Best of the Web Today - September 21, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
Kerry's 'Plan'
Yesterday, while everyone else was preoccupied with the CBS scandal, John Kerry gave a speech at New York University in which he said America would be better off if Saddam Hussein were still in power and then offered his "plan" for dealing with Iraq. As the Associated Press describes it:
Kerry called on [President] Bush to do a much better job rallying allies, training Iraqi security forces, hastening reconstruction plans and ensuring that elections are conducted on time. But his speech was thin on details, with Kerry saying Bush's miscalculations had made solutions harder to come by.
Fox News notes that "Bush dismissed Kerry's four-point plan as a proposal for 'exactly what we're currently doing.' " Kerry's biggest argument seems to be that his overpowering charm would win over "allies" and thus allow him to shirk America's responsibility. Who is he kidding? Reader Stan Watson asks the right question:
I've been waiting for someone to explore what Kerry's pitch to foreign leaders will sound like. "Hey, Jacques, we're engaged in a war at the moment. It's the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. Would you be willing to send some French soldiers to help us fight it?" That sure sounds like a winning sales pitch, doesn't?
In his speech, Kerry also complained that "by one count, the president offered 23 different rationales for this war. If his purpose was to confuse and mislead the American people, he succeeded." That's quite an argument coming from someone who's taken 57 different positions on the war.
Kerry pleaded Saddam's case that "Iraq played no part in September 11 and had no operational ties to Al Qaeda":
The president's policy in Iraq precipitated the very problem he said he was trying to prevent. Secretary of State Powell admits that Iraq was not a magnet for international terrorists before the war. Now it is, and they are operating against our troops.
Yet here's what Colin Powell said to the U.N. on Feb. 5, 2003:
What I want to bring to your attention today is the potentially much more sinister nexus between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network, a nexus that combines classic terrorist organizations and modern methods of murder. Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, an associated in collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda lieutenants.
Zarqawi, a Palestinian born in Jordan, fought in the Afghan war more than a decade ago. Returning to Afghanistan in 2000, he oversaw a terrorist training camp. One of his specialities and one of the specialties of this camp is poisons. When our coalition ousted the Taliban, the Zarqawi network helped establish another poison and explosive training center camp. And this camp is located in northeastern Iraq.
Kerry also praised himself for smearing American servicemen as war criminals back in 1971: "After serving in war, I returned home to offer my own personal voice of dissent. I did so because I believed strongly that we owed it those risking their lives to speak truth to power." On Monday our John Fund drew a comparison between Kerry and Michael Dukakis. But in substance his campaign is increasingly resembling that of George McGovern.
The Angry Left Invades Afghanistan
London's left-wing Guardian reports on a group of American oldsters vacationing in Afghanistan:
The tourists have encountered only generosity from ordinary Afghans. "We make quite a stir wherever we go," said Dick Bogart, a retired computer salesman from San Francisco and grandfather of 10. "It's been very touching."
But then the paper offers this quote:
"My main object in life is to get Bush out of the White House," said Connie Pencall, a retired teacher. "He is a terrible, terrible man. We are not welcomed anywhere any more."
If Americans "are not welcomed anywhere any more," how is it that the tour group has "encountered only generosity from ordinary Afghans"? Is this one of those "fake but accurate" assertions?
CBS's Dirty Tricks
Another connection has emerged between the Kerry campaign and CBS's fraudulent report on President Bush's National Guard Service. USA Today reports:
CBS arranged for a confidential source to talk with Joe Lockhart, a top aide to John Kerry, after the source provided the network with the now-disputed documents about President Bush's service in the Texas National Guard.
Lockhart, the former press secretary to President Clinton, said a producer talked to him about the 60 Minutes program a few days before it aired on Sept. 8. She gave Lockhart a telephone number and asked him to call Bill Burkett, a former Texas National Guard officer who gave CBS the documents. Lockhart couldn't recall the producer's name. But CBS said Monday night that it would examine the role of producer Mary Mapes in passing the name to Lockhart. . . .
"My interest was to get the attention of the national (campaign) to defend against the . . . attacks," Burkett said, adding that he also talked to former Georgia senator Max Cleland and Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean during the past 45 days.
As Hugh Hewett points out, this looks like coordination between CBS News and the Kerry campaign:
Would it be a big deal if FoxNews Carl Cameron had called Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign manager Ken Mehlman to urge Mehlman give Swift Boats Vet leader John O'Neill a call so that O'Neill would provide some after-action reports on a Kerry mission that, once provided, turned out to be forgeries? . . . Remember the outrage that Ben Ginsburg had lawyered for the Swifties--a perfectly acceptable practice under the law? But CBS gets to conspire with Kerry flaks to manufacture fraudulent stories and not a word from the left in criticism?
The one difference between the CBS-Burkett-Lockhart scenario and the Hewett's hypothetical Fox-O'Neill-Mehlman scenario is that O'Neill runs a "527," an independent organization that is barred under the McCain-Feingold law from coordinating with a campaign. But McCain-Feingold doesn't apply to the news media--a significant loophole, as it turns out, if a "journalist" is determined to engage in partisan politics while hiding behind the First Amendment.
But wait a minute. People engaging in partisan politics are citizens too; don't they have First Amendment rights? The real problem with McCain-Feingold isn't that it fails to outlaw Mapesian shenanigans but that it treats the media as a privileged class, permitting them alone to exercise rights that the Constitution guarantees to everyone.
Uh, Never Mind
Two weeks ago, we noted that Susan Estrich, once Michael Dukakis's campaign manager, had penned a reaction to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth's criticisms of John Kerry in which she urged the Democrats to practice the politics of personal destruction, going after President Bush and Vice President Cheney over their propensity (past propensity in Bush's case) to tipple, rumors about abortions, Bush's National Guard service and so forth. "After Vietnam, nothing is ancient history," she warned.
We said we doubted this would work: "Dwelling on minor allegations of wrongdoing in the far-off past seems unlikely to bring down an incumbent president." In a new column, Estrich agrees:
Am I the only Democrat who doesn't quite get this National Guard business? Why are we wasting our time?
I'm no George Bush fan. I'm a card-carrying member of the Democratic Party. I don't buy the toughness applied to the wrong war and all that. But for the life of me, I can't figure out what the National Guard and the privileged son has to do with it, or how it helps John Kerry out of his Swift Boat swamp. . . .
Terrible luck. Unfair. Should've seen it coming. Whatever. It is the past. Kerry has to move on.
Enough with the war hero. Enough with having things both ways. The war is the measure of toughness. Not the war 30 years ago. This one. It's harder to make it simple. If you're that smart, you can do it. Raise the level of the debate by making it simpler.
Weirdly, Estrich doesn't make any mention of her previous column. As usual, the Dems would have been better off if they'd listened to us instead of her.
Another Kerry-Rather Connection!
"Given that the Kerry convention featured a skipper brave and sure, a first mate who makes others comfortable, a millionaire called 'Lovey' by her spouse, two pretty young Kerry castaways and a movie star (the ubiquitously annoying Ben Affleck), I suppose we should be grateful that Camp Kerry didn't introduce the nominee with the 'Gilligan's Island' theme song. Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip."--Maureen Dowd, New York Times, Aug. 1
"For Mr Rather himself, the dispute is another acrimonious brush with power in a career studded with them. For the moment, he is adopting what might be called the 'Gilligan defence,' pioneered by the BBC journalist in the corporation's 2003 row with the Government over the 'sexed-up' Iraq weapons dossier."--Independent (London), Sept. 18
Kerry Imitates Us
"Dan Rather must really be in trouble when even John Kerry is taking potshots at him."
--Best of the Web Today, Sept. 20
Letterman: When a poll gets above, like, 5%--assuming we can believe what they represent--
Kerry: Of course, depending on which network it is, we can.
"Late Show With David Letterman," Sept. 20
John Kerry: Prince or Frog?
The New Yorker has a long profile of Teresa Heinz Kerry, the Democratic nominee for first lady. To be honest, we haven't read it, but a reader calls our attention to an extremely damning revelation about the Kerry-Teresa courtship: On their first date, the couple "chatted in French."
The magazine attempts a lait de chaux, observing that "when two Americans lapse into French, it is usually for the purpose of flirting." This is wholly implausible. Over the years we've pitched our share of woo, and we've never lapsed into French. (Pig Latin occasionally, but never before the third date.) In any case, it appears Teresa made a big mistake. She thought Kerry, who by the way served in Vietnam, was a hottie. It turned out he was just haughty.
Robbing the Cradle
The Associated Press reports on John Kerry's appearance this morning on "Live With Regis and Kelly":
Kerry campaign donors apparently come in all sizes. He told Philbin and Ripa that a woman in New York gave him $385 that her 8-year-old son had raised selling homemade campaign buttons, and a 6-year-old in Philadelphia handed over a plastic container with $685 he had earned selling homemade campaign bracelets.
If you're trick-or-treating in Boston's Beacon Hill this Halloween, watch out for the French-looking guy dressed as a scarecrow. He'll probably try to steal your candy.
Say What?
"Easier Voting Rules Make It Harder"--headline, Campaigns & Elections, Sept. 15
Questioning the Roe Effect
Reader Thomas Crimmins doubts the hypothesis we've dubbed the Roe effect: that liberal/Democratic/pro-choice women have more abortions and thus in the long run move the country in a conservative/Republican/pro-life direction:
I am an ardent pro-lifer, but I did want to mention a statistical fallacy that I have seen in the analysis suggesting that there is a Roe effect. I have a feeling that the error only mitigates the magnitude and does not defeat the analysis, but it certainly needs to be considered.
The error is that it is assumed that all children born to women after they had an abortion would have been born had the mother not had an abortion. That is to say, if a woman has an abortion and then two kids, all the analysis I have seen thus far assumes that if she had not had the abortion, she would have had three kids. This is clearly not necessarily so. Had she not had the abortion she may have stopped at two kids anyway. In fact, had she not had the abortion, she may have had a harder life, married much later, and had no further kids.
I am sensitive to this error because it is similar to one the liberals make when they say that we have a population crisis. They assume that future birth rates are statistically independent of current birth rates.
There is, of course, something to this--but it's not clear how much the effect would be mitigated. Consider:
Some women abort what turns out to be their final pregnancy.
If a woman has a child, say, at 29 rather than 19, one census passes before the child counts toward his state's population for purposes of congressional (and Electoral College) apportionment; and two or three presidential elections pass before he reaches voting age. Thus delays in childbearing are part of the Roe effect.
The Roe effect is compounded over generations; if your parents didn't have children, chances are you won't either. That's true for delayed childbearing as well; if a woman has a daughter at 29 rather than 19, the daughter reaches childbearing age a decade later.
If a woman has an abortion while young and gives birth when older, it is most likely because she was waiting for marriage before having children. Married women are more likely to be conservative, Republican and pro-life than single women are. In part no doubt this reflects right-leaning women's greater propensity for marriage, but it's also surely true that people become more conservative as they settle down--as they realize they have something to conserve.
Reader John Vecchione raises another interesting point: "Why are so many 'pro-choicers' antichoice on schools? One good reason is that only by taking the education of their children out of the hands of conservative parents and delivering it to liberal, unionized teachers can liberals hope to maintain parity. It is the conversion of these right-leaning children that the nulliparous liberals require for any continuation in power. Thus the natural intellectual alignment of pro-choice on abortion/pro-choice on schools is rarely seen."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On the Other Hand, the Beer Is Colder
"Study Reports Air Worse in Smoky Bars"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 21
Caprine Beauty Queens
"Guess Who's on the Catwalk" asks the headline in Saudi Arabia's Arab News:
Goat fanciers turned out in force to admire and bid for beautiful goats showing off on the catwalk at a weekend festival and auction of Al-Shami goats in Riyadh. . . .
Thirty goats were selected according to age and gender. Abdul Aziz Al-Khalaf, one of the five judges for the "Most Beautiful Goat" competition, explained that the winners are chosen on the basis of a combination of factors and overall appearance, not simply by their color. Particular points taken into consideration are the head, nose, mouth, ears, breast and eyes. The most important factor is the size of the head and the whiteness of the eye.
What, no talent competition? As Nicole Johnson Baker, Miss America 1998, writes in USA Today, that's "like holding the Olympics without the running. Or televising a political convention and skipping the nominee's speech."
Doesn't He Know Who's Boss?
Mendacious moviemaker Michael Moore is lying again--this time about fellow Bush-basher Bruce Springsteen. Check out this post from the deceptive documentarian's vanity Web site (ellipsis in original):
If I hear one more person tell me how lousy a candidate Kerry is and how he can't win . . . Dammit, of COURSE he's a lousy candidate--he's a Democrat, for heavens sake! That party is so pathetic, they even lose the elections they win! What were you expecting, Bruce Springsteen heading up the ticket? Bruce would make a helluva president, but guys like him don't run--and neither do you or I. People like Kerry run.
"Guys like him don't run"? In fact, as Springsteen himself has made clear, transient individuals of his ilk, baby, are predestined from birth to run. |
