners would vote for him.

He could say, "The only option now is to do pretty much what Bush is doing, unfortunately." Iraq would then be neutralized as an issue.

Instead, Kerry says "We need a fresh approach," without telling us what it is, while saying a few things that could be taken as hints that we'll leave. He hopes to get 1) cut-and-runners, 2) people who are willing to go for the mystery plan, and 3) neutralize the issue for those (probably a majority) who want to stay the course. All at the price of being disingenuous. This is unfortunate.

Andrew Sullivan says that single-issue fiscal hawks have only one choice, Kerry. That's stupid. Kerry is proposing far more new spending than Bush is. Period. He wants to tax the rich more, but cut taxes on the middle class-- it's a wash. Neither candidate gave a straight answer on the deficit tonight, despite Charles Gibson pressing them both (good job!) I was impressed that Kerry said specifically he had already rolled back some of the programs he wanted. But fiscal hawks should vote for Bush.

Mostly, though, you heard two political philosophies tonight, articulated pretty well in response to great questions. Draw as debate; but I think Bush is closer to the mainstream, so he'll probably win with more of the public than Kerry will. In that sense, this could be a blow-out.

ON FREEDOM

This paragraph from Tom's blog deserves a rebuttal.

Liberating the oppressed. Wow, that sure sounds like a great and noble idea. If you see injustice in the world, you fix it (or at least attempt to).

No, not always. We can't fix everything. You pick your battles.

It's such a simple and good concept, why is there any opposition to it at all? There isn't. Even Hitler saw injustice and tried to fix it. He saw imperfection, and tried to cleanse the world of it.

Sharp. But the problem with Hitler isn't that he did what he believed is right. It's that his beliefs about what is right were wrong, or rather, he gave up attempting to discern the right and pursued a dream of the German people's, and ultimately his own, glory and grandeur instead. And though much of his language is moral, this was merely Machiavellian mimicry of morality. Hitler never even pretended to the ecumenical and benevolent goals which fill Bush's speeches, except occasionally to trick the British and the French. His contempt and hatred for other nations diametrically contrasts with Bush's respect and affection for them. None of this is a pretension to probe their heart of hearts; the most superficial study of their utterances reveals it clearly. There is no analogy between the two.

I guarantee you that every terrorist who blows a bus-load of children and himself up believes that he is doing it for the right reasons, for justice.

Too generous, but point taken. Terrorism is nevertheless crime.

We invaded Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people from an evil dictator and to "pre-emptively defend" (whatever that means) ourselves and our allies. Isn't that justice? It sure is, in a superficial sort of way. The main problem with "liberating the oppressed" is that you can't force "liberty" on anyone; that kind of defeats the purpose.

What's wrong with this may be understood by thinking about a person tied up with ropes or chains. If I cut the ropes, or break the chains, I am giving that person freedom. Am I "forcing" freedom on them? If you like: but it by no means defeats the purpose of freedom. It is the same with a totalitarian regime.

The quest for liberty must be initiated by the person who is oppressed.

False, just as the person in chains does not have to cut the chains himself in order to be freed from the chains-- as a matter of logic.

If they do not initiate it, then they have accepted the status quo.

False, and offensive. A contract signed under duress is invalid. Typically, in totalitarian states, any resistance, or even the withholding of active participation, can result not only in one's own death but potentially in either the death of family members, or their coming under suspicion, requiring increased hypocrisy and moral compromise from them on pain both of death and of jeopardizing their loved ones. If Tom really believed what he has written, he could travel to a country where slavery was practiced, purchase a large number of slaves and guns, and exploit them in any fiendish ways his fancy might contrive, threatening to kill any who disobeyed. Provided his victims preferred slavery to death, he could do all this with a clean conscience, for they would have "accepted" it. Of course, Tom wouldn't act on this, nor does he believe it, he just hasn't thought it through.

Someone else can look at them and pity their plight, but to force "liberty" on them would seem like another form of oppression, maybe even a worse one (since the original state was accepted, and would thus seem better).

No, for the reasons above.

It's interesting that in a recent Gallup poll 42% of Iraqis said they wanted their old regime back. That's not a majority, but that's not insignificant either.

If Tom wants to believe this, he should provide a link. I strongly suspect that either 1) Tom's figure is merely a rumor, or 2) the question was really, "Were you better off under the old regime?" A yes to this is not the same as wanting the old regime back, since Iraqis might (if you credit them with any intelligence at all, as I do, they will) understand that the present is a transitional phase to something better. They might think that things are worse now than under the old regime but it's not the fault of the Americans, but of the scum-"insurgents." They might even think that even if they are worse off now, they would rather be worse off and free than better off but trapped in the moral squalor of totalitarianism (just as I might enjoy cheating on my wife, but still refuse to do it for moral reasons.) I have seen polls suggesting huge majorities of Iraqis want Saddam dead.

I would say that's enough dissent for a civil war, the beginnings of which, it can be argued, we are seeing right now.

Has any pollster asked Iraqis "Would it be worth fighting a civil war to secure democracy?" I doubt it, but Iraqi blogger Mesopotamian has already volunteered an answer in the affirmative:

Now that OPERATION IRAQ FREEDOM II has to be launched against essentially the same enemy regrouped and refinanced and thouroughly convinced that terrorism and "nihilism" is the way to confront civilization, The Mesopotamian is still around, unflinching and undying friend of liberation, freedom and enlightenment.

If that poll is accurate, a sizeable percentage of Iraqis may not accept the outcome of the elections in January (if the elections even happen).

There's a false inference here. Even if 42% of Iraqis would have preferred to stay under the old regime (which I don't believe) that doesn't mean they won't accept the new regime as legitimate. If those 42% passively accepted, rather than actively supported the old regime, some might passively accept the new regime in the same way. Even if some of them actively supported the old regime, they might decide to passively accept the new one, or even actively support it. Fortunately, we don't need to speculate about this: a July poll not only do the vast majority of Iraqis support democracy, Allawi also enjoys high levels of support, even though he's not even elected but appointed:

Some of this confidence may be a result of wide public support for the Iraqi Interim Government. Prime Minister Allawi holds an enviable approval rating, with 66% rating him as either "very effective" or "somewhat effective." Likewise, President al-Yawer enjoys the support of 60.6% of Iraqis polled who say that they "completely trust" or "somewhat trust" him.

In a stunning display of support for democracy and a strong rebuttal to critics of efforts to bring democratic reform to Iraq, 87% of Iraqis indicated that they plan to vote in January elections. Expanding on the theme, 77% said that "regular, fair elections" were the most important political right for the Iraqi people and 58% felt that Iraqi-style democracy was likely to succeed.

Public opinion might have shifted against democracy in the past three months. Or in favor.

As it stands right now, large portions of the country won't even be able to vote due to instability. That's a lot of disenfranchised voters.

Temporarily disenfranchised. Until securiy can be restored. My heck. Why should we assume Iraqis are so stupid they can't understand this?

America's revolution was caused by disenfranchisement. It can have pretty severe effects, even if it doesn't lead to war.

Disenfranchisement was policy under the British. We had no representation in parliament. The Sunnis are being offered representation in parliament. If there is an analogy to the American Revolution in Iraq, it goes the other way: Allawi is George Washington.

Legitimacy would be the biggest casualty (legitimacy already is the biggest casualty).

A preposterous double standard is at work here. Saddam's regime is (as far as I can tell) presumed to be legitimate merely because it held a monopoly of power through force and fear. The successor regime has no legitimacy unless perfect elections can be held throughout the entire country. The truth is somewhere in between: legitimacy evolves, it is a matter of degree, it may be increased by elections or tradition, it involves a good deal of more or less free consent but always some coercion as well. Yes, the insurgents must be defeated, preferably by Iraqis. If that is done, any regime that emerges will enjoy legitimacy superior to Saddam's. But legitimacy cannot possibly be a "casualty" of the war, since there was none to begin with.

On an interesting side note, Saddam Hussein will not have been tried in a court by the time the election happens. His lawyer claims that he is eligible to run for public office, since he has not been found guilty in a court of law. If he runs in the district of Tikrit, where he was born, he will most likely win a seat in parliament. Whether we allow that to happen or not is irrelevant. It will be an entirely symbolic gesture, further destroying legitimacy, assuming there's any left to be destroyed.

Saddam is guilty of crimes against humanity, and the vast majority of Iraqis hate him and want him dead. To forbid the election of such a person to public office does not compromise the legitimacy of the compromise. Suppose that a small and very racist town decided to elect a KKK leader who was on death row for leading a long series of lynchings. The courts could justly forbid him to take public office. But heck, let Saddam be elected. He can participate via video-conferencing from his prison cell after he is convicted of mass murder. After he goes to the chair, Tikrit can elect someone else.

In a way, I hope that Bush gets re-elected, so that when the shit hits the fan, it will hit it hard, and maybe the world will learn something from our mistakes.

There were no mistakes.

Excellent article here on the liberal case for Bush. And this one on how false is Kerry's charges of a bad economy. (It's grown 5 percent over the past 12 months, the fastest growth in 20 years, faster than at any time in the Clinton administration.)

Here is the analogy of the 2004 to the 1864 election: Bush and Lincoln. I've heard tons of historical analogies about this election year. It's like 1896, when the Republicans established a new and lasting majority coalition. It's like 1968, with a war on; or 1972, with the Democrats represented by a doveish ex-soldier and campaigning against an unpopular (maybe) war. But I think the best analogies are 1864 and 1948. In 1948, Truman, perceived as weak because of the way he squeaked into power, was challenged even as he was nation-building abroad.

DEBATE ROUND-UP

My summary of the first two debates.

Thursday night: A man-behind-the-curtain moment. This guy is our strong leader, running the war on terror?

Last night: Ah, NOW we get it. Bush is the curtain. The man behind the curtain is Cheney. Much better.

Most pundits on the right seem to be taking it as a big Cheney win. PoliPundit comes down hardest on this side. Dick Morris calls Edwards a "deer in the headlights." Ann Althouse calls it "a clear win for Cheney." Another commentator thinks "the big dog won." (That's Cheney.) This one is good too: he points out that Cheney "drove a sword into the man who wasn't there-- John Kerry" and showed that he (Kerry) is "supremely unserious about the most serious issue of our time." Yeah. And John Podhoretz is exhilarated:

Again and again on Iraq and the War on Terror, Cheney found ways to slap Edwards down. He put meat on the skeletal justifications offered by George W. Bush on Thursday night. And while Edwards spent much of the debate going after Cheney and his ex-company, Cheney used his time to go after John Kerry (with the exception of the pointed charge that Edwards hasn't performed his duties as senator, which Cheney knows because he is president of the Senate and never met Edwards until last night).

The key line of the evening was Cheney putting a name to the allegation that John Kerry's and John Edwards's shifting positions on Iraq are due to personal political considerations that do not bode well for his conduct of the war on terror:

"Now, if they couldn't stand up to the pressures that Howard Dean represented, how can we expect them to stand up to Al Qaida?"

Yeeeeaaaargh! And ouch. Now that's a bunker buster.

Meanwhile, Daily Kos attempts but fails to prove that Cheney is a "pathological liar." The supposed "lie," which Josh Marshall also alleges, is that Cheney said last night that he had never suggested there was a link between Iraq and 9/11, whereas, they claim, he once did. That sounds desperate. PoliPundit shreds that story. Cheney has always said exactly what he said last night: that there was a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda (there was) but not (as far as we know) between Iraq and 9/11.

An odd outlier, who thinks Edwards won, is Andrew Sullivan. Another is Will Saletan Sullivan thinks... what? Sometimes he says that Cheney's substance was right (e.g. it's not the government that creates jobs) but that Edwards answer was easier to understand; other times he thinks that Cheney sounded solid but people have lots of outside knowledge which makes them skeptical. Which is it? Are voters clever and well-informed, thoughtful, reading between the lines, or are they easily duped by empty promises? Sullivan wants to have it both ways: voters who shrewdly parse Cheney's words on Iraq but lap up all of Edwards' phony government-will-help-you rhetoric on the domestic side. If anything, the reverse is true: voters know the domestic side themselves but defer to leaders on foreign affairs.

Sullivan also thinks that Paul Bremer's recent complaint that there were not enough troops, thus confirming a long-held argument against Bush's war management, will be damaging. Earth to Sullivan: John Kerry is on the Democratic ticket, not Joe Lieberman. What Bush may have done wrong, Kerry would not necessarily have done right. In fact, whatever Kerry might have done differently, invading Iraq with more troops is almost surely not it.

As for Saletan:

If you watched this debate as an uninformed voter, you heard an avalanche of reasons to vote for Kerry. You heard 23 times that Kerry has a "plan" for some big problem or that Bush doesn't. You heard 10 references to Halliburton, with multiple allegations of bribes, no-bid contracts, and overcharges. You heard 13 associations of Bush with drug or insurance companies. You heard four attacks on him for outsourcing. You heard again and again that he opposed the 9/11 commission and the Department of Homeland Security, that he "diverted" resources from the fight against al-Qaida to the invasion of Iraq, and that while our troops "were on the ground fighting, [the administration] lobbied the Congress to cut their combat pay." You heard that Kerry served in Vietnam and would "double the special forces." You heard that Bush is coddling the Saudis, that Cheney "cut over 80 weapons systems," and that the administration has no air-cargo screening or unified terrorist watch list.

Yeah, tons of bad reasons to vote for Kerry. What is a "unified terrorist watch list?" Do we need one? Why? I'll leave it to the experts, of whom Dick Cheney is obviously one, and Edwards is not. None of these details will change anyone's mind, particularly since they're random this-and-that and don't point any particular way or show any particular pattern. And pounding drug and insurance companies? The left will like it. But most Americans are favorably disposed towards business.

It seems to me the elections in Afghanistan next week will play all over the news and give people more hope about Iraq. Victory in Samarra should help too. Here's William Safire's mischievously partisan conclusion to an op-ed praising Afghan progress:

Welcome, then, to the world's interrelated four-month, four-nation election cycle:

Afghans, fighting their unaccustomed way to the polls through feudal fundamentalists and Arab terrorists, will be the most closely watched. But Australians also vote this weekend. Prime Minister John Howard has reaffirmed the traditional Australian-American alliance; he is opposed in the elections by Labor's Mark Latham, the bring-the-boys-home-from-Iraq-by-Christmas candidate.

Then come the U.S. elections, about which you heard plenty last night.

Finally, Iraqi elections are scheduled for January. These will be influenced by the Afghan electoral example, and by the Australian decision signaling the breadth of future coalition support. Most of all, the U.S. election outcome will tell Iraqi voters to expect U.S. help in building a new life in a federal system - or to worry about helicopters hurriedly leaving the roof of the U.S. embassy.

Hehe. Allusion to Saigon 1975. Oh yeah. Will you get out of Iraq, Senator Kerry? That is the question. We still don't know. But maybe. And if the Afghan elections are successful that will really undermine the appeal of Kerry's cut-and-run noises.

Bush never lost his lead in the electoral race even after the first debate. He's still ahead 264-221 in the electoral college, according to RealClearPolitics.

And there may be a silver lining to the loss in the first debate. First, Hugh Hewitt (one of the few who thinks Kerry lost the first debate) emphasizes that Kerry expressed a lot of foreign-policy positions that will come back to haunt him. "Global test" has done so already and will keep echoing, especially since Cheney used it last night to put Kerry's Senate record on the table. Second, the "expectations game." The Bushies, in the past, have always spread the word that Bush was a bad debater so that he would beat expectations. It didn't work this year because the opponents knew about it and the press said he was actually good... but now, expectations of Bush really are low.

The dynamic from earlier this year seems to be repeating itself.

1) Kerry makes headway by sounding strong on foreign policy, though at the same time sounding weak on foreign policy, but people don't notice at first. (Democratic National Convention; first debate.)

2) The Republicans pound him on foreign policy and re-claim that issue. (Zell Miller; veep debate, maybe.)

3) Bush shows that he also has a "compassionate conservative," sensible and centrist yet rather ambitious domestic agenda. This brings in a chunk of swing voters and gives him a significant majority.

So a lot rides on these next two debates. It's the opposite of foreign policy: here Bush is the dark horse, because he described a lot of plans at the Republican National Convention that voters haven't entirely sized up yet, just as Kerry broke news with his emphasis that the Iraq war was a mistake. What I'm afraid of is that he seems on the road to win, but could certainly still lose, he might avoid taking risks. But I think his domestic-policy goals are in the right direction. I hope he presents an expansive agenda in the next debates, and wins himself a powerful new mandate.

Conservatives are happy...

WILL THE VEEP DEBATE MATTER THIS TIME?

Most commentators see a Cheney win. I think they're understating it. In the first debate, I thought Bush did okay, but people's memories and the spin war have a way of re-filtering afterwards and Bush's narrow loss turned into a blow-out. With Cheney-Edwards, I think the spin war will rumble the other direction. Key moments:

1. Cheney catches Edwards in a "classic example" of denigrating our allies, when he treats Iraqi losses as if they "don't count." All the more powerful since Edwards spends much of the debate slandering BushCheney for "not being straight" etc.

2. They can't stand up to Howard Dean, how can they stand up to al-Qaeda?

Many pundits add that no matter how big Cheney won, it won't matter, because veep debates are irrelevant, and they cite past experience. But this year might be different. 1) It's an important election, so people have more reason to pay attention. 2) Cheney showed he is a great complement to Bush because of his gravitas and knowledge. (Bush is the ticket's empathizing domestic-policy guy, like Edwards; Cheney is the foreign-policy heavyweight, like Kerry, only Kerry isn't.) 3) It is well-known that Cheney is an uncommonly influential vice-president. 4) In the wake of 9/11, the assassination of the president by terrorists, or, heck, by Michael Moore fans, is a possibility that people need to take into account. 5) People who saw the presidential debate were taken aback to see Bush, till then perceived as a "strong leader," as out-of-it, confused, at a loss; which probably made them more inclined to tune in to the veep debate to see if they had got it wrong.

(On point (4), my mom, a Kerry voter as of May but who likes Bush well enough too, cites as her most frequent argument against re-electing Bush that Bush-hatred is so strong she thinks he could be assassinated. Voters of this opinion will presumably be reassured that Cheney is not only well-prepared to take over, but is probably calling most of the shots already.)

Poor Edwards. If Bush wins, he'll probably get a lot of the blame for losing this debate. His career may have been finished off last night. It's not really his fault: Kerry's record is just indefensible. But Kerry's not the sort of guy to say, "My running mate did a great job; I accept all the blame!"

GLOBAL TEST (P.S.)

It’s not a crazy point of view, by the way. In Europe, large majorities would nod with approval at the idea of a “global test” for military action. In Israel, to have to submit to a “global test” would be understood as a national death sentence. We’re somewhere in between. It’s an appealing notion in a way—it rings of the brotherhood of man. Let Kerry say it. Let the voters decide. Only, since they would decide against it, Kerry obfuscates. Disturbing behavior in a democratic politician. (Or, at any rate, a politician operating in a democratic context; his remarks about George Washington and Ho Chi Minh cast doubt on whether Kerry should be considered democratic by conviction, as opposed to by necessity.)

YES, THE “GLOBAL TEST” DOES CHARACTERIZE KERRY’S FOREIGN POLICY

It’s true that one may explain away Kerry’s “global test” remark by referring to the “context,” i.e. to other things he said in the debate. Bush is perceived as a strong president, so Kerry frequently imitates him. Thus, if you look at the context of the global test remark, there are plenty of Bush-isms to offset the bow to internationalism.

No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But if and when you do it, Jim, you've got to do in a way that passes the test—that passes the global test—where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing, and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons.

Will Saletan has an unconvincing article (which is also where I got the Kerry quote) along these lines. (His argument, unfortunately, amounts to little more than joining the conspiracy of amnesia about the universality of the pre-war belief that Saddam had WMDs.) The Boston Globe angrily disdains the “global test” meme and the “Kerry doctrine” which the Bushies claim it implies. Both arguments use certain of Kerry's Bush-like utterances to dismiss the charge that Kerry would submit American defense to a global test.

The trouble is that, in the context of Kerry’s whole career, the “global test” seems like a very good summary of the succession of Kerry’s positions, almost of his entire raison d’etre as politician. Here’s an excellent retrospective from redstate.org:

1.

The North Vietnamese, during the Vietnam War, compared Ho Chi Minh to George Washington, argued that their war was one of national liberation, accused US troops of regularly committing war crimes and atrocities, called on Nixon to end the war immediately, argued that the people of South Vietnam would be happy to accept communism, and generally argued that the US war in Vietnam was immoral from beginning to end. John Kerry, during the Vietnam War, compared Ho Chi Minh to George Washington, argued that the North's war was one of national liberation, accused US troops of regularly committing war crimes and atrocities, called on Nixon to end the war immediately, argued that the people of South Vietnam would be happy to accept communism, and generally argued that the US war in Vietnam was immoral from beginning to end.
2. The Soviet Union and its allies denounced the US invasion of Grenada in 1983. John Kerry denounced the US invasion of Grenada in 1983.
3. The Soviets, in the 1980s, denounced Ronald Reagan as a warmonger and a threat to peace for deploying missiles in Western Europe. John Kerry, in the 1980s, denounced Ronald Reagan as a warmonger and a threat to peace for deploying missiles in Western Europe.
4. Daniel Ortega, in the 1980s, denounced US support for the Nicaraguan contras and argued that the US should have peace talks with his regime. John Kerry, in the 1980s, denounced US support for the Nicaraguan contras and argued that the US should have peace talks with Ortega's regime.
5. Moammar Qaddafi argued that Reagan's bombing of Libya was unjustified and caused excessive civilian casualties. John Kerry argued that Reagan's bombing of Libya was unjustified and caused excessive civilian casualties.
6. Our adversaries during and since the Cold War have argued that we were reckless and irresponsible by pursuing missile defense. John Kerry has argued that we were reckless and irresponsible by pursuing missile defense.
7. Fidel Castro has, for decades, regularly denounced US sanctions against Cuba. John Kerry has, for decades, regularly denounced US sanctions against Cuba.
8. In 1991, Saddam Hussein wanted to draw out the process of the Western response in the hopes that it would bog down. John Kerry said we should have drawn out the process.
9. Yasser Arafat has denounced the security fence erected by Israel. John Kerry has denounced the security fence erected by Israel.
We can add four more from the debate alone:
10. In 2002-03, Saddam Hussein wanted to draw out the inspections process and make it more multilateral. John Kerry says we should have drawn out the inspections process and made it more multilateral.
11. Kim Jong-Il wanted to have bilateral talks rather than multilateral talks. John Kerry says we should have had bilateral talks rather than multilateral talks.
12. Osama bin Laden says we helped him by invading Iraq. John Kerry says we helped bin Laden by invading Iraq.
13. The Iranian mullahs oppose US sanctions against Iran, wish to enter into agreements with the US, and insist that there are plausible reasons why a poor but oil-rich country needs nuclear power. John Kerry opposes US sanctions against Iran, argues that we should enter into agreements with Iran, and insists that there are plausible reasons why a poor but oil-rich country needs nuclear power.

A charitable interpretation of John Kerry’s habit of echoing the views of our critics and our enemies is that “global” voices should have a hearing here; that with our huge influence in the world foreigners have a stake in what we do, and if they can’t vote, some of us should take it upon ourselves to vote vicariously for them. In short, John Kerry’s mission throughout his career has been to submit US action to the “global test.” It is the Democrats, not the Republicans, who are ignoring the broader context of the remark.

Beware the word "but" this year. Thus Kerry talks like Bush for show, then says "but," then states his own view. It is the same as in the Iraq war, when people said, "yes, Saddam Hussein was bad, but" and then go on to make what purports to be a counter-point which outweighs the evil of Saddam Hussein's regime, apparently only because of its grammatical position since the clause that follows "but" represents a fact of much smaller importance. To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, the word "but" is the last refuge of a scoundrel.