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.