Who Would I Vote For?
If I had the vote in the U.S., in 2000 I would almost certainly have voted for Bush. Gore's book on the environment was pseudo-intellectualism at its creepiest, and the weird little lies, along with other things, seemed to confirm that he was some kind of puffed-up loser. Bush seemed promising.
Now I seem to have less respect for Bush all the time. If his defenders say he is not stupid, then they have to admit that he has spent most of his life being almost unbelievably lazy, unfocussed, incurious and poorly informed even about things on which he makes major decisions. Rather late in his life he has had some successes, and they can easily be counted on the fingers of one hand: the Texas Ranger; Governor of Texas; the 2000 election.
The Rangers: it was the golden age of shaking down taxpayers to support professional sports franchises. Bush put very little money into the team, but his contract specified that if he persuaded politicians and voters to cover virtually all costs, while reaping virtually no direct profits--leaving all that to the team's owners--then he stood to make huge bonuses. He succeeded, and he was well paid. Voters in Arlington pretty much ratified the whole unbelievable deal. And yes, capitalism means taking advantage of lawful opportunities, not asking too many questions about them. But is this something for a conservative or a Republican to be proud of?
Governor: apparently even in the summer of 2000, the tour guides in Texas would say: under the state Constitution, the Governor is a figurehead.
2000: Great good fortune of no formidable Republican opponent except for one who could be smeared as brain damaged because of his time as a POW; great good fortune of running against gormless Gore. Great good fortune of winning the electoral college despite losing the popular vote. Great good fortune of the Rehnquist court.
One of his defenders, I believe, has said Bush falls down stairs, but ... something. But ... he might be doing basically the right thing? In other words, these might be the stairs the U.S. wants to end up at the bottom of. Bush has found the stairs, and he knows he wants to go down. He just has no idea how, and he relies on staffers (as well as the hilarious con man Chalabi) who are not so much stupid or incompetent as full of nutty ideas. Kerry (it could be argued) hasn't found the stairs, isn't sure he wants to go down, and may even be afraid of the dark (whereas Bush perhaps can't tell the difference between dark and light).
Kevin Drum is mystified that the Bushies would let munitions be dispersed among the Iraqi population, after they had already let Zarqawi escape several times. In other words, they turned loose the guy who has become the major killer of Americans (and others) in Iraq, and they they made sure he had enough ammo to keep fighting for a long time. Drum says the Bushies acted, as opposed to spoke, as if they didn't care about WMDs at all.
I have long held that while they may have been both lying and clueless on the WMD/links to Al Qaeda business, they were probably more lying than clueless. (Maybe the President himself was more clueless than lying). They probably thought it would be pretty easy to get rid of Saddam and then there would be a lot of Iraqis able and willing to build, if not a liberal democracy, then a close facsimile--something close to Turkey, at least. This would be a great beachhead for the West in the Arab world.
Obviously there are a lot of specific issues in Iraq that have blown up in their faces--my guess they didn't think at all about more than about 1% of them--they trusted Chalabi and a few Power Point presentations by their think tank buddies. But they are trying to win a large struggle for hearts and minds. They do intend to support democracies, not just support convenient thugs, Kissinger-style. I guess.
I have a lot of sympathy for Ann Althouse, who seems to support Bush mainly because of the security issue. I must say, though, the "I'm a lovin' guy" episode that so impressed her still gives me the absolute creeps. What's love got to do with it?
Megan McCardle is also a smart individual. It's not a big surprise that she has endorsed Bush, but her reasoning still has some force: for his first fifteen years in the Senate (I guess: before he decided he had to be some kind of centrist to get elected President) Kerry was on the loony left. He still gives signs that he is owned by key Democratic stakeholders: the all-powerful seniors ("I won't raise the retirement age": why the hell not?), teachers unions, people who run--and benefit from--the existing welfare system. Who can forget the Department of Wellness? McCardle is totally opposed to expanding government provision of health care, and I'm not with her on that. (I'm not sure either Canada or the U.S. has the right mix of public and private dollars). Bush is almost certainly more of a free trader than Kerry, and that's important for Canada.
That leaves Mickey Kaus. Kerry will probably manage the war on terror a bit better than Bush now, even if he wouldn't have been better in the early stages. Also: Kaus doesn't expect Kerry to be better than Bush in any other way whatsoever. Whew.
So: Bush, I guess, despite a lot of things.
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