A Pilgrim’s Digression

GOP Will Showcase Bush’s Leadership (washingtonpost.com)

Bush advisers said not to expect big new initiatives or detailed proposals. Instead, they suggest the president will use a broad brush while raising the stakes of the choice in November. He will offer a vigorous defense of his belief that his aggressive approach to terrorism will keep the country more secure than Kerry’s approach.

It sounds to me like President Bush is going to be on the defensive this week. Honestly, I was looking for a big, new initiative, tax reform to be specific. Barring any major announcement on that score, I do not see my thoughts and feelings shifting more towards the President and away from John Kerry.

I think a defensive strategy is a loser for the President. I think most people, like me, have probably made up their mind about what the President has already done. I’d like to know what’s next, if he is reelected.

Even if the President choose not to be bold this week, I am still excited and interested in what happens at the convention. I think after it is over, we will be able to better make a prediction, perhaps not to the winner in November, but at least to whether the contest will be close or not. It may be that the President and John Kerry remain in a statistical dead heat and we won’t be able to tell anything, or it may be that the President finally overcomes all his deficiencies and pulls ahead. The Gallup poll last week suggests the latter may be what occurs. Kerry has lost ground to Bush by three or four points, and the pundits attribute it to the attacks by the Swift Boat veterans.

These attacks on Kerry’s service have been the most damaging negative attacks in my short political memory. They are absolutely without merit, either on the issue of Kerry’s medals or his protest of Vietnam upon his return, yet they have been terribly effective. I am irritated that Bush has steadfastly refused to condemn the Swiftees specifically, instead calling for all 507 groups to cease and desist. However, John Kerry has not condemned Michael Moore and MoveOn.org’s scurrilous attacks on the President, so I can understand why Bush is remaining silent. This is just politics, but unfortunately, many voters don’t see it for the game of one-ups-manship that it is; they give serious consideration to these attacks and maybe even base their vote upon them.

Why am I leaning more towards John Kerry than President Bush at this moment? Not for any particular policy reason. I am conservative, especially on economic issues. I have no problems with the Bush tax cuts, and as a fiscal conservative, probably the only reason I can vote for Kerry in good conscience is that he has promised not to repeal the tax cuts for the Middle Class, only the tax cuts for the wealthiest (those making over $200,000.00). On war, I am a hawk, but a cautious hawk. I believe in the Powell doctrine, which was not followed in the Iraq war. A couple tenets of the Powell doctrine were completely ignored by an administration that is now priding itself on its wartime leadership: the Powell doctrine dictates among other things that before engaging in war, there must be a clear exit strategy. The President tells us repeatedly that our exit strategy is to leave when the job is complete, which really is not so much an exit strategy as a handy excuse. I guess since we are not technically at war with Iraq, the President could say the Powell doctrine no longer applies, but clearly, back in 2002 and 2003, not enough thought was given to what happens after the Iraqi army surrenders or is defeated. Bush essentially admitted as much this weekend, a half-hearted and long-in-coming admission from a man who seems to believe in the doctrine of Presidential Infallibility.Any way you look at it, we went into the war with too high of expectations, expectations raised by the President and Vice-President, and without a clear strategy that would allow us to exit, our goals accomplished. The Powell doctrine also dictates that war is always a last resort. I don’t think I need to elaborate on how the Bush Administration violated that tenet. I don’t know what doctrine the Bush administration followed in Iraq, but it was not the Powell doctrine, which is all very ironic considering these same Republicans sneered at Bill Clinton’s military ventures as ignorant of the Powell doctrine.

On cultural issues, I am more divergent from standard GOP doctrine. I have a real aversion to the moral self-righteousness of the Republican party, but I do not let it stop me from voting Republican when there is a candidate I like. So I am an economic conservative, a hawk on the subject of war, but culturally somewhat moderate to liberal. Still I have to ask, why then am I not a die-hard Bush supporter? On a personal level, I just don’t like the man much, and I never have. I felt in 2000 that the primary elections were a joke. Bush was pre-ordained the candidate regardless of his credentials–or lack thereof–mainly as a surreptitious way of sticking the knife into Clinton’s back over besting Bush père in 1992. I supported McCain in 2000 because I did not like the way the GOP establishment came together behind Bush and assaulted McCain for daring to challenge the Chosen One. That election would foreshadow the Bush presidency in microcosm, though. So much of the Bush presidency is one of revenge, of turning the tables on Clinton “liberals” and generally trying to reverse the nineties and declare it an aberration. I think the war on terrorism has been consistently mishandled ever since December 2001, when the Taliban and Al Qaeda escaped during the battle of Tora Bora. Increasingly, I think the war on terrorism was always and already solely about destroying Saddam Hussein. I’ve read accounts that state pretty clearly that by December 2001, when Bin Laden escaped, attention and resources were already shifting towards the upcoming assault on Iraq.

Iraq now seems to me a war in which our great hopes met an uncompromising and cynical reality. Perhaps if we had fought it differently, it would have been different. Probably not. Increasingly, I think it was a mistake, the height of hubris. And any reader of Greek tragedy can tell you the result of an excess of hubris. All this taken into consideration, I feel no safer today than in 2001. And why should I? The threat to American lives is apparently as great today as in September 2001. Ask Homeland Security.

So then, I cannot think of a single reason to vote for John Kerry, but I can think of many, many reasons to vote against George Bush. Critics of that point of view misapprehend the point of an election such as this, which is really a re-election: this election is a referendum on George Bush. I don’t have to have a reason to vote for John Kerry; I need a reason to re-elect George Bush. I want President Bush to give me that reason this week. We’ll see what happens. I will write throughout the week of the convention as time and reason dictate.