THE SWING INTELLECTUALS GO TO KERRY


As the election approaches, I find it harder and harder to imagine reconciling myself to a Bush victory. The past year has shown a steady withering away of my ambivalence between the Dems flawed instincts on foreign policy and national security and the GOP's horrific domestic agenda. The primary reason of course has been Bush's disastrous handling of the war in Iraq. It has gotten to the point that sensible, committed hawks like Hitchens, Drezner and Sullivan have all endorsed Kerry despite noting they are far more in line with the vision articulated by Bush when it comes to prosecuting the war on terror. In each case, reality trumped vision, competance trumped conviction.


My deepest hope is that other swing voters, no doubt turned off by the Bush's domestic peformance but skeptical about Kerry's security bonifides will choose the hope that Kerry will rise above his limitations as president rather than give into the despair that we can do no better than to watch Bush fail under the weight of limitations for four more years.

GREATEST COMEBACK IN SPORTS HISTORY


As a Phillies fan (who have managed to win all of 1 of the first 99 World Series), who despite my affection for my adopted hometown, has an ingrained loathing of the Yankees, I have a special place in my heart for the Boston Red Sox. Watching the Sox finally exorcize their Yankees demons in the most dramatic fashion possible, I can't keep from grinning ear to ear. I'll try to get it out of my system before riding the subway tomrrow with a depressed mass of Yankee fans. Well, if the Red Sox can finally break through, maybe there is hope for team that breaks my heart every year. E-A-G-L-E-S...

BURNED BY BUSH, VOTING FOR KERRY



This article in the Chicago Tribune (thanks agains Sully) pretty much sums up my dilemma this election and my decision to vote for Kerry.

For most liberal hawks, there is little doubt that Bush bungled the Iraq campaign. Many, however, still believe deeply that going to war in Iraq was the right decision, and some remain cautiously optimistic that Iraq eventually will steady itself and move in the right direction, as long as America and the world provide the necessary help.

That belief only compounds what is a heart-splitting decision.

They find Bush's policies on just about everything outside the war abhorrent. The administration's tax policy is offensive to people who believe in reducing economic disparities. The government's manipulation of science for political gain, including its approach to stem cell research and contraception, infuriates many.

Bush's support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is personally offensive to almost every liberal. And yet, Iraq still stands as the pivotal issue in the international arena, one that will have implications for the future of the Middle East, for democratization, human rights and international security.

In the end, most liberal hawks will find it impossible to vote for Bush.

They likely will stand with Kerry, praying that as president he will take the right action; that the words of the candidate on the campaign trail were aimed at gaining the vote of a sharply divided nation, concealing what they hope is Kerry's knowledge that the liberal hawks were right all along.

The last sentence however does quite get things accurately. Kerry has since the beginning of the campaign tried to appeal both to die-hard dovish opponents of the war, condemning the fundamental policy decisions underlining the war, and at the same time reassure liberal and centrist hawks that he would not aband


I can't speak for all liberal hawks, but I don't happen to think that Kerry's critiques of the Bush's decision to go to war ("wrong war, wrong time, wrong place") are merely sops to his party's base and that in his heart of heart he is a fellow Wilsonian. No, it is far more likely that Kerry's Jeffersonian tropes come from the heart and his more hawkish stances are the strategic counter-thrusts. No, the faith that I have with Kerry is his essential pragmatism. That even though he would never have gone to war in Iraq to begin with, he has the analytical gifts and intellectual flexibility to understand the very real national security interests America has in seeing the project of a stable and democratizing Iraq. That's what I'm praying for when I'm pulling that Working Families Party lever for Kerry on November 2.

THE TRIUMPH OF KERRY'S POLITICAL THEOLOGY


For decades, Republicans,with the complicity of Democrats, have managed to frame the national "values" debate in this nation as one between religious conservatives and secular liberals. In doing so, they have also managed to define public religiosity almost entirely through the dictates of holiness; that above all else what G-d demands of believers is that they uphold traditional sexual morality. For justice-seeking people of faith, this state of affairs was doubly depressing. Not only were these appeals made in the name of religion politically effective, helping to promote socioeconomic agendas antithetical to social justice, they were also a hillul hashem (desecration of G-d's name), in advancing a theological notion of a Creator mostly indifferent to injustice so long as "faith" and "piety" were advanced.


In the past, select Democrats have fought the lonely two-front battle against the GOP's twisted political theology and their own party's religious privatism. Black Democrats, treated as a "special case" as they carried the embers of the fires of the faith-based Civil Rights movement; Clinton, who intermittedly effectively employed religious rhetoric but undermined it with his own behavior; and most directly Lieberman, who drew undue villification from the party elite's secularists. It was therefore a wholly unexpected and delightful surprise for John Kerry, to shed his religious privatism and finally bring progressive political theology out of the shadows of American political discourse. Last night Kerry took our "faith-based" president (who, to his credit has at least pursued justice abroad if not at home) and put forward a far brighter political theology.



Kerry exposed the poverty of the GOP's notion of "values" by taking them to task on the injustice of their socioeconomic priorities:

The president has denied 9.2 million women $3,800 a year. But he doesn't hesitate to fight for $136,000 to a millionaire. One percent of America got $89 billion last year in a tax cut. But people working hard, playing by the rules, trying to take care of their kids, family values that we're supposed to value so much in America - I'm tired of politicians who talk about family values and don't value families. What we need to do is raise the minimum wage.

Five hundred thousand kids lost after-school programs because of your budget. Now that's not in my gut. That's not my value system. And certainly not so that the wealthiest people in America can walk away with another tax cut - $89 billion last year to the top 1 percent of Americans, but kids lost their after-school programs. You be the judge.



And in a more profound way, Kerry addressed the poverty of the GOP's understanding of "faith" in explaining why true faith requires the pursuit of social justice:

There's a great passage of the Bible that says What does it mean my brother to say you have faith if there are no deeds? Faith without works is dead. And I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by your faith, but without transferring it in any official way to other people. That's why I fight against poverty. That's why I fight to clean up the environment and protect this earth. That's why I fight for equality and justice. All of those things come out of that fundamental teaching and belief of faith. But I know this: that President Kennedy in his inaugural address told of us that here on earth God's work must truly be our own. And that's what we have to - I think that's the test of public service.

Finally, Kerry powerfully delivered a political theology that America needs, one that is intolerant of injustice, while tolerant of the pluralities of holiness - the different ways in which people of different faith traditions connect to G-d.

And as I measure the words of the Bible, and we all do, different people measure different things: the Koran, the Torah or, you know, Native Americans who gave me a blessing the other day had their own special sense of connectedness to a higher being. And people all find their ways to express it. I was taught - I went to a church school, and I was taught that the two greatest commandments are: love the Lord your God with all your mind, your body and your soul; and love your neighbor as yourself. And frankly, I think we have a lot more loving of our neighbor to do in this country and on this planet. We have a separate and unequal school system in the United States of America. There's one for the people who have and there's one for the people who don't have. And we're struggling with that today. The president and I have a difference of opinion about how we live out our sense of our faith. I talked about it earlier when I talked about the works and faith without works being dead. I think we've got a lot more work to do. And as president I will always respect everybody's right to practice religion as they choose or not to practice, because that's part of America.

I know that many religious conservatives Americans, already commited to Bush as "one of them" tuned Kerry out last night, and I know that many secularists and religious privatists find Kerry's public discussion of faith disturbing and a capitulation to the religious right, but if even a small minority who listened to Kerry were open-minded enough to take his words to heart, it will mean major progress for both religion and politics in America.

BROOKS: BUSH IS FOR SMALL WORLD GOVERNMENT, KERRY IS FOR BIG WORLD GOVERNMENT...


For the past couple of months, GOP pundits have been furiously trying to raise the foreign policy debate above the unfortunate level of the facts on the ground to questions of vision and grand strategy. After all, from the clouds, Bush's platform of muscular democracy-promotion looks to be a far stronger long-term response to the threat of Islamist terror than Kerry's platform of international cooperation and domestic preparation. The recent article in the N.Y. Times Magazine, which aimed to reassure readers that Kerry in fact has a grand strategy in the war on Terror, acheived exactly the oppposite effect for me. Reducing the impact of terror to a nuisance level exalts a tactical objective to the level of strategic goal. However,
the reality is that on the ground Bush's lofty goals are being thwarted by the fiscal irresponsibility, cronyism, pervasive polticization and sheer incompetence of the Bush Administration.


In today's Times, David Brooks finds an original way to over-simplify the differences in worldviews of the two candidates, by mapping the Blue/Red America dichotomy onto the Kerry-Bush foreign policy agendas. Bush, the candidate of wide-open, libertarian, gun-shooting, meat-eating Red America is for small world government. Islamic terror, like Communism was, is rooted in a lack of freedom, and freedom is best preserved by the good guys - America and other freedom-loving nations (namely the U.K. and Poland) having more firepower than the bad guys. The U.N. and other international institutions are more likely to get in the way than be constructive.


On the other hand, Kerry, the candidate of crowded, communitarian, tax-and-redistribute, smoke-banning Blue America is for big world government. Islamic Terror, like illegal narcotics, environmental concerns and other trans-national problems, is rooted in a lack of order, and that order is best established through America helping to build multilateral alliances and institutions. The least constructive way to do this is for the U.S. to round up posses to dole out vigilante justice.


Putting things that way, however, it clearly the Jacksonian vision of Bush that is lacking. You simply cannot fight global problems such as failed states, nuclear proliferation and global warming with the good-will of freedom-loving nations. Too many nations are run by regimes that are any but freedom-loving, and too many nations that believe in freedom for their own citizens (France) are indifferent to the freedom of others. We need strong international institutions to solve these problems, to lock otherwise selfish nations into firm commitments the global good.


To take Brooks' domestic analogy further, we are currently at a place analogous to the 1980s debate over dysfunctional social programs. Conservatives pointed to the programs dysfunction and argued for in effect ignoring the underlying problem (whether it be poverty or education or health care) while liberals pointed to the underlying problem and ignored the programs dysfunctions. It took a New Dem, neoliberal approach to begin to reform welfare and other programs.


It is no surprise that Bush is taking the same politically effective "small government" critique on international issues. After all, the U.N. is corrupt, the IAEA impotent and the Kyoto Treaty hopelessly flawed. Unfortunately, up until now, John Kerry has played the role of the paleoliberal - so focused on the need for these institutions to work that he is denial about how little they actually do. If Kerry was able to, like Clinton on domestic issues, articulate a reform agenda for international governance, he could dramtically shift the terms of the debate. More importantly, if he were to win, a Kerry Administration might be something more than "anything but a second Bush" administration.

THE VEEP DEBATE


Here are my quick thoughts on the veep debate



Cheney won the first half of the debate, for now. If points are deducted for Cheney's egregious prevarications (He NEVER linked Saddam to 9/11....nope, never happened, never, ever, ever, well, OK, a little, but he had a good reason for doing it), then he loses, which he still might in the post-debate re-evaluation if the Kerry campaign effectively follows through.
The dynamic of the foreign policy part of the debate was dramatically different than Thursday night. Cheney delievered the administration's talking points far more effectively than Bush, keeping Edwards on the defensive, where he was not particuarly impressive in defending the Dems "consistent" position on Iraq.

The problem of course is that the Kerry campaign can't decide whether or not to focus on Bush's decision to fight the war - attacking the claims of linkage between Iraq and the larger war on terror, the deceiving claims made by the administration, the disingenuous diplomacy (which would appeal to the Dem base); or rather to focus Bush's incompetence in conducting the war - failure to put in sufficient number of troops, abandoning Fallujah to Zarqawi, Abu Ghraib, etc. (which appeals to hawkish swing voters). Kerry didn't do a particularly good job on this front either in the Miami debate, but the combination of Bush's weak, non-sequiter attacks and Jim Lehrer's passive moderating let him get away with crisply delivered soundbites that sounded at lot more coherent than they were. Edwards did not have that luxury; Cheney's attacks were head on, moderated Gwen Ifel would not let Edwards dodge the issue. Edwards played the good soldier in spending much of this portion rebutting Bush's distoritons of Kerry's positions in the Miami debate. Still, especially on a day where Bremer's recent admissions were still fresh, for Edwards not to focus on the incompetence conduct of the war was a missed opportunity.


Cheney's pot-shot at Edwards absenteeism from the Senate during a campaign season was a cheap shot that the TV pundits were giving far too much credit for afterwards. Edwards countered this brilliantly by invoking Cheney's radical record in Congress, which he has effectively hidden under his cool, CEO-demeanor.


I thought Gwen Ifel for the most part did a solid job, but why on earth did we have to endure 2 questions on gay marriage? If the Bush campaign wants to distract the rest of the country from its national security and economic record by peddling their attempted stain on the Constitution, that's their choice, but I don't see why the media has to play along. Then again, along those line, why did we need 2 questions on medical malpractice reform. I feel Edwards did an excellent job digging out from the hole this framing of the health-care issue put him in.


Edwards crushed Cheney on domestic issues, but by that point in the debate, most everybody had zoned out. The tele-pundits especially overlooked Edwards effective attacks as the debate wound down.


Oh well, its now on to a fun Iraq-free town-hall for Kerry-Bush 2 on Friday, which easily has the potential to be the least memorable debate in the campaign. I'm dozing off already thinking about it.