Monday, September 20, 2004
Train Wreck
A couple of weeks ago, I declared that John Kerry is finished--that we'd be spending the next two months watching the Repugs pour water on somebody that's already drowning--and I have seen not a damn thing in the last two weeks to make me change my mind. Sure, I had a brief flash of hope when Kerry hired some members of the Clinton team, but the hope was swept away when the memos on Bush's National Guard service degenerated into arcane discussions over the typefaces of IBM Selectric typewriters (no matter whether the documents are real or copies, the questions already raised, if they were about any candidate other than Bush, would have made him him unelectable), and when the Kitty Kelley book on the Bushes turned out to be a two-day wonder. My Republican friends don't seem bothered by anything Bush says, does, or is said to have done or not done. They're ready to pull the lever again no matter what. The poll data, despite the attempts of lefty bloggers and journalists to whistle past the graveyard, is grim. Swing states are gradually swinging in line with Bush, and it seems likely that Bush could roll up 350 electoral votes, making it unnecessary for his people to steal either Ohio or Florida to win. (Just to be safe, however, the government is launching a major anti-terror initiative in October, which will undoubtedly ferret out and stop evildoer plotting, doubtless in critical states.) And everybody is looking toward the debates as Kerry's last stand--which is too bad, because all Bush has to do is not drool on himself to win. No matter how deferential and careful Kerry is, he will be criticized in the end for coming on too strong, for being disrespectful, and for acting all smart and stuff. It will be Al Gore 2000 all over again, and I'd bet my house on it. (If, as I am compelled to note, there are debates at all. Even though the first one is supposed to be next week, don't believe it until you see it.)
But I am beginning to think that Kerry may not want to win this thing, because the next four years are going to be riven with disaster. The intelligence estimate that came out last week with dire scenarios for Iraq's future is just one example--and if Kerry wins, it becomes his problem, and whatever erupts over there will become his fault, as if the whole damn thing was the Democrats' idea to begin with. The likelihood that the draft will have to be reinstated to cover America's military manpower needs is another example of the disaster that awaits the next president. See the Forest suggested last week that bloggers need to start talking about the reinstatement of the draft during a second Bush presidency as if it's a foregone conclusion of his reelection--which it is. But I think it's probably a foregone conclusion if Kerry is elected, too. And the law of averages dictates there's going to be another major terrorist attack on American soil at some point, so every year that passes without one increases exponentially the likelihood that there's going to be one. And if it happens on Kerry's watch, even if it can be proven that Bush's criminal neglect of useful homeland security provisions in favor of cosmetic roundups of Muslim men is to blame, it won't matter. Dick Cheney will have been proven right--a vote for Kerry was a vote for more terrorism. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to imagine Kerry's approval ratings down around Nixon territory come his reelection time four years from now. For Kerry personally, it'd be better to be watching the mess safely from the Senate.
While Kerry watches, the country will be taking a screwing that will make the last four years look like sweet tender love, of course: wingnuts on the courts, pillage of the environment, ballooning of the deficit, the end of Social Security and Medicare, more secrecy, more repression, more religion in government--but there's an argument, and not just from the Nader nutjobs, that the screwing is necessary. Over the last century, American politics has swung like a pendulum from progressive enlightenment to repressive reaction and back again. Maybe, if we want to break the cycle, we need the post-Clinton swing to the right to reach the full, grim potential the first term of Bush has only hinted at.
We don't live our lives in historical cycles, of course, we live them in individual moments governed by the circumstances of the moment. And that means we are in for some very bad moments indeed over the next four years. But perhaps we're headed for them regardless. And so, if we can't stop the train, perhaps it's better that one of our guys isn't the engineer.
Recommended Reading: Bill Moyers on journalism's promise, its failings, and its future. Sounds pontificating and dull, I know, and it's really long. But read it anyhow.
A couple of weeks ago, I declared that John Kerry is finished--that we'd be spending the next two months watching the Repugs pour water on somebody that's already drowning--and I have seen not a damn thing in the last two weeks to make me change my mind. Sure, I had a brief flash of hope when Kerry hired some members of the Clinton team, but the hope was swept away when the memos on Bush's National Guard service degenerated into arcane discussions over the typefaces of IBM Selectric typewriters (no matter whether the documents are real or copies, the questions already raised, if they were about any candidate other than Bush, would have made him him unelectable), and when the Kitty Kelley book on the Bushes turned out to be a two-day wonder. My Republican friends don't seem bothered by anything Bush says, does, or is said to have done or not done. They're ready to pull the lever again no matter what. The poll data, despite the attempts of lefty bloggers and journalists to whistle past the graveyard, is grim. Swing states are gradually swinging in line with Bush, and it seems likely that Bush could roll up 350 electoral votes, making it unnecessary for his people to steal either Ohio or Florida to win. (Just to be safe, however, the government is launching a major anti-terror initiative in October, which will undoubtedly ferret out and stop evildoer plotting, doubtless in critical states.) And everybody is looking toward the debates as Kerry's last stand--which is too bad, because all Bush has to do is not drool on himself to win. No matter how deferential and careful Kerry is, he will be criticized in the end for coming on too strong, for being disrespectful, and for acting all smart and stuff. It will be Al Gore 2000 all over again, and I'd bet my house on it. (If, as I am compelled to note, there are debates at all. Even though the first one is supposed to be next week, don't believe it until you see it.)
But I am beginning to think that Kerry may not want to win this thing, because the next four years are going to be riven with disaster. The intelligence estimate that came out last week with dire scenarios for Iraq's future is just one example--and if Kerry wins, it becomes his problem, and whatever erupts over there will become his fault, as if the whole damn thing was the Democrats' idea to begin with. The likelihood that the draft will have to be reinstated to cover America's military manpower needs is another example of the disaster that awaits the next president. See the Forest suggested last week that bloggers need to start talking about the reinstatement of the draft during a second Bush presidency as if it's a foregone conclusion of his reelection--which it is. But I think it's probably a foregone conclusion if Kerry is elected, too. And the law of averages dictates there's going to be another major terrorist attack on American soil at some point, so every year that passes without one increases exponentially the likelihood that there's going to be one. And if it happens on Kerry's watch, even if it can be proven that Bush's criminal neglect of useful homeland security provisions in favor of cosmetic roundups of Muslim men is to blame, it won't matter. Dick Cheney will have been proven right--a vote for Kerry was a vote for more terrorism. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to imagine Kerry's approval ratings down around Nixon territory come his reelection time four years from now. For Kerry personally, it'd be better to be watching the mess safely from the Senate.
While Kerry watches, the country will be taking a screwing that will make the last four years look like sweet tender love, of course: wingnuts on the courts, pillage of the environment, ballooning of the deficit, the end of Social Security and Medicare, more secrecy, more repression, more religion in government--but there's an argument, and not just from the Nader nutjobs, that the screwing is necessary. Over the last century, American politics has swung like a pendulum from progressive enlightenment to repressive reaction and back again. Maybe, if we want to break the cycle, we need the post-Clinton swing to the right to reach the full, grim potential the first term of Bush has only hinted at.
We don't live our lives in historical cycles, of course, we live them in individual moments governed by the circumstances of the moment. And that means we are in for some very bad moments indeed over the next four years. But perhaps we're headed for them regardless. And so, if we can't stop the train, perhaps it's better that one of our guys isn't the engineer.
Recommended Reading: Bill Moyers on journalism's promise, its failings, and its future. Sounds pontificating and dull, I know, and it's really long. But read it anyhow.
