Look. I’m a lifelong Democrat. I’m desperately trying to get a handle on this election, as I weigh Bush’s foreign policy – which is a lot closer to my beliefs than what I’ve heard from Kerry to date – against his damaging domestic policies.
I’m actually working on the question of what Kerry could say that would convince me – I’m drafting the speech and will put it up here sometime this week.
Now go over and click on today’s Doonesbury, if you haven’t seen it in the paper yet.Look, Trudeau stopped being funny or truly sharp about five or ten years ago. He now takes a cleaver to large and obvious targets, but instead of speaking ‘truth to power’ and looking at the deep problems with the powerful classes that lead our society, he’s joined them in the Hamptons, and is standing there, aperitif in hand, chatting with Babs and skewering Bush – which doubtless makes him feel in touch with his rebellious youth.
In this specific case, it would have been nice to note that Kerry also asked for and received an early discharge from the Navy so he could run for Congress.
Garry, you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution. It’d be nice to see that self-awareness reflected in your work somewhere.
And to the editors of the Los Angeles Times (click here to email Jamie Gold, the reader’s representative): Could we think about moving it to the editorial pages until the election is over? I’m having a hard time explaining to my seven-year old that things aren’t quite so black-and-white as far as the election is concerned. Actually, could we just retire it honorably and find some new talent?
The U.S. military has long had a policy of allowing enlistees to leave early in order to facilitate transition to post-military careers. I don’t remember what the upper limits were, but they are likely longer for people in the guard and reserve than they are for the regular military, since the former are only on duty a few days each month.
In 1972, I was due to end my active duty in the U.S. Army on April 14, but was allowed to exit on January 4 in order to finish college, after being formally accepted into the spring semester by an accredited institution. I also spent a few weeks at the end of my active duty stint taking a course in cement masonry under the Army’s “Project Transition” designed to help soldiers find civilian jobs.
As many bloggers have commented, it’s clear that very few media types have any familiarity at all with the military. And the same is true for their equally ignorant audiences who get exercised about these “scandals.”
A.L,
This is what I said about this Democratic problem with the War on Terrorism before here on Winds:
http://windsofchange.net/archives/003756.php
July 11, 2003
Dumb and Dumber — The Two Schools of Democratic Foreign Policy
Trent Telenko
I noted before in a Winds post (here: http://windsofchange.net/archives/003510.html ) that the Democrats had exiled their real national security wing, the “Scoop Jackson Democrats” who are known today as Republican Neo-cons. This has left the Democrats with two foreign policy schools that I cheerfully refer to as “Dumb and Dumber.” The “Dumb” school is what Holsinger called the “Armed Social Work Among Ungrateful Foreigners” Internationalists. The other school neither Krauthammer nor Holsinger mentioned. They are the “Let’s Join The Other Side Because The Only Evil In The World is American Power” Isolationists. This second Democratic foreign policy school only comes to the fore when there are Republican Presidents.
Examples of their power and influence on the Democratic Party include the House Speaker Jim Wright’s “Dear Commandantee” letter to the Nicaraguan Sandinist government during the Cold War’s mid-1980’s Central American campaign; “Red” Rep. Ron Dellum’s (and later Armed Services Chairman) letters of support and advise in the Communist government of Grenada captured by the American Army and later the capture of one of Dellum’s staffers by the US Navy running the American blockade of Iraq in Gulf War I; as well as the recent trip by two Democratic congressmen, including the Democratic House Whip Bonior, to Iraq prior its liberation from Saddam’s Regime.
It is vital for the presidential hopes of Democratic candidates that this “Dumber” foreign policy school be silenced or drowned out during the Presidential primary campaign. The problem is that sitting on Democratic activists is foreign to the current generation of Democratic rank and file and most Democratic politicians. Democratic Presidential candidates who both know that sitting on these activists is needed, and have the skills to pull it off, are often called “Mr. President.”
The root problem with both schools of Democratic foreign policy is that neither believes war is real. War is outside either schools frame of reference. Too borrow a sci-fi concept from Robert Heinlein, they do not “Grok” war. They are complete space cadets for whom civil discourse on war is impossible. In this both Democratic schools are very Chinese, in that they don’t see the outside world save strictly in terms of domestic political considerations.
And here are one comment of mine and two from commentor Tom Holsinger on what will happen next:
My comment:
Tim said:
>This is why no major Democrat candidate is
>running on a foreign policy platform oftaking
>the war on terrorism to the enemy’s home,
>unilaterally if necessary, to defend American.
Yep. This is why Democrats are dead and damned.
Tom Holsinger mentioned once before the Federalist Hartford convention during the War of 1812 as a parallel to the predicament that Democrats are facing for the 2004 convention during the War on Terrorism.
The Federalists debated seccession because of the effects the anti-British tariffs and the British blockade were having on New England.
The Federalists after much debate, voted down seccession.
The problem for them as a party is every other American took that to mean that the Federalists were not on the same side as every other American and the Federalists quickly faded from history.
The Democrats have a very small window of time to get a candidate with the message “Lets kill terrorists where they live because they are evil bastards who want to kill us” or they will join the Federalists.
And the Democrats are not going to do it.
We are going to see a Democratic Boston convention where the protestors outside will have people on the inside agreeing with them and no one inside willing to publically call the lot of them American traitors.
Then you will see the Republican convention in NY City just prior to the 9/11 anniversary with flag waving patriotism and in your face confrontations between Republican activists and anti-war protestors with the former calling the latter traitors on national TV.
A lot can happen between now and Nov 2004, but that particular turn of events looks more and more set in stone.
Posted by: Trent Telenko on July 13, 2003 12:00 AM
Holsinger’s first comment:
The Democrats’ problem here is that the Party speaks with just one voice, and it is the wrong voice. The so-called Democratic hawks aren’t picking fights with their party’s loony left, which means the latter have no public opposition inside the Democratic Party.
The reason for this is that the Democrats lack non-loony leaders, other than Ted Kennedy who picks his fights carefully (and this isn’t one of them), willing to fight for what they believe in. Moynihan is dead and no one has replaced him. Everyone else is only in it for personal advantage – none have any issues bigger than themselves.
Democratic hawks died or left when Senator John Glenn wouldn’t oppose the “nuclear freeze” concept in 1984, let alone attack it. I was one who left.
And I did the same thing to the California GOP in 1968, for Republicans who wanted to vote against the Vietnam War and couldn’t in the 1968 GOP presidential primary because then Governor Reagan ran alone as a favorite son. I got the anti-war Republicans in my county (Santa Cruz – I was then a freshman at UC Santa Cruz) to change their registration to Democrat to vote for Eugene McCarthy. Almost 10% of all the Republicans in the county switched in a month, giving Santa Cruz County its first Democratic majority in a long time and McCarthy his second biggest county majority in the California Democratic Presidential primary.
Having a big tent is important in politics. It lets people express themselves inside the party on issues important to them. If they can’t, they’ll walk. I did in 1987, as did thousands of Santa Cruz Republicans the other way in 1968.
But there is no way for Democrats who believe in their country to do so through the Democratic Party these days, and that has been true for almost a generation.
Only it is a defining issue right now, and the Democratic Party is on the wrong side. Tough for them. The Federalists are waiting.
Posted by: Tom Holsinger on July 13, 2003 01:36 AM
Holsinger’s second comment:
Post-script:
Democratic hawks don’t need to win, but they do need to fight and, in particular, they need a presidential candidate who fights for them at the convention. The latter is even more important for the party’s long-term interests, and not merely for the interests of Democratic hawks.
IMO the Democratic Party must have a visible hawk faction at the Boston Convention if the party is to have a future. If its Boston Convention is as one-sided concerning the war on terror issue as most of us think it will be, IMO the party has a significant and growing chance of dying like the Federalists, and for the same reason – the taint of treason.
Posted by: Tom Holsinger on July 13, 2003 02:02 AM
The only thing that has changed since that post and thread is that Ted Kennedy has joined the ranks of anti-Iraq War loons, if today’s performance on NBC’s Meet The Press is any indication.
A.L. you might want to go back to this thread’s comment section and see what Micheal Totten said then versus what he said about voting for Bush later.
America needs a real opposition party in this war.
Instead we have the current Democrats, and maybe not for much longer.
The main point of course being why the hell are we immersed in these entirely trivial, contrived, unserious details of Bush’s guard service in the middle of a f*king war?
I don’t have a problem with Trudeau. He’s a political cartoonist – or tries to be. It’s the Deans, the Kucinich’s, the Moveon’s, and even Kerry in his more pandering moments, doing the same thing. The deeply unserious obsession with ‘uranium’, ‘imminent’, ‘Halliburton’, ‘Alabama National Guard’ (and I haven’t even gotten to the guys in the back shouting “all about oil”, “bush=hitler”).
Any party that thinks these are the important issues of the day is not getting my vote.
You’ve let your 7-year-old read Doonesbury? I think that’s illegal in several states.
New talent… like, say, Chris Muir of Day by Day perhaps?
Important issues? You mean like whether Kerry cussed out a secret serviceman? Or what about whether Kerry has any foreign leaders who want him to beat Bush?
It seems amazing that so called Democrats would be attacking various people for bringing up various issues, when instead they should be creating the conversation. All I’ve seen here is bitching about various things, without even a hint of positive, active development of the issues.
Take the log out of one’s own eye before bitching about the moat in the eye of another.
One of the implications of this current enthrallment of the Democrats with trivial minutia is that if they do win the election, they will be beset like WJC was when trying to conduct a foreign policy which has a armed force component. Regard the wars that Clinton got us involved in, and there were plenty, there was a distinct lack of operational coherence, as beset the Balkans in particular. The travails of Weasley Clark were the best example of this, when the NATO Cinc’s worst enemies were in Arlington VA. When you have a party that doesn’t believe in the exercise of force to support US interests, then you have a party which is bound to fail when it comes exercising national political power.
The GOP can be similarly criticized WRT Iraq, as they didn’t exercise good judgement concerning the Iraqi endgame, which will continue much longer than anyone thought possible. But Bush’s mistakes there were mistakes which the Pentagon and StateDept have switched course on and sought to fix or remedy when the error was identified. Ergo, that is why progress is occurring today precisely due to fundamental changes in policy. The Bush error on nationbuilding’s priority was one of tactics and not a fundamental core belief.
Contrariwise, most of the WJC expeditions seemed to be consistent variations from the same music theme, with the primary goal being to turn over long term responsibility to some vague international body. When a suitable recipient for such power was unavailable, then degenerate situations like Rwanda or Haiti ensued. What Kerry et al have proposed to date, which is pretty thin gruel, isn’t too much different than the Clinton approach, and the cast for implementing the Kerry foreign policy will almost certainly come from the prior Clinton administration. Richard Holbroke is a name almost certain to be prominent.
Take the log out of one’s own eye before bitching about the moat in the eye of another.
Hey, that’s what I thought I was doing: after all, I’m a Democrat. And of course you Hal are a Republican, right?
As a moderate-centrist liberal I am begining to wonder if we are over emphasising the value of GWB to the war on terror. It is of paramount importance (the war) BUT are we allowing a myriad of other things to slide that are counter to the views of “A lifelong Democrat”. I have been wrestling with these issues myself as of late. I have long stated that I am a 3E Democrat, those 3Es being Education, Energy, and the Environment. Now before you lambast me about how important the war is and how stupid I am for looking at other issues at a time like this, let me state that my fear is directed towards the policies of GWB and his administration. If he is relected and a large number of moderate Democrats defect due to the war on terror issue can it not then be stated that GWB will look at that as a validation of his other non war-related policies? I promise you that is how it would be spun (I reference the Spain vote as a example… since now the Spanish are cowards just because 5% of the population changed its vote for some reason.)
Right now my disatisfaction level with the current administrations policies here at home is increasing daily. At the same time I am not filled wih confidence in Kerry. However I as I look back at GWB before 9-11, I would have had little more confidence in his abilities were the situations reversed. I think its the advisors around a promintent man/woman that make he/she a great leader or a placeholder. I’ll also add that an ability for the leader and advisors to admit to being wrong and listening to dissenting opinions without scorn go far toward elevating them out of the madding crowd.
As for the war on terror I think the lack of a strong showing by Kucinich is evidence that no elected Democratic president can have a sucessful term and be relected by removing us from Iraq or the war on terror. So I am willing to give Kerry my vote because I think he can’t be so stupid as to drastically change course on the war. But more than that I feel that for some issues he will definitively fix points of great trouble for me (tax-cut, deficit, insuficient troops in Iraq).
Dear A. L.:
Along with you I am deeply troubled by the remarkable unpalatability of both of our alternatives for president. Should I presume that no sitting president can fail to act decisively to defend the country? Should I wonder if a President Kerry will hesitate Hamlet-like unable to choose between the needs of the country and the advice of his fellow-Democrats within his own administration?
Econometric models suggest that GWB will win re-election. But a lot can happen and models can be wrong. What would a Kerry administration look like? Was the Clinton selection of Cohen (a Republican) as Secretary of Defense a non-partisan gesture? Or couldn’t he find anyone within his own party willing to break with the party orthodoxy?
Gabriel, it’s a matter of playing into the other side’s hands. Bush == Hitler? I mean, c’mon. “obsessing about Uranium, etc”? These are people trying to penetrate the weak areas of the other side. It’s worked quite effectively for the Republicans, or haven’t you noticed?
And I can tell you that it’s having an effect on solid fundamentalist Christians like my parents. Lies are something they care deeply about, and right now they are feeling extremely betrayed. Following your strategy is akin to giving up pressing on these points that are having an big effect.
And as to the National Guard, why isn’t that a valid issue? The whole Clinton military service thing (or lack thereof) was an extremely effective tactic used by the right during the entire two terms of the man.
What I detect is a lot of loathing of the very people you desperately need in your camp. If that’s the way you feel, then by all means have at it. If you want to alienate them, then please continue.
I happen to be an old Dean supporter and of course I’m now a Kerry supporter. I find it terribly distressing to see these kind of conversations where the sole focus is the tearing down of one’s own party.
Again, if that’s what you want to do, then by all means continue. But it seems rather silly to be in-fighting when there’s a heck of a lot on the other side to be slamming against.
Doubly silly to be complaining about Democratic silliness when the Republicans are doing twice as silly things with a heck of a lot more funding and organization.
But it’s a free country and the Democratic party is hardly a homgenous organization.
It’s a matter of playing into the other side’s hands… I find it terribly distressing to see these kind of conversations where the sole focus is the tearing down of one’s own party…
Well, Hal, I’m actually a dyed-in-the-wool commie-bashing rightwinger and I’m not about to let these soft on terrorism Democrats destroy the country.
I couldn’t agree with you more.
ROTFLMAO
Hal, it’s very simple. I want to be able to support the Democratic nominee for President and a Democratic Administration at this point in our nation’s history, and I’m not sure I can.
(note that I think it’s a bit irrelevent because I have a hard time envisioning a path from here to a Kerry victory in November)
So I’m trying to plant some seeds that may grow in the debris of the defeat and make the Democrats a party I can freely support.
A.L.
A.L.,
Aside from the more traditional hostility to defense on the Democratic side, I detect a deeper and widespread problem in our political-social-military-media-whatever culture that infects the Democrats more than the Republicans. I’m not sure what to call it, but I can think of a few examples the illustrate it.
– one is the minute-by-minute play-by-play coverage of every bomb, every tragedy, every failure, every abuse, every mistake, and every accident in Iraq,
– another is Moveon’s new anti-Bush ad showing Tom Friedman “catching” Rumsfeld in a “lie!” about the so-called “imminent threat” (that has been pretty much debunked by Spinsanity). Now, I watch this ad and think “Ok, maybe there’s a point there”, but frankly I come away with a greater sense of Moveon’s mendacity than Rumsfeld’s. Then there’s the attitude: Matthew Yglesias puts up a post congratulating Moveon for “the damn fine work” in producing this “gotcha” piece. Ok, but what are we talking about: the various interpretations of “imminent” and “immediate” parsed a billion different ways in soundbites? That’s the goddam issue?
– then there’s the scandal du jour created by Richard Clarke’s gossip about Rumsfeld’s supposed wish to blindly bomb Iraq immediately after 9/11, with Brad Delong calling for the immediate impeachment of Bush and Cheney. I’m skeptical: Is Richard Clarke a heroic patriot exposing high-level corruption and wrongdoing? Or just another troublemaker in a destructive, irresponsible culture that treats national security like a spectator sport? It’s worse than Lewinsky because it’s war: Who needs Ken Starr when everyone can be a Ken Starr (and even make a buck at it)?
I still believe the problem runs deeper with the Democrats. They maybe had a headstart or are handicapped by traditional reluctance on defense problems. But it’s a culture-wide problem. Our troops would never have made it to the Normandy beaches.
Agreed. I’ve been suggesting getting rid of Doonesbury for some time. HERE is a comparison between then and now.
They could also run Day By Day…
Gabriel: bite me. 🙂
A.L. Even if you supported a millitary based solution to terrorism, this administration has been laughably innept at pursuing it. A fraudulent prosecution of the war *undercuts* the very goals. A laughable occupation planning that threatens the whole point of overthrowing Saddam.
I find myself baffled by your support of a man who wages war for political gain. Unfortunately I have a 9 hour flight from Germany to NJ to get on with, otherwise I’d like to explore this later (sorry, I’m new to your site so I’m not familiar with your issues and observations).
Ciao
Sadly, Hal, all this stuff is graded on a curve, so the answer to your point is is ‘compared to what?’
Looking forward to continuing once you’re on the ground.
A.L.
The Democrats hearts are in the right place but they have two glaring defects for me.
1. Economics
2. The War
On economics the idea that an economy can prosper by robbing from the rich is just plain stupid. Let us assume that the rich as the Democrats say are just a bunch of greedy bastards. Now what would a greedy bastard do if given a pile of money: invest it. So the hated Bush tax cuts for the rich will lead to the long term health of the economy since there is a lag between cash in hand and production. The French and the Germans are doing it the Democrat way and are losing ground. They have had unemployment in the 10% range for ten years. That is right. During one of the longest booms in history 10%. The American low during that time was under 3%. So democrats (except for Lieberman) are economically ignorant.
The War. Bringing democracy and limited government to the world used to be a Democrat ideal. Bush announces that idea as Republican policy and all we get from the Ds is silence. Not the best way to impliment the policy. Not congratulating Bush on finally getting it. And by the way what took you so long. Silence. What is with that?
Then we come to civil liberties. The Ds supposed uber strong point. Do they decry the anti-gay laws promoted by a North Carolina county as a march to the Hitler drum? An over reach by the evangelicals? How about Ashcrofts attacks on the sick in Calif and elsewhere using pot for relief. Silence.
Well OK the gay issue may be hard. The population may not be with the Ds. So what is with the silence on Ashcroft? 70 to 80% of Americans favor medical marijuana. Silence.
So the Ds attack Bush where he is right and leave him alone in the places he is wrong. It is like one big suicide charge into the machine guns and artilery of WW1. Stupid. Frontal attacks are always very costly even if successful.
All I can figure out is that the Democrats have a death wish.
You know I’d love to vote for a sensible Democrat. But first I have to find one.
Hal,
Let me suggest that that sort of reaction is really uncalled for. I’m sorry for any offense, but let’s try to keep things inbound (I’ll keep up my end).