THAT'S THE TICKET....


I wish could get excited about the selection of John Edwards as Kerry's VP choice. After all, I am big fan of Edwards and this decision has effectively preserved his national political career for at least one more election cycle. I am looking forward to the Edwards-Cheney debate, which will put the starkest contrast between the GOP's domestic policy of cronyism versus the Democratic alternative that is superior both in terms of prudence and justice. Still, at the end of the day, the top of the ticket is the top of the ticket, and Edwards' passion and vision do not erase Kerry's failings anymore than Al Gore's moral probity erased Clinton's. Moreover, the one area where it is pretty clear Edwards is going to have little say about is foreign policy. If Kerry wins it will be as much his show as it was for Bush the Elder. And that means a large, heaping dose of liberal realism.


A large part of me prefers the Jacksonian-neocon mess that stumbled into Iraq to four years of putting democracy-promotion on the back burner in the name of international consensus. I won't however, pull a lever for Bush, not even in New York as a protest vote. Not after Abu Ghraib. I'm not sure I could have ever swallowed a domestic platform based on gay-bashing, tax cuts for the rich and an ostrich-like approach to global climate change. However, up until Abu Ghraib, for the all the bumbling, Bush at least "got it" about the war against Islamist terror. But, the Jacksonian urge to "send a message" won out over the neocon dreams of a "democratic Middle East" and the whole point of the Iraq war was discarded for a short-term bump in intelligence on the insurgency. So, as upset as I am about the the Democratic abdication of America's mission, there is no point in doing anything that rewards the Cheyney-Rumsfeld-Ashcroft approach to the world either.


So maybe what I really do need, given the dark color to my thoughts on the American political landscape is to listen to few more John Edwards speeches. At least somewhere, besides the blankness of Bush and the bleakness of Kerry there's a ray of hope coming out of the 2004 election. While that might not be excitement, at least its something.