Sullivan is endorsing Bush the way Moore is endorsing Kerry.
BUSH'S LATEST ARGUMENT: Allawi's address was moving, inspiring and almost persuasive. Obviously, he's under-playing the grip that terrorists now have on a swathe of Iraq, and he's over-stating, if polls are any indicator, the support for the coalition forces among Iraqis. But what choice do we now have? And this is Bush's essential response to Kerry. Yes, we've screwed up; yes, we've under-manned the liberation; yes, we haven't been able to spend more than a fraction of the reconstruction funds; yes, we haven't sealed the borders; yes, insurgent attacks are growing fiercer and more frequent than ever before; yes, we're unlikely to get even one international ally in future wars; yes, we're even losing the Brits; yes, we're up shit creek if another world crisis blows up, because we don't have enough troops to cope. But because we've screwed up so badly, it would compound things if Kerry were elected, and we gave some kind of mixed message to our enemy. Re-elect me, because I've made such a mess of things! Only a Bush re-election would inject the occupation with the necessary conviction to give us a chance of seeing this through. And conceding our failure - or even admitting that we have made mistakes - will only demoralize the troops. Tada! Heads, Kerry loses. Tails, I win.
BUSH-HATERS FOR BUSH: Once you've absorbed the chutzpah, it's a pretty powerful argument. It's a bit like Bush saying, after bankrupting our fiscal future in three short years, that we cannot afford Kerry's big spending instincts. No shit, brother. So we're torn between holding Bush accountable and re-electing him. But here's another brilliant Bush counter-argument: wouldn't we actually be holding him accountable by re-electing him? For the first time in his entire life, Bush may actually be forced to take responsibility for his own actions if he is re-elected and becomes the LBJ of the Iraq war. I wonder why Bush-haters haven't thought of this: that the way to punish Bush is to force him to live through the consequences of his own policies. Why, after all, should Kerry take the fall? If he gets elected, can you imagine what Fox News and NRO are going to do to him the minute he brushes his teeth in January? He'll be destroyed by the chaos in Iraq, whatever he does. The right will give him no lee-way at all. Maybe this is simply another version of the notion that we shouldn't change horses in the middle of a cliche. But there's an upside: if Bush fails in Iraq, at least he will be punished for his own failures; if he succeeds (and, of course I hope he does), we all win. Am I persuading myself to endorse Bush? Or am I finding some kind of silver lining in the increasingly likely event of his re-election? I blog. You decide.
- 6:03:38 PM
THE BRITISH VIEW: An emailer from Blighty writes the following:
Bush doesn't deserve to win, because his errors - Iraq, deficits - outweigh his merits - Afghanistan, not being Al Gore.
Kerry doesn't deserve to win either, being, as we'd say in Britain, a plonker, a prat, a numptie.
Who'd prefer a frivolous result e.g. Bush wins the popular vote but Kerry wins the Electoral College?
Okay, I haven't lived there for twenty years. What on earth is a "numptie"? |
