And, since you've all been dying to know, we come finally to discuss John Kerry.
I've been watching the Democratic primaries with mixed feelings, which response is hard to avoid with such a bunch of vitriol, puerile taunting, demagoguing, and generally behaving poorly being broadcast with such alarming constancy by the news networks. I've been pulling for John Edwards as the best of the electable bunch (I have a lot of respect for Joe Lieberman, but primary races for either party tend to be really ugly affairs which reward campaign behavior which isn't Joe's strong suit). I don't think I agree with John Edwards on many things, and I know I didn't agree with Howard Dean on some things (Iraq, his current economic policy) though I agreed with him on others (gun owners' rights, and the fiscal moderation and discipline he demonstrated while he actually governed). I have no idea whether John Kerry and I agree on anything, because I have concluded that John Kerry believes in nothing. Except, naturally, for his desire to beat George Bush and propel himself to power. Which I don't agree with.

If you look up at the top left corner of this page you'll see my own little political axiom, which at its simplest is that all politicians are basically venal. I'm sure Howard Dean had more than a little fancy for the Oval Office, and I disagree wholly with his take on the Iraq war, but I believe him when he says he believes these things. And there's no doubt that what George Bush says is more than a little colored by the fact that he'd rather keep his job than lose it, but there's little doubt that what he represents as his core beliefs are genuine.

But I think John Kerry is the very worst sort of politician in this regard, one who is actuated solely by his venality, and is devoid of any real beliefs of his own. His rather tortured attempts to change his story and expain away his votes on the Iraq war resolution suggest that nothing he says or votes can be taken at anything like face value. It's worth noting that he voted against the 1991 Iraq war, despite its having UN approval, though he now explains that that was so President Bush 41could build more domestic support for the effort. And he voted for the current war, which he now says he opposed, and which war can be blamed on George Bush and Halliburton. (Come on. He's on the Senate Intelligence Committee. He's privy to all the intelligence the President reads, both during the Clinton administration's Operation Desert Fox and in the run-up to the current war. Saying that he only supported the war because of faulty intelligence--so it's not his fault and he can't be blamed for it--but then condemning George Bush for doing the same is absurd, and any thinking person knows it. I'm frankly insulted he expects that to fly, and more than a little appalled that so far, in fact, it is.)

And he voted for the Patriot Act, which in fact he co-authored, and which he now virulently opposes for, essentially, its "chilling effect." Tip to astute listeners: the supposed chilling effect, which you will hear cited as a basis for opposing all manner of Republican legislation, is only cited in the face of an utter absence of real and specific problems with the policy being criticised, and it means that not only have no actual abuses surfaced, that it's difficult even for educated critics to even imagine specifically what might go wrong.

Kerry voted for the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, making regime change for Iraq the official position of the United States, though evidently not with any real seriousness of purpose, according to what he's been saying lately about how wrong it was for us to actually depose him. And, every Democrat's pal, Bill Clinton, signed this bill calling for regime change, so why all the Democratic angst when it comes time to actually do it? The same liberals who always wore FREE TIBET t-shirts in high school should have loved our kicking of a murderous oppressive tyrant from power, though in fact they were the loudest to oppose it for some reason.

Lest I digress into an analysis of the state of American Liberalism, which is perhaps a subject worthy of some attention but which would take us rather too far afield, let us return to John Kerry. I started to notice his yea on the Iraq war becoming but Bush assembled a "fraudulent coalition" and I didn't expect George Bush to fuck it up as badly as he did once Dean's consistently strident opposition to the war had made him (Dean) the temporary front-runner. Which vulgarity, in that Rolling Stone article, was an especially nice touch for the man who would be leader of the free world, as it nicely encapsulated not only that the way he actually votes shouldn't be held against him, but that he was also too angry to talk about it without having his grammar explode. Yale-educated three-term United States Senators have fully sufficient savvy and self-awareness to avoid any accidental embarassing choices of diction, and I haven't heard Kerry dropping F bombs on Tim Russert and Brit Hume, so I can only attribute this particular choice of language as a carefully considered maneuver to position himself favorably in whatever particular idiom he thinks the readers of Rolling Stone should view him in order for him to garner the support of another subsection of a demographic. Taken together, I must confess that I just don't buy it. He's faking it, and he doesn't even have the decency to be convincing about it.

So what? My problem with all this is that John Kerry is just Bill Clinton, devoid of charm and probably less likely to philander. His every policy focus-group tested, governing according to the latest opinion tracking polls, and always choosing what's momentarily most advantageous--not for the nation, but most advantageous to John Kerry's gaining and continuing in power. This habit was obvious and annoying, though slightly amusing, during the Clinton administration, when the economy was booming and the nation was generally at peace. Matters are rather more serious now, and as a consequence we don't have the luxury of playing silly posturing games with our policies or indulging leaders who just want to make everyone like them so they'll be re-elected. Because the easiest and most dangerous policy which Kerry will end up selling us before this is over is that we're not really even at war anymore.

The reason he'll sell this, and why I fear a dangerous number of Americans might buy it, is because it offers the easy path. It's much easier to say, and for a listener to hear, we're not really at war anymore, than to listen to George Bush say that we're at war; it will be long and difficult; there will be setbacks and men will die; and sacrifice will be needed from all of us. Which, if you've been listening, is pretty much what George Bush has been saying all along. It's the hard path, and it makes even a great wartime leader vulnerable in peacetime. It's why no less a leader than Winston Churchill himself was voted promptly out of office in the first election after the danger was past. No one wants to hear about sacrifice and toil and endurance, or vote for someone who offers nothing but.

None of which has anything whatever to do with whether we're really at war right now. We are. The absence of major attacks in the US since 9/11/2001 is significant and gratifying, but it does not mean our enemy has been beaten or has given up. For all the comparisons the Iraq war draws to Vietnam, I maintain that the overall War on Terror is much more like World War II than Vietnam, for it is fundamentally an existential conflict against a deranged enemy who will stop at nothing to see us wiped off the very face of the earth. Hitler and Hirohito had their armies and navies of hundreds of thousands of men to try to accomplish this; all the terrorists need is one major breach in nonproliferation security and they may be able to develop or acquire a nuclear weapon. Or, possibly worse, an enhanced strain of smallpox. Either one would be at least two orders of magnitude more deadly than 9/11 was, and would have the potential to cause the utter economic collapse of our civilization. That's what we're up against here, and it's every bit that serious.

This is not a game. I don't care exactly about the Nigerian yellowcake, or whether Saddam had actually tricked us into thinking he still had weapons he had really destroyed (which, really, does seem incredible). I really don't care whether "Mission Accomplished" was an arrogantly premature celebration of a victory not yet achieved, or was really meant just for the crew of one carrier who had served admirably and honorably. I really don't care whether George Bush's dental records prove he was at a meeting in Alabama for the ANG in the '60s, and whether the one meeting he missed was optional or supposedly mandatory. All that kind of quibbling is silly kid's stuff, and the fact that the Democrats are obsessed with it all shows just how profoundly unserious they are about winning this war, or even recognizing and admitting that it is a war and not just an elaborate law enforcement excercise. Right now we don't have the luxury of indulging silly politicians who want to pretend that the war is over, and we won, and we can all come home and disarm and celebrate the new Peace Dividend. Because right now that sort of thinking from the elected leaders in our highest offices has the ability to get an unseemly large number of us killed.

I can only say that I wish more Democrats still had the spirit of John F Kennedy, not John F Kerry, as we prosecute this long and shadowy war.

"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." John F Kennedy, Inaugural address, 1/20/1961.