Best of the Web Today - September 9, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
On the Road Again
We won't be filing a column tomorrow, as we'll be traveling to promote our book, "Presidential Leadership: Rating the Best and the Worst in the White House." We return Monday, and OpinionJournal's subscription-only Political Diary appears tomorrow in our place. Don't forget to buy a copy of the book at the OpinionJournal bookstore.
Mick Bekowsky, RIP
The media's ghoulish scorekeepers have been reminding us all week that more than 1,000 American servicemen have died in Iraq. Yesterday reader Alia Darrow e-mailed us this tribute to Mick Bekowsky, a Marine corporal, one of seven Marines murdered by a terrorist car bomb Monday:
Mick is the same age as my eldest daughter. My daughter entered the Army in May; Mick followed soon after by entering the Marines in October. These two kids grew up next door to each other, from the time they were little bitty kids. I just received word, before calling his family, of his death while on duty for the United States of America, on Monday, in Fallujah. He was on his second tour, which he volunteered for, and was due to return to the U.S. next month.
This young man is one of the finest. Mick was always demure and modest. And so very clear on right and wrong. And so proud to enter the Marines.
I know what Mick would be saying to me right now: Alia, that's the price of freedom. I was glad to pay it. Look after my country while I'm away.
May the good Lord raise him high. May light perpetual shine upon him. Yes, I'm sharing my grief with you, specifically, as I think you understand how keen is our nation's grief, when an eagle has fallen in battle defending us.
My heart is full.
MoveOn.org, along with an outfit called Win Without War, is sponsoring a series of "candlelight vigils" tonight to "honor" the servicemen who "have given their lives in service to our country." An e-mail announcing the event, from MoveOn's Peter Schuman, contained this statement: "Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld diminished their deaths by calling the toll 'relatively small.' " Here is what Rumsfeld actually said:
If you take all of those patrols, and look at the number of incidents, they're relatively small. If you look at them from our standpoint, a single loss of life is large, and it's a life that's not going to be lived. I don't know how to calculate it or calibrate it for you any better than that.
It truly takes chutzpah for MoveOn.org to portray itself as "honoring" the troops when in fact it is using their deaths in an effort to score cheap political points.
Finally, an Insomnia Cure
Today's Washington Post reports that "President Bush failed to carry out a direct order from his superior in the Texas Air National Guard in May 1972 to undertake a medical exami8og;hvfzsedddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd
Oh sorry, we fell asleep on the keyboard.
Teresa Heinz Dostoevsky
John Kerry "is the candidate of the intellectually vain," George Will aptly observes. Which reminds us why we like first lady nominee Teresa Heinz Kerry so much: She is completely uninhibited about displaying that vanity. Indeed she seems proud of it, as this Associated Press dispatch from Lancaster, Pa., suggests:
Teresa Heinz Kerry said Wednesday that "only an idiot" would fail to support her husband's health care plan. . . . If Kerry is elected, Heinz Kerry predicted that opponents of his health care plan would be voted out of office. "Only an idiot wouldn't like this," she said. . . . "I don't have to sell it--the people want it," Heinz Kerry said of the health plan. "The common man doesn't look at me as some rich witch. I talk about what I see. It has always been so. You judge people not by their pocketbook but by their actions. Walk the walk."
That line about the "common man" reminds us of a joke. An aristocratic family of potatoes--father potato, mother potato, and their little daughter potato--are in their mansion sitting around the breakfast table. The tater tot starts musing: "When I grow up," she says dreamily, "I want to marry George Will."
"You can't do that!" the father potato says sternly.
"But daddy, why not?"
"Because he's a commentator."
But we digress. Slate's Chris Suellentrop notes a hilarious provision in the Kerry health plan:
"What I want to do, what I'm determined to do, and it's in my health-care plan, is refocus America on something that can reduce the cost of health care significantly for all Americans, which is wellness and prevention," Kerry said. So far, so good. But then, "And I intend to have not just a Department of Health and Human Services, but a Department of Wellness." Again, what? Apparently this idea comes from Teresa Heinz Kerry, who told the Boston Herald in January 2003 that she would, in the Herald's words, "be an activist first lady, lobbying for a Department of Wellness that would stress preventive health."
Mickey Kaus calls this "spirit-crushing foolishness from my candidate, John Kerry" (asterisks in original):
The nation is trying to figure out how to fight global terrorism and he's talking about having "not just a Department of Health and Human Services, but a Department of Wellness." How about a Department of F***ing Perspective?
Kaus may be an idiot, but we'd say he's on to something here. Of course, what do we know? Like George Will, we're just a commentator.
Gore Slams Hillary's Religion
We've got a flight later on, so we'll probably read David Remnick's apparently longsome profile of Al Gore in The New Yorker from 35,000 feet. But several readers wrote us to call attention to this passage:
Gore's mouth tightened. A Southern Baptist, he, too, had declared himself born again, but he clearly had disdain for Bush's public kind of faith. "It's a particular kind of religiosity," he said. "It's the American version of the same fundamentalist impulse that we see in Saudi Arabia, in Kashmir, in religions around the world: Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Muslim. They all have certain features in common. In a world of disconcerting change, when large and complex forces threaten familiar and comfortable guideposts, the natural impulse is to grab hold of the tree trunk that seems to have the deepest roots and hold on for dear life and never question the possibility that it's not going to be the source of your salvation. And the deepest roots are in philosophical and religious traditions that go way back. You don't hear very much from them about the Sermon on the Mount, you don't hear very much about the teachings of Jesus on giving to the poor, or the beatitudes. It's the vengeance, the brimstone."
Now, we don't pretend to be an expert on the various Christian denominations, but we do know that President Bush is a Methodist. (He was raised Episcopalian but switched when he married Laura.) Another prominent Methodist is New York's junior senator, Hillary Clinton, so Gore seems to be suggesting that Hillary's religion is similar to the "fundamentalist impulse that we see in Saudi Arabia," which of course produced Osama bin Laden. Shame on Gore for slandering Mrs. Clinton in this way.
It occurs to us, too, that if Gore's views about Methodism are typical of Southern Baptists, Hillary and the erstwhile veep's coreligionist Bill Clinton must have an awfully stormy marriage. Did he have sects with that woman?
Gail Collins's Standards of Taste
"There are some things a presidential campaign should steer clear of, through innate good taste, prudence or just a sensible fear of a voter backlash. We'd have thought that both the Kerry and Bush camps would instinctively know that it would be appalling to suggest that terrorists were rooting for one side or another in this race."--editorial, New York Times, Sept. 9
"In reality, all infidels probably look alike to the terrorists, but if they do have a preference, nothing in Mr. Bush's record would make them unhappy at the prospect of four more years."--former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, New York Times, July 20
Life Imitates ScrappleFace
"U.N. Poll: Kerry Beats Bush in Landslide"--headline, ScrappleFace.com, March 8
"Global Poll Shows a Kerry Landslide"--headline, New York Times (Paris edition), Sept. 8
Getting to Know JoFo
Everyone knows John Kerry is a haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way surfed in Vietnam. But it's worth learning more about the candidate. For example, according to his campaign Web site, on his swift boat in Vietnam, "there were people who came from places as diverse as South Carolina, Iowa, and Arkansas." Wow, that's diverse!
Here's something else you might not have known about John Kerry. According to a page on his U.S. Senate Web site that lists his "accomplishments," in 2001 he received the "Gerry Studds Stewardship Award from the Boston Harbor Island Alliance for his work to preserve the Boston Harbor Islands." In case you don't remember who Gerry Studds is, here's some background from a 1998 article in The Advocate:
Rep. Gerry Studds, a Massachusetts Democrat, used an early-'80s scandal in which he admitted having sex with a 17-year-old male House page to publicly identify himself as a gay man. Voters rewarded his honesty with six subsequent re-elections.
Now that's what we call stewardship!
Bush Takes Back Vermont
George W. Bush has retaken a narrow lead in the race for Vermont's three virtual electoral votes. The AOL straw poll now has the president ahead in the Green Mountain State, 265 votes to 262. And of course, we meant to say yesterday (since corrected) that Bush, not Kerry, had the overall electoral-vote lead--a lead that has now widened to 535-3. But the race isn't over yet, in Vermont anyway. Keep watching.
Gray Ladies and 'Yellow Men'
From a story about the Olympics in yesterday's New York Times:
All of this adulation because Liu Xiang, a high hurdler, has proved what many Chinese have long felt was not possible: that yellow men can jump, and sprint, too.
"Yellow men"? We don't pretend to be an expert on racial sensitivity, but somehow that phrase sounds wrong to us. Does the New York Times stylebook really say "yellow men" is a permissible term for the Chinese?
You Don't Say
"The Genesis capsule plunging and tumbling out of control toward the Utah desert wasn't how the mission was supposed to end."--CNN.com, Sept. 8
The next sentence informs us: "Up to this point, the mission had been a success."
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Depends What They've Been Consuming
"Wal-Mart CEO: Consumers Affected by Gas"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 8
Barking for Columbine
"Dog Wiggles Paw Free to Shoot Florida Man"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 9
The Libertarians Strike Back!
Predictably enough, yesterday's item on the Libertarian Party's tasteless anti-U.S. rally set for Sept. 11 brought quite a few responses, such as this one from Tom Howe, a self-described "Libertarian in NC":
In the spirit of "spell my name right," I thank you for leading Wednesday's rant with the story of Libertarians and their "presidential candidate." And more thanks for not disputing that U.S. policies are responsible for the deaths of thousands.
Oh, by the way, you can't credibly complain about Reuters' misuse of scare quotes, any more, since you use them with a person's official and legal status. Bummer!
Sure we can. We fault Reuters, a "news" service, for using scare quotes to editorialize. Editorializing is what we get paid to do.
Reader Randal Morgan defends the party:
The Libertarian Party is the only party that bases its platform strictly on the Constitution of the United States. Pretty sicko, right? And all the rest of you, from "conservatives" through "socialists," all believe that you can tax some people to give benefits to other people, in more or less greater degree of violation to that Constitution. The Democrats have become the Big Socialists, and you Republican "conservatives" have become the Little Socialists. All of you are to the "left" of the Constitution, and to whatever degree you are to the left of the Constitution, to that degree you are un-American. That's right. I'll say it again: You are un-American!
How's that for "sicko"?
The problem here is that we were not criticizing the Libertarian Party for its views on domestic policy. For our taste, both the Democrats and the Republicans are too favorably disposed to big government. It would be nice if there were a credible party that stood for smaller government. But a party that uses Sept. 11 as an occasion to bash America cannot be taken seriously. Reader Jeff Wilson makes the point:
Libertarian candidates generally provide the best match for my political goals, but I will not be voting Libertarian this year. Between the party's head-in-the-sand foreign policy (or absence of policy), and the readiness of the words "Legalize pot!" to spring from the lips of any Libertarian who finds himself in front of a camera--as if it were an attractive way to get people to listen to more of what he wants to say--I am afraid the party has gone up in smoke. It's not the environmental Angry Left, but there is a certain tinge of "green" to it.
I am more or less an Objectivist, philosophically, and a political independent. President Bush can alleviate a lot of the reservations I have about him by being more aggressive with the U.S. military in the war on terror, and by initiating tax reform that moves us toward a consumption-based tax system, as in the "Fair Tax" plan. I would count those as two signal accomplishments for which I was proud to vote. I think the chances are good for each.
Add one vote for Bush in California.
Stephen Gordon responds to us on the Libertarian campaign blog, and he is indistinguishable from the Angry Left:
I love America while I simultaneously despise the acts of those who govern us.
To be sure, the terrorists themselves are the ones to blame. They are clearly the ones who "pulled the trigger"--but our government has some share in the blame. If one stands around a hornet nest, he or she might expect to be stung once or twice. But if one beats the hornet nest with a baseball bat, just how many stings might he or she expect?
Our interventionist foreign policy is that bat--and we are still swinging it wildly in the middle east, where we just took our 1000th sting yesterday.
Later, Gordon refers to "the disconnect between our tyrannical government and the American people." Of course, if you're free to call your government "tyrannical," it's a safe bet that it isn't.
The Libertarian Party might once have had some appealing ideas about shrinking government--and for all we know, it still does. But in the middle of a war, the party is indulging in lurid fantasies about America's "tyrannical" government while explaining away the murderous actions of real tyrants. We can all be grateful that the party is too much of a joke to do any real harm. |
