31 March 2010 >> Not too long ago, taking to the streets to protest your government was considered a patriotic act.

It’s true!

But it seems that publicly airing your grievances stopped being patriotic right around noon on January 20th, 2009.

Once President Obama was sworn in, protesting became incitement to violence.

If you’ve opened up a newspaper or watched a cable news program in the past week or so, you’ve probably seen members of the media painting Tea Party activists as dangerous bigots. That’s because disagreeing with President Obama on issues like government spending and high taxes makes you a racist, you see.

What’s interesting about the media’s latest freak-out is that there were radicals a-plenty under President Bush. They protested in the streets. They talked openly about revolution and killing. But oddly, the violent imagery used by people claiming to be advocates for peace never registered with the media. They were too busy fawning over Cindy Sheehan.

Why the difference in coverage? Did the media cheerlead protests against President Bush to hurt him politically? Are they trying to marginalize the increasingly powerful Tea Party movement because they favor President Obama’s agenda?

One thing’s for sure: If there is such a thing as dangerous rhetoric, then the media is at least one president too late in reporting the story.

Don’t believe me?

Well, then let’s take a trip down memory lane... Video >>

20 August 2009 >> Not too long ago, hundreds of thousands of protesters took to the streets with signs comparing our president to Adolf Hitler, painting him as “the world’s biggest terrorist,” even calling outright for his killing. Here in New York City, posters of a cartoon George W. Bush replete with simulated bullet holes began springing up around town.

It was a time when Democratic politicians complained loudly whenever they felt their patriotism was being impugned. In those days, bumper stickers reminded us that “Dissent is the Highest Form of Patriotism” and Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, declared that disruptive protests were “very American and very important.” Now that protests are directed against a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, Nancy Pelosi thinks such disruptions are “un-American.”

During the Bush era, the media looked the other way at the extremist element in the protest movement; the large number of protest signs bearing swastikas and mathematical formulae like “Bush=Hitler” just didn’t interest them. But it did interest me, and because the media didn’t want to report it, I did some reporting of my own. The videos I posted online inadvertently launched me on a second career as a documentary filmmaker.

I recently dug through my old footage and found many examples of the same kind of inflammatory speech that the media and the Democratic Party—forgive the redundancy—now decry. What follows are just a few examples. More >>

18 June 2009 @ 9:07AM >> The Washington Times reports on an appearance made by former President George W. Bush:

He lamented the politics of personal destruction that he said is rampant in Washington, noting, though, that it has always been thus. Recalling how a treasury secretary and a vice president once fought a duel, he joked: “At least when my vice president shot somebody, it was an accident.”

1 May 2009 @ 9:04AM >> Just because the media is trying to convince everyone that Barack Obama is the most popular president in American history doesn’t make it true:

Gallup reports that 56% of the public believes that Obama is doing an excellent/good job. Gallup reported 62% approved of George W. Bush’s job performance after the first 100 days.

I don’t put much stock in polls; careful tweaking of words and phrasing are well-known ways to produce whatever outcome you might want to see. The media seem to be obsessed with polling, though, so we should at least be aware of the games they’re playing.

And if Obama’s about as popular as Bush was at the same point in is presidency, how popular with Obama be by the time he leaves office?

18 January 2009 >> With George W. Bush’s presidency down to its final hours, we’re now being told that he is not the second coming of Hitler.

First, he gets a compliment from the Dalai Lama:

The head of the Tibetan government-in-exile left the audience stunned when he said “I love President George W Bush.” He went on to add how he and the US President instantly struck a chord in their first meeting unlike politicians who take a while to develop close ties.

And then, a little respect from the New Messiah:

I think personally he is a good man who loves his family and loves his country. And I think he made the best decisions that he could at times under some very difficult circumstances.

Finally, in the Washington Post, Peter Beinart urges his fellow Democrats to acknowledge that—gasp!—President Bush may have been correct about at least one thing:

It’s no longer a close call: President Bush was right about the surge.

[...]

[President Bush’s] decision to increase America’s troop presence in late 2006 now looks like his finest hour. Given the mood in Washington and the country as a whole, it would have been far easier to do the opposite. Politically, Bush took the path of most resistance. He endured an avalanche of scorn, and now he has been vindicated. He was not only right; he was courageous.

It’s time for Democrats to say so.

4 December 2006 >> A study of how the media has been distoring war reporting since the September 11th attacks:

Convincingly and without resorting to partisan politics, [study author Jim A.] Kuypers strongly illustrates in eight chapters “how the press failed America in its coverage on the War on Terror.” In each comparison, Kuypers “detected massive bias on the part of the press.” In fact, Kuypers calls the mainstream news media an “anti-democratic institution” in the conclusion.

“What has essentially happened since 9/11 has been that Bush has repeated the same themes, and framed those themes the same whenever discussing the War on Terror,” said Kuypers, who specializes in political communication and rhetoric. “Immediately following 9/11, the mainstream news media (represented by CBS, ABC, NBC, USA Today, New York Times, and Washington Post) did echo Bush, but within eight weeks it began to intentionally ignore certain information the president was sharing, and instead reframed the president’s themes or intentionally introduced new material to shift the focus.”

5 October 2006 >> In response to my piece on Bob Woodward’s admission that higher-ups at the Washington Post claimed an “obligation” to publish State of Denial before the election, reader Matt S. e-mails:

I’m a regular reader and fan, but yesterday’s post titled “A Question for the Washington Post” was, in my opinion, far below your standard.

Setting aside Woodward’s politics, biases, and agendas, it seems perfectly compatible with standards of professional journalism that a journalist would aim to publish a story before an election if that story contained information relevant to the election.

Citizens are supposed to make informed decisions on Election day; it’s the role of a free press to help citizens become informed. I think it follows that citizens should be informed prior to making such consequential decisions.

I’m perfectly happy to read arguments that question the accuracy, veracity, or objectivity of Woodward’s reporting - I think there are legitimate questions there - but to suggest that there’s something wrong with publishing a relevant story before an election is silly.

Matt,

Of course a more informed electorate is preferable. But the subject of Woodward’s book is not on the ballot in this election, which is why I find it curious.

The book discusses the Bush Administration and reportedly casts the president in a harsh light. If President Bush were up for election, I would understand the civic obligation felt by journalists to get the facts out—however they perceive them—so that voters could make up their minds. But since the voters will not get to pull the lever for or against the president, I’d figure the folks at the Post would be relatively neutral about whether the book launched in the home stretch of a midterm election that, unlike most, has the potential for both houses of Congress to switch party control.

Instead, there was a sense of importance placed on the timing. Woodward, the Post people felt, had a “real obligation” to make sure the book dropped before a specific date. Woodward acknowledged that he and the Post sat on these stories. He said he didn’t want “to make a splash” by reporting individual stories when they happened, but instead he wanted “to assemble the whole story,” which required waiting until the assembly was done. A fair argument, but usually, newspapers are in the business of telling us things when they happen, not months later when the political timing is right. Besides, isn’t waiting until six weeks before an election going to cause much more of a political splash than a story reported in, say, the spring of 2005?

I can’t claim to know Woodward’s motivation or that of the folks at the Post. But I do suspect that if he were given a chance rephrase his statement, he wouldn’t pass it up. I think it was an admission he didn’t intend to make.

Thanks for writing,
Evan

1 April 2006 @ 4:42PM >> In a parallel universe, this likeably unlikely combo is the top-rated reality TV show:

Although [the Dalai Lama] appeared not to approve of the war in Iraq, he was admiring of [President George W.] Bush.

“He is very straightforward,” said the monk.

“On our first visit, I was faced with a large plate of biscuits. President Bush immediately offered me his favourites, and after that, we got on fine. On my next visit, he didn’t mind when I was blunt about the war.

“By my third visit, I was ushering him into the Oval Office. I was astonished by his grasp of Buddhism.”

10 February 2006 >> Shortly after September 11th, when President Bush said Islamic terrorists “hate freedom,” critics derided his statement as a simplistic dodge. Freedom couldn’t be the problem, it must be U.S. foreign policy. It must be arrogant American imperialism. It must be anything that places the blame on us and absolves the terrorists of responsibility. After all, no rational person could hate freedom, right? Well, take a look around. To a frighteningly large number of people on this planet, freedom is the enemy.

2 February 2006 @ 10:39AM >> Some protesters in Chicago’s Daley Plaza seem to think so. Documentarian Andrew Marcus has the video.

The patriots protesting are still calling for revolution, it seems. Wake me up when it starts.

31 January 2006 >> The one story that can unite conspiracy theorists on the right and the left.

8 December 2005 @ 6:51PM >> 60 minuteman Mike Wallace was apparently turned down by President Bush for an interview. He recently revealed what he would have asked the president if given the chance:

What in the world prepared you to be the commander in chief of the largest superpower in the world? In your background, Mr. President, you apparently were incurious. You didn’t want to travel. You knew very little about the military. . . . The governor of Texas doesn’t have the kind of power that some governors have. . . . Why do you think they nominated you? . . . Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that the country is so [expletive] up?

11 November 2005 >> Former news producer Mary Mapes is still defiant.

Shortly before last fall’s election, Mapes was forced to resign in disgrace from CBS News after she and Dan Rather were caught peddling bogus memos intended to hurt President Bush’s chances for re-election. But Mapes still can’t figure out why people questioned her reporting:

In her first television interview since the National Guard story, Mapes sat with ABC’s Brian Ross to talk about the events surrounding the story and her book. She defended the story and asserted, “I think I’m somebody who got fired for trying to do their job in a difficult atmosphere,” adding, “I don’t think I committed bad journalism. I really don’t.”

Ross asked Mapes if she still believed the story on President Bush’s National Guard service was true and she answered, “absolutely.” She said of the Killian memos, which were used to validate the story before their authenticity came under intense scrutiny, that they have not proven to be inauthentic, adding, “I’m perfectly willing to believe those documents are forgeries if there’s proof I haven’t seen.” Ross asked Mapes if the standard ought not to have been for her to prove their authenticity, to which she responded, “I don’t think that’s the standard.”

Mapes assumes everything she sees is true, assuming it fits with her preconceived political notions. Apparently, she’s not alone in the media these days.

Many media outlets have breathlessly reported the charges of Jimmy Massey, a former Marine who became a prominent peace activist after witnessing what he says were war atrocities in Iraq. Problem is, none of the reporters who repeated his accusations ever bothered to check them out. And now that Massey’s been exposed as a fraud, it leaves a bunch of credulous reporters with egg on their faces:

For more than a year, former Marine Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey has been telling anybody who will listen about the atrocities that he and other Marines committed in Iraq.

In scores of newspaper, magazine and broadcast stories, at a Canadian immigration hearing and in numerous speeches across the country, Massey has told how he and other Marines recklessly, sometimes intentionally, killed dozens of innocent Iraqi civilians.

[...]

Each of his claims is either demonstrably false or exaggerated - according to his fellow Marines, Massey’s own admissions, and the five journalists who were embedded with Massey’s unit, including a reporter and photographer from the Post-Dispatch and reporters from The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports:

Editors at some papers look back at the Massey articles and are surprised that they ran them without examining whether the claims were true or without ever asking the Marine Corps about them.

“I’m looking at the story and going, ‘Why, why would we have run this without getting another side of the story?’” said Lois Wilson, managing editor of the Star Gazette in Elmira, N.Y.

David Holwerk, editorial page editor for The Sacramento Bee, said he thought the newspaper handled its story, a question and answer interview with Massey, poorly.

“I feel fairly confident that we did not subject this to the rigorous scrutiny that we should have or to which we would subject it today,” he said.

Rex Smith, editor of the Albany (N.Y.) Times Union, said he thought the newspaper’s story about Massey could have “benefited from some additional reporting.” But he didn’t necessarily see anything particularly at odds with standard journalism practices.

[...]

“You could take any day’s newspaper and probably pick out a half dozen or more stories that ought to be subjected to a more rigorous truth test,” he said.

“Yes, it would have been much better if we had the other side. But all I’m saying is that this is unfortunately something that happens every day in our newspapers and with practically every story on television.”

20 October 2005 @ 8:06AM >> Did President Bush pick Harriet Miers for all the wrong reasons? The White House has been quietly touting Miers’s religious background for the apparent purpose of signaling her position on the abortion debate. But if that’s the sole reason she was chosen, then her Supreme Court nomination might be even worse than I originally feared.

Abortion-rights advocates argue in favor of Roe v. Wade, not because it was based on sound judicial reasoning, but because it resulted in an outcome they favor. If Miers would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade because of personal beliefs—as opposed to reasons of law—then she might be casting a sensible legal vote, but she would be doing so for all the wrong reasons.

Conservatives tend to favor justices whose philosophy is to interpret the Constitution as written, not as they would like it to be personally or as Europeans might want. Conservatives recognize that this philosophy would restrict the unlimited growth of government and would preserve individual rights in the way that the Founders intended. In my mind, having the correct judicial philosophy is far more important than casting one or two votes any particular direction, especially when those votes are cast for political reasons.

Despite what the abortion debaters say, overturning Roe v. Wade would have a relatively limited effect. In many states, abortion would still be legal, in some, it would be more restricted, and in a few, it could be outlawed. Sure, a post-Roe world would be different, but it wouldn’t be so vastly different that anti-abortion conservatives should sell out all their other beliefs to secure it.

I’ve got a bad feeling about Miers. If she gets on the court, she could be issuing decisions decades from now that would make Constitutional conservatives cringle. Long after George W. Bush has left the White House, conservatives could be cursing his name. Is President Bush willing to risk leaving that legacy by putting Miers on the Supreme Court? We already know the answer, and this is one of those instances where the president’s legendary steadfastness runs the risk of driving a permanent wedge between himself and many of the people who voted for him. Luckily for President Bush, he doesn’t have to run again.

8 October 2005 @ 5:25PM >> Is the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court the biggest political misstep of the Bush presidency? After assessing the mood of the guests at the White House’s dinner for the 50th Anniversary of National Review magazine, James Taranto believes he sees “a political disaster in the making.”

We talked to quite a few people, and we heard not a single kind word about the nomination from anyone who wasn’t on the White House staff. A couple of our soundings led us to think that such support as it has received has been more sycophantic than sincere. One putative proponent privately distanced himself from his public praise of Miers. Another person, whose employer has strongly backed the Miers nomination, told us, “Of course, I disagree wholeheartedly.”

[...]

Conventional wisdom still has it that Miers is a shoo-in for confirmation. We’re not so sure. From what we saw last night, the right is furious at President Bush for appointing someone they see as manifestly underqualified and for ducking a fight with the Democratic left—a fight that, in their view (and ours), would be good for the country, the conservative cause and the Republican Party.

Charles Krauthammer zeroes in on the problem:

When in 1962 Edward Moore Kennedy ran for his brother’s seat in the Senate, his opponent famously said that if Kennedy’s name had been Edward Moore, his candidacy would have been a joke. If Harriet Miers were not a crony of the president of the United States, her nomination to the Supreme Court would be a joke, as it would have occurred to no one else to nominate her.

[N]ominating a constitutional tabula rasa to sit on what is America’s constitutional court is an exercise of regal authority with the arbitrariness of a king giving his favorite general a particularly plush dukedom. [...]

It is particularly dismaying that this act should have been perpetrated by the conservative party. For half a century, liberals have corrupted the courts by turning them into an instrument of radical social change on questions — school prayer, abortion, busing, the death penalty — that properly belong to the elected branches of government. Conservatives have opposed this arrogation of the legislative role and called for restoration of the purely interpretive role of the court. To nominate someone whose adult life reveals no record of even participation in debates about constitutional interpretation is an insult to the institution and to that vision of the institution.

Absolutely. The best conservative argument for the philosophy of the court is that the Constitution should be interpreted as written, not through some sort of deconstructionist psychic reading of what the Founders might or might not want if they were alive today and informed by supposedly enlightened European jurisprudence. If there is no public record whatsoever of where Miers stands on this debate, I wonder whether she has any underlying philosophy at all. Maybe I just naturally recoil when a President Bush puts forth an unknown quantity for the Supreme Court. The Harriet Miers nomination was a disaster the first time when it went by the name David Souter.

“A disaster on every level” is also what Robert Bork—nominated for the Supreme Court by President Reagan in 1987—said of the Miers nomination. He added:

It’s a little late to develop a constitutional philosophy or begin to work it out when you’re on the court already. It’s kind of a slap in the face to the conservatives who’ve been building up a conservative legal movement for the last 20 years.

Just as there’s a reason the judiciary shouldn’t assume the role of the legislature, there’s also a reason the judicial branch is supposed to be separate from the executive. When President Bush tries to put someone on the court whose only real qualification seems to be her proximity to him, he is neglecting the core principle that defines conservative court philosophy, and he is sinking to the very sort of behavior that conservatives have been decrying for years: using the court as a political tool. By putting forth Harriet Miers, President Bush is almost daring principled conservatives to oppose her, because if we didn’t, we’d be hypocrites.

President Bush places a high value on personal loyalty, and for that reason, he’s unlikely to withdraw the nomination of Harriet Miers. Well, I pledge my loyalty not to a particular leader or party, but to a set of ideas. And those ideas require me to oppose Harriet Miers because she is simply too close to the president and because there don’t seem to be any other arguments in her favor.

I hope there are still enough principled leaders in the Senate to give this nomination the kind of scrutiny it deserves. As Democrats are often fond of reminding Republican presidents, the Senate is under no obligation to rubber-stamp any of the president’s judicial nominations. Republican Senators should remember that as well.

22 July 2005 @ 12:44PM >> This editorial in the Los Angeles Times makes me wonder: is there anything about George W. Bush that his opponents don’t hate?

30 June 2005 >> From The Times (of London):

In person, Mr. Bush is so far removed from the caricature of the dim, war-mongering Texas cowboy of global popular repute that it shakes one’s faith in the reliability of the modern media.

17 April 2005 >> The New York Times reports that more mass graves have been found in Iraq:

Investigators have discovered several mass graves in southern Iraq that are believed to contain the bodies of people killed by Saddam Hussein’s government, including one estimated to hold 5,000 bodies, Iraqi officials say.

[...]

If the estimated body counts prove correct, the new graves would be among the largest in the grim tally of mass killings that have gradually come to light since the fall of Mr. Hussein’s government two years ago. At least 290 grave sites containing the remains of some 300,000 people have been found since the American invasion two years ago, Iraqi officials say.

Armies of the self-proclaimed compassionate marched across the world to keep Saddam Hussein in power. A reckless cowboy, a dangerous warmonger, a stupid, conniving cretin stood up to the masses. If not for the cowboy, the compassionate would have succeeded and murders would still be rolling corpses into those mass graves. Now all that’s left of the thugs is weakening insurgency and an aging leadership rotting in jail. The Iraqis defied threats of death to go out and vote, and by doing so, they validated the actions of that idiotic cowboy and gave the finger, tipped in purple, to the compassionate whose actions would have consigned them to a lifetime of oppression. Peace might come to the world much faster if only there were more of those cowboy criminals.

14 April 2005 >> Some kind, compassionate, tolerant, pacifist New York liberal(s)* have recently taken to posting George W. Bush shooting targets—complete with simulated bullet holes penetrating various parts of the body—around town. This picture was taken on the west side of Second Avenue, between 72nd and 73rd Streets.

Despite the cartoonish look, it is a bit eerie that these posters, which implicitly advocate the assassination of a sitting U.S. president, could remain unmolested in the nation’s largest city for days on end. (No, I won’t be taking it down, since it stands as a graphic monument to the mentality of today’s left.)

PowerLine and Michelle Malkin have recently noticed similar examples. One has to wonder whether we’re seeing a modern fascist movement being born before our very eyes.

* Yes, I am making some assumptions here. Since I don’t actually know who’s been posting these, perhaps it is a bit unfair to be blaming liberals. Still, given the prevailing political views of New York City residents, combined with my extensive first-hand experience witnessing liberals advocating violence, I feel fairly comfortable making this assertion.

25 March 2005 @ 5:40PM >> Victor Davis Hanson asks:

[W]hat do Linda Ronstadt, Harold Pinter, Scott Ritter, Ted Rall, and George Soros all have in common? The same thing that unites Fidel Castro, the European street, the Iranians, and North Koreans: an evocation of some aspects of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany to deprecate President Bush in connection with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Bush’s political opponents have been comparing him to Adolf Hitler for years. (I’ve made an online cottage industry out of documenting it myself.) Hanson psychoanalyzes the “Bush is Hitler” left, and concludes that—while the extreme rhetoric is evidence of their waning political influence—the environment it creates risks “unleashing even greater extremism by the unhinged.”

8 March 2005 >> How many times can Walter Cronkite gleefully fork the corpse of Dan Rather in a single interview? Find out.

Meanwhile:

It is barely six weeks since the U.S. President delivered his second inaugural address, a paean to liberty and democracy that espoused the goal of “ending tyranny in our world”. Reactions around the world ranged from alarm to amused scorn, from fears of a new round of “regime changes” imposed by an all-powerful American military, to suspicions in the salons of Europe that this time Mr Bush, never celebrated for his grasp of world affairs, had finally lost it. No one imagined that events would so soon cause the President’s opponents around the world to question whether he had got it right.

That debate is now happening, in America and beyond, as the first waves of reform lap at the Arab world. Post-Saddam Iraq has held its first proper election. In their own elections, Palestinians have overwhelmingly chosen a moderate leader. Hosni Mubarak, who for 24 years has permitted no challenge to his rule in Egypt, has announced a multi-candidate presidential election this year. Even Saudi Arabia is not immune, having just held its first municipal elections. Next time around, Saudi spokesmen promise, women too will be permitted to vote.

Not gonna gloat. Wouldn’t be prudent. Not at this juncture.

26 January 2005 >> President Bush’s re-election left some Americans distraught and depressed. And with Inauguration Day set to rub salt in those still-healing wounds, I decided to act in the interest of national unity and extend an olive branch across the great Red/Blue divide. Would my overtures of peace be rebuffed? Video >>

28 October 2004 >> The choice we have on election day is between the worldview of September 10th—embodied by John Kerry—and President Bush’s September 12th worldview. More >>

9 October 2004 @ 3:22PM >> Last night, President Bush displayed the plain-spoken resolve reminiscent of the days after September 11th. He was able to forcefully defend his decision to invade Iraq, and he tied that decision to the bigger picture of the post-September 11th world. He also explained that he’s not afraid to make such decisions even though it might not win him any popularity contests in the halls of European capitols. Sometimes doing the right thing is neither popular nor easy, but leadership isn’t defined by how many people love you after you take action.

John Kerry, on the other hand, seemed a little distracted, shaken almost, perhaps by witnessing President Bush’s performance. Kerry moved around the stage like a robot with a dying battery, and he ended every statement with phony sounding slogans that reeked of politician. Every single Kerry answer seemed to be a litany of criticisms of the president followed by a list of people who agree with Kerry. By the end of the debate, I wished someone had asked Kerry if there was one thing he could name about President Bush that wasn’t a complete disaster.

For all of Kerry’s much-vaunted intellect, I can’t understand how he doesn’t see that we’re living in a different world than the Cold War. All of Kerry’s foreign policy vision is predicated on the institutions and doctrines of the past. But the way you defeat an enemy state in a decades-long standoff where mutually assured destruction brings its own form of stability is not the same way you defeat terrorists who pledge no allegiance to any particular nation and who aren’t afraid to die.

I’ve always thought that if Kerry’s reflexive opposition to everything Bush were demonstrated to the voters, they’d reject him. A presidential candidate needs to stand for something more than merely the opposite of whatever the other guy says. But last night, there seemed to be nothing to John Kerry’s message beyond what a lousy president he thinks Bush is.

Bush won because his passion came across. You may not always like it, but you always know where the guy stands. I think that’s remarkably reassuring in a dangerous, uncertain world. Kerry looked like a petty politician pre-programmed to fire off a few slogans and important-sounding names. But in the end, I think voters want more from a president than lists of things he dislikes about his opponent and names of people who support him. People want to see vision. That’s where Bush shined, and that’s were Kerry lost this debate.

1 October 2004 >> Well, it looks like neither candidate landed a body blow during the big debate.

Kerry came across better than I expected. He wasn’t the droning, passionless blowhard that he so often is on the campaign trail, and he didn’t come across as a member of the Angry Left. People who were already leaning towards Kerry were probably reassured by his performance, but I don’t think he sealed the deal with anyone else.

Bush had a few verbal gaffes, but to voters, he’s already a known quantity. The quality of his public speaking is already factored into the equation, so I don’t think it does him any harm. He succeeded in staying on message and reinforced the notion that he’s decisive and resolute, and he hit Kerry’s inconsistencies enough to keep people wondering about him. However, I think the president missed a few opportunities to hit a home run.

John Kerry missed a big opportunity, too. After the debate was over, I didn’t understand Kerry’s foggy position on Iraq any more than I did going in. I don’t think I’m alone.

I call it a draw, which works to Bush’s advantage because he seems to be leading. The campaign dynamic going out of this debate is little changed from that going in.

Ultimately, if I worked on the Bush campaign, I’d make hay out of the fact that despite all the explanations from Kerry, you still can’t figure out where the guy stands on Iraq. If voters can’t understand Kerry’s Iraq position on November 2nd, he’s not likely to have a happy evening.

4 September 2004 >> I thought President Bush’s speech was a home run.

He articulated a clear foreign policy vision: the key to being safe from terrorists is to spread freedom to the parts of the world whose conditions create terrorists. The theory is based on the view that repressive societies breed terrorists—not America—which is precisely why it’s such an anathema to the left.

Perhaps that’s why leftists—the nominal defenders of liberty—are aghast at our freeing two countries: if President Bush is right, and Middle Eastern repression is responsible for creating terrorists, then his plan might work. And if freedom in the Middle East stems the outward flow of terrorists from the region, then it is proof that America isn’t at fault for “creating” those terrorists.

Since the sum total of leftist theory seems to be that all world problems are created by America, history proving President Bush right would be just as damaging to the left as President Reagan’s victories were. Of course, during the time that Reagan tried to implement his policies, many more people were skeptical of him than today, which is why the left seethed at the recent tributes paid to President Reagan.

When it comes to foreign policy, I think President Bush is as big and as bold a thinker, and that his optimism will be borne out over the long haul.

If that’s the case, then President Bush may some day have a sendoff as grand as Reagan’s.

One underreported aspect of the speech was the sheer emotion of it. Even the video right before President Bush’s speech was moving, but there were times when you could see tears forming in the eyes of the delegates. President Bush looked a little misty at one point, too.

Aside from the foreign policy vision he outlined, I think the real power of the speech was its emotional aspect. That’s why I think viewers connected with it—and with President Bush. And if that’s one of the major reasons why the speech worked, it’s interesting that nobody seems to be reporting that angle.

After this week, I was left with a pretty strong sense that President Bush will win, and I don’t think it will be close. Then again, one of the prime purposes of predictions seems to be to make a fool of the person making them.

2 September 2004 >> The problem with John Kerry isn’t so much that he changed his mind about such a defining moment in his life, it’s that he has no explanation for why he changed his mind. When a man undergoes a major personal transformation—such as President Bush’s decision to quit drinking—there’s usually a very telling biographical episode that gives us some insight into the man’s character. But in the case of John Kerry, there is no explanation. We’re just supposed to accept at face value that, one day, Kerry throws his medals away and the next he brandishes them as evidence of his heroism. One day he accuses his fellow soldiers of mass atrocities in Vietnam, the next day he stands on stage with a handful of them as evidence of his strength.

So, who is John Kerry? With just over sixty days to the election, we still don’t know.

Last night, Senator Zell Miller, a Democrat from Georgia, broke away from his party to speak at the Republican Convention. Miller’s speech sought to end the mystery of John Kerry by reciting more from Senator Kerry’s voting record than Kerry himself cited at his own convention. More >>

6 August 2004 @ 5:01PM >> Slate has an interesting piece on President Bush’s performance on the campaign trail.

At first, when I saw that it was titled “The Right Rev. George W. Bush,” and subtitled “Among the worshippers at the president’s traveling revival show,” I expected the worst. Even though I am not a follower of an organized religion, there is something very condescending about how the self-appointed coastal elites look down their noses at regular churchgoers or anyone who professes religious faith. Tolerance and understanding are things that these elites demand of others, but they never seem capable of dispensing it themselves unless it’s for one of their favored groups.

Given the title of the article above, I expected more of the same. I was pleasantly surprised.

26 July 2004 >> What Kerry needs to do is attract some of the voters who don’t equate Bush with Hitler. That’ll be hard if Kerry is seen as surrounded by extremists. Maybe Kerry recognizes this but is trying to have it both ways, as he does when he votes in favor of bills before he votes against them. But this is an issue he can’t waffle on. When voters view the Democratic Convention, they’ll either see hatred on display or they won’t. I’m sure Kerry’s team will do their best to present a sanitized convention, but today’s Democrats seem to be driven by rage and not reason. And rage is very hard to contain, which means we may be in for a rather interesting week up in Boston. More >>

3 May 2004 @ 11:34PM >> In an editorial, The Wall Street Journal calls attention to some interesting tidbits from Bob Woodward’s latest book, Plan of Attack:

The President continued, “I’ve been told all this intelligence about having WMD and this is the best we’ve got?” At which point Mr. Tenet is said to have thrown his hands in the air and remarked, “It’s a slam-dunk case!” Mr. Bush pressed again, “George, how confident are you?” Mr. Tenet: “Don’t worry, it’s a slam dunk!”

It isn’t a shock, of course, that the CIA believed Iraq possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. The Clinton Administration bombed Iraq for four days in December 1998 based on that assessment. Every other major intelligence agency in the world believed the same. What is new in the Woodward account is the extent to which Mr. Bush appears to have been a thoughtful and critical consumer of such intelligence. The President reportedly told Mr. Tenet several times, “Make sure no one stretches to make our case.”

These revelations, of course, haven’t been widely discussed. Doing so would debunk many of the media-propelled myths intended to damage President Bush.

It does make one wonder about Tenet, though. If I were as conspiratorially-minded as many on the left, I’d think that Tenet, a Clinton hold-over, was trying to sabotage the Bush presidency. I don’t think that. I just think intelligence gathering and analysis is a tough business, and that our systems need serious work.