A Simple Argument

Andrew Sullivan reprises a rationalization for backing Kerry that he floated last week. I loved it then (but did I love it enough to find a link?), and it is even more entertaining now:

FORCING THE DEMS INTO RESPONSIBILITY: It's a simple argument and it goes as follows. One reason to vote for Kerry this time is that, whatever his record, he will, as president, be forced by reality and by public opinion to be tough in this war. He has no other option. You think he wants to be tarred as a wimp every night by Fox News? Moreover, he would remove from the Europeans and others the Bush alibi for their relative absence in the war on terror. More important, his presidency would weaken the Michael Moore wing of the Democrats, by forcing them to take responsibility for a war that is theirs' as much a anyone's.

He goes on to quote Bob Kagan and Max Boot, who offer support for the notion. Unfortunately, his excerpts are not linked to a more complete discussion, so we have no idea whether their support is "in concept" or "in this election". A hint - Bob Kagan does say "in theory".

But set aside such quibbles. Can there be any doubt that Andrew is correct? John Kerry is certainly a strong, principled leader, but even his deeply held convictions will be subject to the whims, harsh words, and raised eyebrows emanating from Fox News. After all, Fox is so big that the wire services dropped it from this comparison to the ABC, CBS, and NBC nightly news shows, which averaged roughly 25 million viewers last week. Down in cable world, Fox had a huge surge when the war started in 2003, and spiked to a robust 3.3 million angry, influential viewers per day.

But that was then! Now, of course, Fox is truly dominant - during the second Presidential debate, Fox managed to trounce all of its rivals except for ABC, CBS, and NBC:

NBC, with 12.3 million viewers, was the most-watched network, followed by ABC with an audience of 10.3 million, CBS with 8.1 million and Fox with 3.8 million.

Fox News Channel led among cable channels with 7.1 million viewers, while CNN had 3.4 million and MSNBC had 1.7 million.

Fox's strength is even more impressive when we take "Fair and Balanced" versus "The Libs" (we exclude MSNBC since we don't know what they are this week, either). Fox and Fox Cable drew 11 million; the Libs drew 34 million. We are prepared to accept their surrender.

And this is surely the type of President we want - a man who can properly balance the frowns from Brit Hume against the scowls from Jacques Chirac. Well chosen!

Andrew is even more compelling when he assures us that Kerry's presidency "would weaken the Michael Moore wing of the Democrats..." Of course it would. Flush with his success at having helped to elect a President, Michael Moore will announce that being the guest of honor at the Democratic Convention was too heady, and that he is going to shut up and go back to making obscure documentaries.

Atrios and the Daily Kos will stun their readers by announcing that their work is done, and will urge their readers to reach out to the fundo-fascist homophobic bigots on the other side;

Nancy Pelosi will step down, stating that the country and the House need someone other than a San Francisoco Democrat in the leadership;

the Gephardt-Lieberman wing of the party, which has been quietly gaining strength since their triumph in the primaries, will emerge ascendant;

and Kerry's advisors will celebrate the success of their brilliant "Sometimes you've got to say - WTF" strategy, summarized with their famous bumper sticker - "Let's Fly Under The Bridge".

In other news, Curt Schilling announced today that his ankle is feeling so good, he may pitch twice more against the Yankees. Coming on top of the thrilling Red Sox victory in Game 2, where Pedro Martinez backed up his boast that "the Yankees will call me daddy", this news gave Red Sox Nation hope that, with the Series tied at 1-1, they could close the Yankees out at historic Fenway.

Yup, that's the way it is... somewhere. In my world, the clouds have parted and the sun is yellow.

Comments

[Paul Zrimsek]

This notion of Sullivan's is made all the more interesting by its juxtaposition with all the gay-marriage talk. I believe the Fox News crowd has its opinions on that issue as well; Sullivan evidently expects Kerry's iron convictions to put up more resistance to the insidious pressure of public opinion here than they will when it comes to Iraq. After all, so much more is at stake!

[Thomas Hazlewood]

What a great idea! Think I'll try that on my, heretofore, spendthrift son. "There's only one way you'll ever learn to respect a dollar..... Here's a million of them."

Don't know why it had never occurred to me before that the Presidency of the most powerful country in the world is, actually, just a learning tool. Once you get there,well, you just HAVE to do the right thing.....except for Bush, that is.

[OCBill]

The Presidency forces someone into responsibility? Two words: Jimmy Carter.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

"In my world, the clouds have parted and the sun is yellow."

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light.

And, somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout,

but there is no joy in Blogville --
mighty Andrew has struck out.

[Michael Ubaldi]

Actually, the best way to reform the Democratic Party is to hand it a humiliating defeat this year and in 2006, giving its collectivist/nihilist-left leadership a practical reason to stop animating a corpse and found their own party. Here's the logic in question with extreme values:

FORCING HITLER INTO RESPONSIBILITY: It's a simple argument and it goes as follows. One reason to give the Fuhrer the Sudetenland this time is that, whatever his record, he will, as protectorate, be forced by reality and by public opinion to be responsible in his repatriation. He has no other option. You think he wants to be tarred as a continental menace every week by that backbencher Churchill? Moreover, he would remove from the Europeans and others the Versailles alibi for their relative absence in postwar Germany. More important, civil negotiation would weaken the militant wing of the Nazi Party, by forcing them to take responsibility for a territory that is theirs' as much as anyone's.

As nearly anyone can see, there's a pattern: blogger quotes Sullivan, ten commenters start a sentence with "I stopped reading Sullivan when..." I suppose, if someone wanted, he could maintain a weblog that daily excerpted Michael Moore, or Hans Blix, or Margo Kingston, and agonized over what they said and why they said it.

[GungHo]

Fantastic New York Times profile of the new messiah Bush!

"In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

So it seems we are witnessing a great historic victory (tragedy to the reality based dinosaurs) , when God's chosen son Bush is reelected. Our Founding Fathers must be groaning in their graves. To think we'd see the day Thomas Jefferson would become irrelevant. To quote the now useless Philosopher of Enlightened American Democracy:

"The presumption of dictating to an independent nation the form of its government is so arrogant, so atrocious, that indignation as well as moral sentiment enlists all our partialities and prayers in favor of one and our equal execrations against the other. I do not know, indeed, whether all nations do not owe to one another a bold and open declaration of their sympathies with the one party and their detestation of the conduct of the other. But farther than this we are not bound to go; and, indeed, for the sake of the world, we ought not to increase the jealousies or draw on ourselves the power of [a] formidable confederacy."

"We would be guilty of great error in our conduct toward other nations if we endeavored to force liberty on our neighbors in our own form."

Thank God we don't need this kind of foolish intellectual ethicism any longer. We have new ACTORS to lead us into Armageddon. (How many of your children are acting in their great play?) With Evangelical Christians leading us into the great fight against the infidels, I think a great beginning would be to shut down the blasphemous public school system. I hear Saudi Arabia has a really fine system we can model it on - we indoctrinate all the children in the principles of religious warfare. Kids like that make great ACTORS!

FOUR MORE YEARS! BUSH CHENEY 04!

[Cecil Turner]

Sully's gone completely 'round the bend.

And is it just me, or do others find it a bit presumptuous of foreigners telling us how to vote? I got a serious chuckle out of Tim Blair's Operation Guardian, and some of the pointed comments reflect my attitude perfectly. Unless Sully's filled out a citizenship application recently, the same considerations apply to him.

Or has he?

[GungHo]

I agree Sully's an idiot. He claimed Kerry's mention of lesbian Mary was a GOOD thing. Doesn't he realize lesbianism is a sick perversion that all good Christians loathe and are viscerally repelled by? How dare he shame our good Vice President who only wants to send our young off to slaughter the infidels by reminding America that he himself has this dark foul mark in his own family? He tried to show his disgust for her by supporting the Amendment to ban her kind from ever entering our society with equal rights. He's doing the right thing. Yet the vile Kerry reminds us that he also coddles this hedonistic pervert within his own family. How can Sully call himself a Republican?

[Paul Zrimsek]

abb1, I thought you said you were staying away until after the election.

[GungHo]

I'm not abb1, I'm GungHo. And I'm just jazzed as all get out about the new New York T imes article:

Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush, told me recently that ''if Bush wins, there will be a civil war in the Republican Party starting on Nov. 3.'' The nature of that conflict, as Bartlett sees it? Essentially, the same as the one raging across much of the world: a battle between modernists and fundamentalists, pragmatists and true believers, reason and religion.

''Just in the past few months,'' Bartlett said, ''I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.'' Bartlett, a 53-year-old columnist and self-described libertarian Republican who has lately been a champion for traditional Republicans concerned about Bush's governance, went on to say: ''This is why George W. Bush is so clear-eyed about Al Qaeda and the Islamic fundamentalist enemy. He believes you have to kill them all. They can't be persuaded, that they're extremists, driven by a dark vision. He understands them, because he's just like them. . . .

Don't you guys get it? This is GREAT!!!!We finally have what we need to take over the world! How else can we beat back these Islamofascists unless we have a Christianofascist of our own? He's the CHOSEN ONE! Come on if we had one of those hifalutin educated intellectuals like Kerry who rationalizes and consults and analyzes - Where the hell would we be? How can we change the course of 250 years of godless intellectualism that have ruled our nation and turned it into the hedonistic envy of the world? We need to tear it down. We need to bring on Armageddon. And I know I'm one of the ones ascending to the heavenly father. So don't worry me none. All hail George Bush! All praise the coming Rapture!

[Paul Zrimsek]

OK, so TM's got a new troll who just happens to share abb1's pet obsession with the libertarian natural-law rights of dictators. I would have thought the odds against that were pretty steep, but maybe there's something in the air here that attracts 'em.

[GungHo]

I don't know nothin about no libertarian rights of dictators. I really don't know nothin about much except Bush is our SAVIOR, men!

This is the part I loved the most:
''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now,

Dont' you see how important this is? This USA, that is become nothin but a den of evil and hedonism and iniquity - think about it. What was the founding principle? Freedom from EMPIRE, right? But now under Bush we've become an empire !!!! Woo Hoo!

It's amazing the greatness he hath wrought. He is completely transforming us into a different entity entirely! And next we take down IRAN! Man, can't wait. It will be such fun to watch our boys blow the heads off those ragheads. Hey, how many of you boys are signing up? You won't want to miss out on this action!

Where do you think we should go after Iran? When we make the Mideast into a parking lot we won't have this $55 barrel oil nonsense. And we can use all those towelheads as our slaves. One's we don't bury under the tarmac that is! Hee hee.

[TM]

What is troubling is that we actually had some good back and forth with sensible lefties during our brief respite from abb1. Hence, his return (or the arrival of his intellectual heir) is quite unwelcome.

Gung Ho - would you do as all a favor and please find another site where your comments are welcome?

I would appreciate it if you did not comment here. My experience has been that a persistently absurd commenter tends to drag the entire tone of the conversation off a cliff.

Thank you.

[OCBill]

I'm gung ho for Kerry-Edwards, and they're gung ho, too, and not just for the power to lead the ignorant proletariat into true Enlightment. They're also gung ho for something a little more personal.

[Bou]

I can't figure out where Sullivan is coming from anymore either. But I really wonder about his motives when he posts somthing like this.">http://themoteingodseye.blogspot.com/2004/10/there-are-some-things-ill-just-never.html">this.

[Veeshir]

If you don't feed them they go away. Besides, it has us pegged. It must be a particularly perceptive troll.
Bush for G-d 2008!!!!!!

[Cecil Turner]

Winning friends and influencing people. You go, dude.

BTW, for those who are interested, Gung Ho is an interesting term. Originally a favorite saying of the Chinese Eighth Route Army, its most literally translated as "strive for harmony." Evans F. Carlson, USMC, assigned as an observer in 1937 (during the Japanese invasion) was impressed. He brought the concept to the Marines when he commanded the 2nd Raider Battalion at the opening of the war in the Pacific. Not too surprisingly, the Marine leadership wasn't too impressed with a Chinese concept that reeked of communism, and Carlson's adoption of the motto originally met with a cold reception. But it seemed to help instill espirit de corps, and was eventually co-opted (somewhere along the way it was retranslated as "work together").

The Raider concept (essentially highly trained "super soldiers" for dangerous missions), however, wasn't considered a success, and they were eventually disbanded.

[Cecil Turner]

"And we have the right to do it don't we?"

Yes, actually, we do. States who sponsor anti-American terrorists are engaged in acts of war. It is perfectly appropriate to reciprocate.

You may think the world's most active terror sponsor (Iran) has a "right" to nuclear weapons (after all, we have them, don't we?)--I am not impressed with that line of reasoning.

[TM]

It's on to Plan B, although I am uncharacteristically pessimistic.

This is sort of like "not feeding", but "weeding" might be more accurate.

Makes for a cryptic comments thread, regrettably.

[kajando]

Maybe, the only way we can ever build a stable Iraq and spread democracy into Syria and Iran is with Kerry as President. In order for us to succeed, the terrorists, and those who would consider terrorism a possible career choice, need to see that America is winning, That democracy is growing daily, that schools are opening across Iraq, that clean drinking water is being provided to the entire country, that demonizing America is a losing fight. With Kerry as President, the press would immediately began telling us how suddenly upbeat the Iraqis are. Kerry can tell us in a NY Times piece how the elections he pushed for have been a huge success. Without the beating America takes in its own press daily, the terrorists have no chance. Maybe Kerry is our only hope. Or maybe we just need more blogs and fewer frogs.

Submitted, from the near future, for your approval; Headlines we will see if Kerry wins.

Kerry Lauds Iraqi Elections
“Proof Positive” of his successful foreign policy.
“Kerry has accomplished more in his first 4 days in office than “shrub” did in last four years”, cheers James Carville, new anchor of the CBS Evening News.

Kerry Praises Iraqi Security Forces
U.S. officials praised Iraqi Army and Iraqi National Guard units, saying they demonstrated both combat and support capabilities during the capture of Samara.
The officials cited in particular Iraqi support operations, counter-insurgency raids and intelligence missions in the city, located north of Baghdad. In all, they said, about 2,000 Iraqi troops were sent to Samara.

Clinton Cheers Syrian Accord
“Evidence of Kerry’s continuing success in rebuilding Iraq”, US Ambassador tells world body.
Last week, Iraq, Syria and the United States agreed to cooperate on border security and intelligence sharing.
"They [Syria] have used their border with Iraq to facilitate terrorists moving back and forth, money moving back and forth, and they've been unhelpful," Clinton said. "There have been meetings lately, and whether they'll change their way and be more helpful prospectively, time will tell. But I'd like to see it. John Kerry's succesful diplomacy is paying huge dividends" (too bad the dividends are now taxable again) Clinton also said that he would like to see Hillary and Linda Tripp fighting in jello, for a Big Mac.

Kerry Keeps The World Focused on Iraq Successes
President's leadership key in building a "new and hopeful" Iraq
Some 12 million people are being served by new projects across Iraq. A poor area of Baghdad with nearly 1 million people is now getting water from a rehabilitated water treatment plant. Some 30-40 percent of the marshlands deliberately drained by Saddam Hussein in his genocidal campaign against the marsh Arabs have been reflooded. A program last year cleared more than 17,000 kilometers of Iraqi waterways to improve water flow and irrigation. Another program is set to clear some 20,000 kilometers and employ around 100,000 Iraqis.

How can we be sure these things will come true? Well, because they already have, or in the case of the Iraqi elections, are scheduled to occur. The MSM is just a little slow, as usual, to bring us any report of Bush succeeding at anything. They are too busy faking documents trying to bring down W. to bother with what's going on around them.

here's the links to the stories to back up what's going on today in Iraq. Don't wait for months before Rather gets it right. Read today's news today. Wow, what a country.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40844

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/front_3.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3702386.stm

[Jim Glass]

"FORCING THE DEMS INTO RESPONSIBILITY: It's a simple argument and it goes as follows. One reason to vote for Kerry this time is that, whatever his record, he will, as president, be forced by reality and by public opinion to be tough in this war. He has no other option."

Andrew's got less sense than Toto:
http://www.ucomics.com/glennmccoy/2004/10/07/

[antimedia]

Don't you guys get it? Guys like GungHo are frustrated bloggers. Nobody reads their crap so they post at popular sites like Tom's where they can get (they think) a great deal more exposure. Pity the poor guy. He's not self-sustaining.

[Cecil Turner]

Hmmm, "weeding" eh? Impressive. That seems to work better than blocking.

[The Kid]

Sullivan needs to talk to some women who’ve tried the route of reforming a spouse – changing a guy. It won’t work, it doesn’t happen unless some dramatic event causes the guy himself to wake up and start anew. Successful drug rehab – including its subset, recovery from alcoholism – takes a whole lot of willpower and a lot of help, but it starts with one’s self. He ought to go down to the women’s shelter and find out what’s really up.

Compare the records of Kerry and Bush in the 1990s – who got more done by working with others? What’s Kerry done other than bloviate? He’s by no means the ringmaster that can cause change within the Democrat Party circus. Organizations can be changed, but it takes a remarkable leader and a lot of time for change to occur. Or they break up and re-form along lines of common interest.

Just sitting here with a beer, thinking about the coalitions in the Democrat Party makes me think that it needs a shakeup. Look at the membership and leadership: the plaintiff’s bar, teachers and other union members, environmental and animal rights extremists, Hollywood stars, society elites, journalists, black leaders, socialists, and kooks. (I’ll leave the differences among the Republican constituencies alone except to remark that there’s more to unite than divide them, even among the kooks.)

What one thing do they have in common, other than a desire for power? The common theme is that they know what’s good for us, and they’ll make sure we get it, whether we want it or not.

What’s cemented my support for Bush is his “ownership society,” the buzz phrase that includes private Social Security accounts, health savings accounts, and the kinds of things that let’s individuals make very important choices with their own money, their own savings. It’s as though Bush is saying that he doesn’t know, can’t know what’s best for each of us, so he’ll try to provide the structure that let’s us choose.

True, I’d be happier with a whole lot less of the federal spending that Bush has planned, but I know that the only thing that unites Kerry and all of the Democrats is their desire to remove choices in the name of a centralized, directed efficiency that the fall of the Berlin wall proved is not possible.

[Dave]

I sent this comment to Sullivan on his bizarre suggestion; apparently he's not going to post it:

Your remarkable suggestion that we should put a party of demagogues like Michael Moore and Terry McAuliffe, and organizations like moveon.org, who traffic in hatred, lies, and violent, corrosive rhetoric, into power in order to temper their radicalism and "force" them into the responsibility of governing has been tried at least once before in a similarly charged and divided political environment. The results were less than encouraging.

Now I don't suggest that a Kerry victory would lead to gas chambers, but surely the message would be heard loud and clear by all (of whatever political persuasion) who would seek to gain political power at any price: delegitimize and demonize your opponents, appeal to peoples' basest instincts, polarize the country with media-assisted disinformation, demean our own successes, cheer for our enemies, do or say whatever it takes (including ballot fraud, violent take-overs of political offices, "pre-emptive" claims of voter intimidation, etc) to make yourselves so irreconcilable that the only choice is between another Faustian bargain and the complete unraveling of the social fabric that makes a civil and democratic society possible.

Thanks, no. I'm not going to vote to make someone the most powerful human being in the world "whatever his record", and however unsavory his friends and tactics, in the naïve hope that appeasing their thirst for power will somehow transform unprincipled cynicism and opportunism into virtue.

[Reader]

I stopped reading Andrew Sullivan a while back.

[Al Superczynski]

I think Mr. Sullivan has been captivated by Kerry's Magic Hat. Or maybe it's the bunnies...

[TM]

Months later - hmm, that last bit, about Schilling coming back to pitch against the Yankees, and the Red Sox going on to victory? Uhh, that was meant to be a parody, not a prediction. Darn it. Darn, darn, darn it.